Creative Director - Pontifex & Denteel Marketing
Location: UK-based
Travel: Required - travels with the Founder as needed (travel and accommodation costs covered)
About the role
Pontifex and Denteel Marketing are scaling fast, and content is becoming the engine behind both organic growth and paid ad performance. We're looking for a Creative Director to work in close daily contact with our Founder - owning content strategy and pre-production end-to-end, building and running the creative team, and building the systems that let content scale without depending on any single person or shoot day.
This spans the Founder's personal brand and the Pontifex / Denteel Marketing brands, across short-form, long-form/YouTube, and organic content.
This is a UK-based role. You'll need to be available to travel with the Founder for shoot days and content production as they happen - travel and accommodation costs are covered when you're on the road together. This is not a fully remote position; being close to the Founder, in person when needed, is core to how this role operates.
You come from a video background - you understand lighting, filming, and what separates content that performs from content that doesn't - but you operate as a director, not just an operator: planning, briefing, and leading a team, not only executing yourself.
What you'll do:
Content & pre-production
- Own content strategy end-to-end across the Founder's personal brand and the company brands, on an ongoing, near-daily basis.
- Lead the full pre-production chain: research, outlier analysis, ideation, scripting, planning shoot days, and video packaging (thumbnails, titles, hooks).
- Decide how content should be shot and structured - down to shot selection, framing, and lighting - and brief videographers and editors accordingly.
- Own long-form/YouTube content specifically as its own discipline, including packaging (thumbnails, titles, formats), not just short-form.
- Write and sharpen the copy that carries the content itself - scripts, hooks, titles, and packaging copy - since a script is often what separates content that performs from content that doesn't, not just the visual execution.
- Work closely with the creative team to keep a constant stream of content moving, reducing dependency on any single shoot day.
Team & systems
- Manage and grow the creative team (editors, designers, clippers) - setting KPIs, running regular check-ins, and ensuring everyone is aligned to the brand vision. Structure this like running a small media operation, not ad hoc collaboration: define team size, meeting cadence, and standards as the team grows.
- Build and maintain a content performance tracking system - dashboards, tracking sheets, and AI tools - and use that data to actively decide what to double down on, not just to report metrics.
- Document processes into SOPs and training modules so workflows can be replicated and the team can scale without bottlenecks.
- Build repeatable content systems (scripting workflows, competitor teardown processes) so the wider team can consistently produce strong creative independently.
- As the team matures, take on attracting and vetting new creative talent - including using your own presence/personal brand to draw in A-tier talent.
What we're looking for
- Has edited short-form or long-form content themselves - not because you'll edit daily, but because it's what lets you tell good work from bad and manage editors effectively.
- A portfolio or creative reel showing a clear, consistent visual style and creative taste - this is how we assess creative judgment, so please have one ready.
- A strong intuitive sense for what makes content perform, across organic and paid.
- Strong scriptwriting and copywriting ability - hooks, titles, video scripts, packaging copy - across organic and long-form content. This is core to the role, not a nice-to-have, since you're expected to write and refine the actual words the content runs on, not just direct how it's shot.
- Experience managing a creative team - tell us how many people, how you structured it, and what cadence you ran (check-ins, reviews, etc.).
- An operator's mindset - you've built SOPs, training modules, or documented processes before, and can point to examples.
- Experience building tracking systems tied to hard metrics (thumb-stop ratio, hook rate, hold rate) and using that data to make creative decisions, not just report on them.
- Comfortable directing others (videographers, editors) confidently and specifically, at scale.
- High emotional intelligence: You know how to protect the Founder's time, read when they're in flow state, know when it's the right moment to film and when it isn't, and ask the right questions to spark content without creating friction.
- Based in the UK, with the flexibility to travel with the Founder as needed for shoot days and content production (travel and accommodation costs covered).
- Strong communicator, highly organised, and comfortable owning team output and systems rather than just executing tasks.
- Marketing or content background ideally, with exposure to paid social, short-form, and long-form/YouTube.
What success looks like
By 3 months:
- You've embedded into the daily workflow with the Founder and creative team, understanding brand voice, audience, and content goals across Pontifex, Denteel Marketing, and the Founder's personal brand.
- A consistent content pipeline is running end-to-end - from pre-production through packaging - with no gaps caused by single shoot days or single points of failure on the team.
- A tracking system for baseline performance metrics (thumb-stop ratio, hook rate, hold rate) is in place and actively informing decisions, not just being reported.
By 6 months:
- Repeatable content systems (scripting workflows, competitor teardown processes, SOPs) are in active use by the wider team, not just you.
- You're managing the creative team effectively at a defined size and cadence - editors, designers, and clippers are aligned, hitting KPIs, and producing to a consistent standard.
- The team has grown to meet content demand, with clear roles and reduced dependency on any one person.
- Measurable improvement in key performance metrics compared to the 3-month baseline.
By 12 months:
- The systems and SOPs you've built allow other team members to consistently produce strong creative independently of you.
- You're actively attracting and vetting creative talent - including through your own presence - to strengthen the team as the brand scales.
- You've become a trusted strategic partner to the Founder, operating with a high degree of autonomy.
