Lead Brand Strategist in Lewes

Ancient + Brave is a female founded, mission-driven wellness brand with an award-winning range of collagen, supplements and functional blends. Rooted in ancient wisdom and validated by science, our simple daily rituals support our community in nurturing whole body health. Ancient + Brave has been recognised in The Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing private companies for three consecutive years - most recently placing 7th - and ranked 4th in the Oresa Retail Growth Index in 2025. Social and environmental responsibility has always been at the heart of the business and woven into how we operate. We're a certified B Corp, a member of 1% for the Planet, and through the Made By Brave Foundation we direct 1%+ of all revenue to environmental and social causes. As an equal-opportunity employer we are committed to an inclusive and diverse workplace culture, where we are brave, connected and intentional - and lead with integrity.

We operate from beautiful head offices overlooking the river Ouse in Lewes, East Sussex.

Ancient + Brave has a profound sense of identity and purpose. We are a brand with a deep belief in the power of bravery to change the world and we have created a science backed business and product portfolio designed to maximise the potential of our customer to live with bravery in small moments and big. Our opportunity is to turn this USP into true strategic advantage, translating our sharp positioning into a strategic, scalable and competitive brand approach underpinned by science, rooted in customer understanding. The vision is to apply this brand as an operating system across our business, building impact through time.

The role reports directly to the Chief Brand and Creative Officer and owns the strategic layer that powers our creative: you will be the guardian of brand position, define and refine customer facing product positioning, working with customer, brand and cultural insight to apply the brand to challenges across the organisation. This is not just a thinking role, the right person will translate the brand into action across the business, using the power of our brand to drive measurable step change in business performance.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Brand and product positioning: Lead the ongoing evolution of the A+B brand position, translating strategic logic into brand narrative, and frameworks that guide all that we do. Creating tools that act as generators of ideas.
• Own product-level customer facing positioning for every product in the range: developing clear, differentiated narratives grounded in science and evidence, relevant to audiences and inspiring to our creative teams.
• Develop the strategic frameworks that allow the brand to be expressed consistently across markets, channels, and formats without becoming rigid.
• Work with the Founder, Chief Brand + Creative Officer and Creative Director to ensure strategy is the catalyst of true, world class creativity across time.

Customer insight and research

• Be the authority on the A+B customer: who they are, what they believe, what drives their decisions, be able to articulate what they need from the brand at every stage of their journey.
• Be at the forefront of wellness category trends, competitive positioning shifts, and cultural movements that affect how our brand and business should show up and bring that intelligence into the room unprompted.
• Own all branded customer research: commission it, manage it, and translate it into powerful insight that changes the course of our business.
• Turn data into narrative with an exceptional ability to move from data to stories that change how teams think about their work.

Creative strategy partnership

• Partner the creative team on strategically significant projects, bringing the strategic rigour and inspiration to unlock genuinely distinctive work.
• Write NPD briefs and support in the ad hoc improvement of BAU marketing briefs helping teams keep them strategically grounded and creatively inspiring.
• Act as a strategic partner to the Creative Director, bringing insight and provocation to ensure work solves problems in the most interesting way.
• Support the performance creative teams with insight and product positioning beyond what they get from their own platform data to enable the development of creatively diverse, winning work.

Embedding strategy across the organisation

• Work cross-functionally to make brand strategy an operating system that supports the whole business; partnering marketing, ecommerce, retail, and international teams on the specific strategic questions that matter most to their work from NPD to brand delivery in international markets.
• Be a critical friend on commercial and brand projects where a sharp strategic point of view can unlock opportunity.

YOUR BACKGROUND

We are looking for someone who has:

• A minimum 8 years experience in brand and creative strategy, most likely at a leading agency before going in house.
• A portfolio of brand positioning and creative strategy work that shows both depth of thinking and impact.
• Experience owning and interpreting customer research across qualitative and quantitative outcomes, turning insight into actionable strategic direction.
• A track record of working in-house, or as an embedded partner to in-house teams, on business-critical brand and creative challenges.
• Experience applying brand strategy beyond traditional advertising formats into product, content, partnerships, retail, and international markets.
• A clear understanding of the commercial realities of a fast paced scale up and experience in delivering brand thinking at pace.

WHO YOU ARE

To be successful in this role, you will need the following skills / knowledge / experience:

• You are restlessly curious, always reading something, noticing something, connecting something and bringing that energy to every problem.
• A lateral thinker. You see the non-obvious angle on a problem and back it with the evidence to create unreasonably successful outcomes.
• As comfortable with data as you are with ideas. You interpret data with precision and use it to build confidence into brave creative leaps.
• You aren’t precious about where the good thinking comes from. You see your role as to make the brand better, not to protect a point of view.
• You operate as a partner, not a consultant. Embedded, collaborative, and committed to shared outcomes.
• You believe nothing is impossible. You solve problems to the left and right of the brief, not just in front of it.
• You write exceptionally well, and inspire the people around you.
• You are not precious, you know that perfection is the enemy of progress.
• Pace energises you and despite your experience, you still thrive on doing, not managing.

Further, to truly thrive at Ancient + Brave you will need to embody the spirit of our brand and align with our company culture. For us that is a series of shared beliefs:

• WE BELIEVE IN BRAVERY — We are: Courageous, Bold, Experimental
• WE BELIEVE IN INTEGRITY — We are: Honest, Accountable, Ethical
• WE BELIEVE IN CONNECTION — We are: Collaborative, Inclusive, Open
• WE BELIEVE IN INTENTION — We are: Purposeful, Proactive, Focused

WAYS OF WORKING

We're a fast-paced scale-up and being together in person makes a real difference to how we collaborate and move the business forward. We've worked hard to make our riverside office an inviting and genuinely enjoyable place to be, and we're proud of the environment we've created for our team. Therefore, please only apply if you’re happy to commute to our HQ in Lewes, East Sussex on a full‑time basis.

As part of being an equal-opportunity employer, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace culture. We embrace varied perspectives and encourage creativity that knows no bounds. While most of our roles are advertised as full-time, we are open to discussing part-time setup where appropriate.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to support you through the application or interview process, please don't hesitate to let us know.

WHY JOIN US

At Ancient + Brave you’ll find an engaging, collaborative and inclusive work environment where your talents will be nurtured, and your contributions valued.

Here's what joining us looks like: We pay a discretionary bonus based on a mix of company performance and individual contributions and review our salaries annually. Our Private Medical Insurance is designed to support your health and wellbeing, providing swift access to high-quality care whenever you need it most. Our Medicash plan offers access to specialist consultations, 24/7 Virtual GP and health screenings as well as dental, optical and complementary therapies and access to confidential support via its EAP programme.