Senior Creative strategist in London

Candy Crush is on a mission to deliver bold, insight-driven creativity that fuels our growth, deepens player love, and elevates Candy into a true global entertainment brand. As the world of Candy expands, we're raising the bar for what creative excellence looks like inside mobile gaming—and across culture.

To support this ambition, we’re hiring a Senior Creative Strategist to join Candy Crush Saga's Brand Strategy & Creative team. This role is instrumental in shaping the strategic backbone behind our marketing; ensuring our work is insight-led, creatively ambitious, culturally relevant, and truly impactful. This is a highly visible role, partnering across Insights, Analytics, Integrated Planning, Product Marketing, and GTM to bring the creative strategic vision to life.

Your Role Within Our Kingdom

We’re looking for a culturally sharp, creatively ambitious strategist who thrives on transforming insight into powerful ideas. Working closely with the Brand Strategy & Creative Director, you will help define the strategic direction for Candy Crush Saga's brand and creative work; ensuring clarity, coherence, and creative excellence throughout the organisation. You will partner deeply with teams across Candy Crush to set the foundation for great marketing: from generating strategic insights, to shaping briefs, to crafting comms strategies, to analysing brand health, to developing award-winning narratives that showcase the craft behind our work. This is the strategic engine for Candy's creativity - perfect for someone who loves ideas, culture, insight, and elevating the work from the very beginning.

Skills to Create Thrills

• Brand & Creative Strategy
  • Define and strengthen Candy Crush's brand positioning and architecture to guide long-term storytelling and campaign development.
  • Craft clear, inspiring strategy documentation that aligns cross-functional teams and elevates creative decision-making.
  • Unlock opportunities for radical, culturally relevant thinking that pushes Candy's creative expression forward.
• Insight & Knowledge Development
  • Partner with Player Insights and Analytics to identify emerging trends, motivations, and behavioural shifts that shape our brand and campaign strategies.
  • Lead deeper research programmes (e.g., ethnographies, DAT evolution) to expand our understanding of current and future players.
  • Synthesise data into actionable, inspiring narratives that fuel creative briefing and ideation.
• Briefing & Creative Development
  • Craft high-calibre, hypothesis-led briefs rooted in player insight and business ambition.
  • Lead brainstorms and strategic workshops to inspire new ideas and challenge teams to think bigger.
  • Ensure strategic coherence across all creative workstreams, from tentpoles to brand-building to seasonal campaigns.
• Comms Planning & Integrated Rollout
  • Collaborate closely with Integrated Planning to ensure rollouts are idea-led, not channel-led.
  • Develop comms and messaging frameworks that translate brand and creative strategy into cohesive execution across earned, owned, and paid channels.
  • Help elevate GTM planning by advocating for insight-driven, consistent, effective storytelling.
• Brand Health & Performance Insight
  • Own the narrative around brand health results, ensuring insights are clearly communicated and actionable for senior stakeholders.
  • Work with Analytics to interpret campaign performance and identify the strategic implications that inform future creative work.
  • Champion measurement approaches that help us better understand how brand-building and cultural impact connect to business outcomes.
• Creative Effectiveness & Award Submissions
  • Identify award opportunities and lead the development of submissions that highlight Candy Crush's creativity, craft, and effectiveness.
  • Raise the profile of Candy Crush Saga's marketing within King, Microsoft, and globally across the industry.
  • Help build internal belief and external recognition around the power of our brand and creative work.
• Cross-Functional Influence & Collaboration
  • Guide and inspire cross-functional teams with opinionated, well-reasoned strategic perspectives challenges.
  • Collaborate closely with senior stakeholders, bringing clarity and direction to complex challenges.
  • Mentor others through your approach to insight, creativity, and strategic rigor.

What You Bring

• Experience in brand strategy, creative strategy, or comms planning—ideally within creative or integrated agencies.
• Experience developing culturally resonant, insight-driven strategies for entertainment, gaming, or lifestyle brands.
• Fluency in creative comms planning grounded in storytelling and human behaviour.
• Strong analytical and data-fluency skills; able to translate data into meaning and opportunity.
• Ability to craft compelling narratives and communicate them confidently to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience crafting or contributing to award-winning campaigns and submissions.
• A culturally attuned, curious mindset—constantly exploring trends, behaviours, and shifts in entertainment and media.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment with multiple partners and priorities.
• A collaborative spirit with strong stakeholder management and influence skills.

About King

With a mission of Making the World Playful, King is a leading interactive entertainment company with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world's most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world-famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile game hits such as Farm Heroes Saga. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users. King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta.