Strategic Lead (Creative + Growth) in London

Position: Strategic Lead

Department: Creative Strategy | Performance Creative | Growth Strategy

Reports to: Head of Creative Strategy (with dotted line to the Chief Creative Officer)

Location: Hybrid, Central London (Camden Roundhouse)

Compensation: Competitive Base + Benefits Scheme + 28 Days Paid Holiday + Private Health

The Opportunity

We're hiring a Strategic Lead to join the Creative Strategy leadership team at the UK's largest performance creative department. Hambi Media (ECD) is the creative engine of the Soar Group - the UK's #1 independent Meta agency group. We've put £300M+ of Meta spend through our data warehouse, and our Creative Strategy department is the group's biggest revenue driver - producing performance creative across High Production video, UGC, and Static design for 7-9 figure DTC and e-commerce brands. We manage over £100M in ad spend yearly and operate 13 creative pods.

You will join a six-person Creative Strategy leadership team: the Chief Creative Officer, the Head of Creative Strategy, three Creative Leads, and you. Your remit is unique within that team - you are the bridge between our Growth Strategy function and our Creative Strategy function. The lines between these two departments are blurring fast, and the next evolution of the work demands strategists who think in both languages simultaneously.

Our Creative Strategists are some of the most talented creative thinkers in the industry. But to deliver on our strategic ambition - moving the department from executional throughput to the strategic spine of every client relationship - they need to be equipped to connect creative work to advanced performance, distribution, offer, growth strategy, and the wider commercial system in which our creative lives. That's where you come in.

You will coach our Senior Creative Strategists to operate at a higher strategic level, lead all departmental training focused on growth strategy and performance, and work with our Growth Strategy team to build the systems and rituals that make these two functions work seamlessly as one. You will also tap into our £600M+ Meta data warehouse to surface the macro creative insights, trends, and tactical plays that compound across every account in the book.

This is a Creative Lead-level role with a department-wide focus. You won't own a pod or run an account directly, but 40% of your time is still billable - embedded in the strategic support of the four Senior Creative Strategists you'll manage, coaching their thinking on the accounts they own. The other 60% is split across cross-departmental up-skilling, performance constraint work, macro reporting, and cross-function synergising.

If you're an advanced strategist with 5+ years of experience across growth strategy, performance marketing, media buying, or creative strategy - and you have genuine energy for coaching others to think strategically about the work - this is the role where your impact compounds across every client we work with.

Requirements

What You'll Own

• Strategic Coaching & Management (Billable, 40%)
  • Embedded coaching and management of 4 Senior Creative Strategists on the strategic work of their biggest accounts.
  • Help every Senior CS make the leap from being an exceptional creative strategist to a complete strategist - one who connects creative to offer, distribution, performance, and the wider growth ecosystem.
  • Coach the constraint mindset: identifying performance bottlenecks and reverse-engineering the steps required to drive meaningful change.
  • Coach intentionally - reverse-engineer your approach from knowing each individual. Ask what does this person need to learn next to step up strategically? before defaulting to advice.
• The Strategic Voice on Growth & Performance
  • Be the primary voice in the Creative Strategy department whenever questions arise that lean heavily on data, growth strategy, performance, or media buying.
  • Build the bridge between Creative Strategy and our Growth Strategy team - work with our Senior Growth Strategists to surface what creative needs from growth, and vice versa.
  • Help our strategists develop fluency in: offer, distribution, scaling logic, attribution, funnel, persona development from a growth lens, and how creative ladders into wider commercial strategy.
• Risk Mitigation, Audits & Performance Constraint Identification
  • Cross-department audit authority on priority accounts - when performance dips, you go deep, identify the constraint, and work with the pod to reset strategy.
  • Run regular creative audits across the department, surface what's working and what isn't from a performance lens, and feed insight into the wider Creative Strategy leadership team.
• Departmental Training & Upskilling (Growth & Performance Focus)
  • Work closely with the Creative Leads to map out the training plan for the department - which sessions, when, who delivers.
  • Personally lead every session focused on growth strategy, performance, media buying, offer, distribution, and constraint-based thinking.
  • Translate insight from our data warehouse and from the Growth Strategy team into team-wide upskilling.
  • The goal: every strategist in the department thinks like a strategist, not just like a creative executor.
• Macro Creative Reports from the 9-Figure Data Warehouse
  • Tap into our data warehouse to produce regular macro creative reports.
  • Surface trends, insights, and tactical plays that compound across accounts - what's working at scale, what's emerging, what's broken.
  • Feed these into our monthly Creative Strategy momentum sessions, and into the broader leadership team's strategic decisions.
• Cross-Function Systems with the Head of Creative Strategy
  • Work closely with the Head of Creative Strategy to design the systems that ensure Growth Strategy and Creative Strategy functions operate as one.
  • Work closely with the Creative Leads to uphold standards, ownership, curiosity and happiness across the environment. As a CS leadership team, you will all be responsible for creating a gold-standard environment for growth, development and client results.
  • Help shape the next evolution of how these two functions interact at scale.

How You'll Spend Your Time

Work is organised by leverage, not seniority - you should be operating at high leverage throughout:

• Senior CS coaching, management & risk mitigation - 60%
  • Embedded strategic coaching anchored in live client work - growth, performance, creative, constraint identification, reverse-engineering performance drops. Full management responsibility for up to 4 direct-reports: quarterly reviews, KPI accountability, and individual development roadmaps. Department risk-mitigation on priority accounts, performance audits, strategic resets.
• Cross-department training + synergy - 25%
  • Designing and delivering training on growth, performance, media buying; building the bridge between CS and GS.
• Macro reporting from the data warehouse - 15%
  • Monthly macro creative reports surfacing trends, insights, tactical plays across accounts. Self-training + market scanning.

You don't own a pod, run a department P&L, or manage hiring rounds. Those sit with the Pod Creative Leads and the Head of Creative Strategy.

What You'll Bring

Must-Have

• 5+ years in a strategic role in performance creative, growth strategy, media buying, or paid social - ideally with exposure to all of them.
• Deep performance fluency - you understand testing structures, scaling logic, attribution, funnels, CRO. You can audit a Meta ad account in 30 minutes and tell us the biggest constraint, and how to fix it.
• Strong understanding of creative strategy in a growth ecosystem - you don't need to be the best creative strategist in the room, but you need to understand how creative ladders into the wider commercial system.
• Coaching mindset - you've trained or managed strategists or junior team members and got real energy from doing it.
• Constraint-based thinking - you can reverse-engineer a performance bottleneck to its root cause and identify what changes upstream will drive meaningful results downstream.
• Continuous research + data mindset - constantly scanning what's working in the market, daily not quarterly. Comfortable spending hours in data if it surfaces the next insight.
• Outcome Obsessed - every task, framework, and training tied to a measurable outcome.
• Kind Candour - confident in giving direct, honest feedback regularly in a way that empowers.
• Extreme Ownership - you demonstrate strong accountability in everything you do.
• AI-literate and tech-enabled - you understand the trajectory of AI in creative and paid social, are comfortable using AI tools yourself, and can lead a team through AI-augmented workflow adoption.
• DTC / e-commerce business model literacy at 7-9 figure scale.

Nice-to-Have (Not Required)

• Track record running training sessions or workshops with growth or creative teams.
• Prior experience working across both brand-side and agency-side.
• Familiarity with our internal frameworks: macro / micro personas, Growth Compass, CSOS.

What Success Looks Like

In your first 90 days

• You've met every Senior CS, CS, Creative Lead, and Growth Strategist across the Soar Group and built initial trust.
• You have full clarity on our processes, our Growth Compass framework, and the wider Growth Strategy infrastructure.
• You're embedded in the strategic work of all four Senior Creative Strategists' biggest accounts with a regular cadence.
• You've taken on at least 1 direct report and identified the biggest strategic capability gaps, which have been translated into a progression roadmap.
• Department audit complete: top 3 strategic capability gaps identified across the team, with a 60-day training cadence built to plug them.
• At least one department-wide training session delivered (growth / performance focus).
• First macro creative report from the data warehouse presented within the Creative Strategy Monthly Momentum.

By month 6

• Blended ECD hit-rate has measurably improved through better strategic ability.
• You have helped contribute to an increase in time spent on strategy vs execution by 30% within the Senior CS layer.
• Taken on all 4 direct reports, with each 60% through their strategic progression roadmap.
• The Creative Strategy and Growth Strategy leadership team sees you as the indispensable bridge between creative and growth with clear operational rhythm in-place.
• The Creative Strategy Department sees you as the voice of performance within the dept.
• Training cadence is fully operational with content owned and delivered by you.
• Cross-function systems with the Growth Strategy team are rolled out (shared rituals, briefing structures, frameworks).
• 100% adoption of Control Room SAAS, CSOS, and Growth Compass framework across the entire department.

Benefits

• Enjoy 28 days of annual leave, giving you the time to recharge and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• Benefit from our long-service reward scheme, with 1 additional day of annual leave awarded each year after 2 years of service.
• Work in a flexible hybrid model, with 2 days in our Central London office at the Roundhouse in Camden and the remainder from home.
• Access private health and life insurance, providing additional peace of mind and support for you and your family.
• Participate in our company pension scheme to help you plan and save for the future.
• Take advantage of a one-month annual work-abroad allowance, giving you the flexibility to work remotely from another location each year.