Growth Director (Marketing, brand and commercial growth)
Salary: Competitive base + bonus and equity (full details provided to shortlisted candidates)
Location: London, hybrid working (three days a week in the office)
Permanent role
The Opportunity
We are looking for an exceptional Growth Director (marketing, brand and commercial growth) to design, evolve and lead the commercial growth engine of an ambitious multisite consumer brand as it enters its next stage of growth.
This is not about fixing an underperforming function. The business has a strong brand, an established team and a growth model that has performed well. This appointment is about taking what has made the business successful and evolving it for the next stage of growth; bringing greater sophistication, capability and repeatability to the way the company acquires, engages and retains customers as it expands into new markets.
The role brings together five interconnected disciplines: paid acquisition; creative; growth operations; martech, data and analytics; and CRM and retention. Deep performance marketing expertise is non-negotiable, and sophisticated CRM and lifecycle capability will be critical to success.
AI runs through all of this. The Growth Director will need a strong, practical command of how AI is applied to growth at scale; sharpening customer insight, increasing the speed and quality of creative, powering personalisation, automating activity and improving analytical decision‑making.
The successful candidate will own the commercial marketing strategy and create the playbook for the next stage of growth, determining what should be protected, evolved, scaled or changed within an already successful model. They will move confidently between setting direction and staying close enough to performance to understand what is working and why. It is equally a leadership and culture appointment: we are placing as much emphasis on chemistry, leadership style and values as we are on technical capability.
We'd love to hear from accomplished growth and marketing leaders whose careers have been anchored in performance marketing and commercial growth, with broad marketing leadership and credible brand experience alongside. Experience within a multi‑site, multi‑location or geographically distributed consumer business: retail, hospitality, leisure, fitness or consumer services, or a high growth technology‑enabled business that has scaled across cities, regions or markets, would be valuable rather than essential. We are more interested in the growth problems you have solved than the sector in which you solved them.
Key Responsibilities
Growth strategy - Own the commercial marketing strategy and establish a clear, repeatable approach to where the business invests, who it targets, how it acquires, converts and retains customers, and how it measures, tests and scales.
Paid acquisition - Scale customer acquisition while improving its quality and economics, with genuine command of channel performance, attribution and incrementality, CAC, LTV and payback, funnel conversion and the point at which additional investment creates diminishing returns.
Creative - Treat creative as a commercial growth lever, connecting customer insight, creative strategy and channel performance, and building the capability to generate, test and optimise creative at pace.
Growth operations - Establish the planning, forecasting, measurement and experimentation frameworks that make growth predictable and repeatable, creating visibility around performance and directing resource towards the highest-value opportunities.
Martech, data and analytics - Ensure the business has the marketing technology, customer data and measurement capability required to understand performance across the funnel and make increasingly sophisticated investment and prioritisation decisions.
AI within growth - Set the pace on how AI is used across the growth function, building the team’s practical capability to work with it and applying clear judgement about where it creates commercial advantage and where it does not.
CRM and retention - Develop an intelligent approach to segmentation, personalisation and marketing automation that improves engagement, retention and lifetime value, connecting acquisition decisions to downstream customer behaviour.
Brand and commercial marketing - Continue to develop a strong brand as a source of customer demand and competitive advantage, understanding how longer‑term brand investment supports consideration, direct demand and acquisition efficiency.
New markets - Develop a repeatable approach to taking a proven growth model into new markets, recognising that different locations and customer catchments can require different approaches to acquisition, investment, creative and activation.
Leadership - Lead an established team alongside agency and external partners, build the capability required for the next phase, and work closely with colleagues across Finance, Technology and Product where customer journey, conversion and technology can unlock growth.
Who You Are
You are a highly commercial, analytical and intellectually curious growth leader who combines low ego with high energy. You are bold but collaborative, comfortable with ambiguity, and able to create clarity without waiting for perfect information. You challenge constructively rather than politically, combine conviction with curiosity, and are comfortable changing your view when the evidence changes. You bring energy and momentum without creating unnecessary noise, set ambitious standards, and create accountability without unnecessary hierarchy. You are a credible and influential communicator at Board level and a sophisticated manager of external partners, able to select and challenge agencies while retaining strategy and commercial ownership internally. Above all, you are a natural leader; someone talented people want to work with and for.
Your key skills and experience
Exceptional performance marketing credentials, with deep understanding of acquisition economics, attribution, CAC, conversion and efficiency at scale.
A track record of delivering significant customer and commercial growth, with specific examples of scaling acquisition and improving efficiency through evidence‑led investment decisions.
Experience building a successful and scalable commercial marketing playbook.
Demonstrable use of AI in your current role to drive marketing and growth performance, with evidence of the commercial impact it has delivered.
Sophisticated CRM, lifecycle and marketing automation experience.
Strong commercial judgement, analytical capability and a genuinely data‑led approach to decision‑making.
Broad marketing leadership, including credible brand experience.
Evidence of building and developing high‑performing teams, and of getting outstanding performance from agencies and external partners.
Experience of operating successfully within a fast‑growth or scale‑up environment, at pace and with ambiguity.
Curiosity and a practical understanding of AI and emerging technology across customer insight, creative, personalisation, automation, analytics and team productivity.
Experience of multi‑location or geographically distributed growth would be valuable, but will not outweigh exceptional performance marketing, commercial and leadership credentials.
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Contact Details:
Suzie Walker Executive Search Limited Recruitment Team