Lead Performance Creative Strategist

Clever Digital Marketing; Vaughan; Hybrid; CAD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Performance-based bonuses

Remote work option (Vaughan, ON)

MacBook provided

Benefits package

Job summary

Clever Digital Marketing in Canada is seeking a senior strategic leader to raise the quality of our creative thinking and strategy. You will own how we identify, develop, and scale creative across video and static formats, supported by a growing AI-enabled workflow and a cross-functional team.

You will not edit every asset day-to-day; instead you will set the direction, craft briefs, and build repeatable systems that drive performance across accounts for our home-improvement clients in North

Qualifications

• 5+ years in performance-focused creative strategy.
• Strong direct-response copywriting and storytelling skills.
• Structured approach to testing and iteration.
• Experience building systems, frameworks, or knowledge bases.
• Advanced practical experience using AI for research or ideation.

Responsibilities

• Elevate the quality of thinking, research, and strategy behind all creative work.
• Generate new creative concepts and storytelling approaches for video and static ads.
• Conduct customer, competitor, and market research to uncover unmet motivations and pain points.
• Translate performance insights into actionable briefs and testing hypotheses.
• Build and maintain CDM's creative-strategy frameworks and learning repository.
• Coach team members to raise overall creative thinking across the department.

Skills

Performance-focused creative strategy

Meta advertising

Direct-response copywriting

Testing and experimentation

AI in research/ideation

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Department: Creative

Location: Canada

Compensation: CA$100,000 - CA$120,000 / year

Description

This is a founding role — which means your ceiling is uncapped and your fingerprints will be on how an entire function works for years to come. You'll own how CDM identifies, develops, and scales creative — video and static — built Paid Social–first, with support for our Paid Search team, so our clients grow faster than their competitors can copy them. Here's the bet we're making: creative is the most durable lever in performance marketing. Budgets, algorithms, audiences, and targeting all converge over time — everyone eventually gets access to the same tools. The creative is what still separates the winners from everyone else. CDM believes the agencies that dominate the next decade will be the ones that treat creative strategy as a rigorous, repeatable discipline instead of a guessing game.

You will be the person who builds that discipline here.

Who We Are

Clever Digital Marketing is a performance marketing agency helping large home improvement companies across the US and Canada grow through Paid Social, Paid Search, CRO, and strategic advising. We manage a large portfolio of accounts, an in‑house creative team, and significant monthly ad spend. As we scale, we're building a stronger creative‑strategy function to help clients find new creative winners — and to turn one‑off learnings into repeatable systems that compound across every account.

What You’ll Own

This is a senior, strategic role. You won't be editing every asset or running campaigns day‑to‑day. Your job is to raise the quality of the thinking, research, and strategy behind everything we produce and test.

• Generate net-new creative. Develop original concepts, messaging angles, hooks, formats, and storytelling approaches for video and static ads — not variations on the same three ideas.
• Find the ideas before you have them. Run customer, competitor, and market research to uncover motivations, objections, and pain points that haven't been explored yet. Mine reviews, sales calls, and customer feedback for the insight that makes an ad work.
• Turn performance into strategy. Analyze why creative wins or loses and translate it into clear next steps. Write sharp, actionable briefs grounded in customer insight, direct‑response principles, and a defined testing hypothesis — and push iteration beyond surface‑level hook and footage swaps.
• Build the system. Create CDM's creative‑strategy frameworks, brief standards, testing processes, and a shared learning repository. Spot what's working in one account and determine where it can be adapted across others.
• Level up the whole team. Coach Media Buyers and editors so stronger creative thinking becomes a department‑wide capability, not something that lives with one person. Partner with CRO to align messaging, personas, offers, and landing‑page experiences. Provide direction for UGC, founder‑led, and spokesperson‑led formats.
• Use AI as a force multiplier. Build AI‑powered workflows and tools that accelerate research, ideation, and production for the entire team — more on that below.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years in performance‑focused creative strategy.
• Deep understanding of Meta advertising and direct‑response creative.
• Strong direct‑response copywriting and short‑form storytelling skills.
• A track record of developing concepts from customer research and performance data — not just intuition.
• Fluency with creative metrics (Hook Rate, Hold Rate, CTR, CPL) and the judgment to weigh them against lead quality and down‑funnel performance.
• Experience across multiple brands, accounts, or verticals.
• A structured approach to testing — hypotheses, iteration strategy, isolating variables.
• Demonstrated ability to build systems, processes, frameworks, or knowledge bases.
• Advanced, practical experience using AI for research, analysis, ideation, workflow design, or creative enablement.
• The ability to explain not just what you'd test, but how you found the opportunity and why you believe it will work.
• Strong communication, prioritization, and cross‑functional collaboration skills.
• A bias for speed — you generate learning quickly without over‑engineering every test.

What "AI-First" Means to Us

We are not looking for someone who asks AI to spit out scripts and hooks.

We're Looking For Someone Who Uses AI To

• Analyze customer reviews, calls, and feedback at scale.
• Identify creative patterns across many accounts at once.
• Build and maintain shared account context.
• Surface cross‑account testing opportunities.
• Automate recurring creative research and reporting.Improve the speed and quality of briefs and production workflows.
• Build systems that help the whole team make better creative decisions.

Nice to Have

• Lead generation or high‑ticket services experience.
• Home improvement experience.
• CRO and landing‑page testing familiarity.
• UGC, founder‑led, or spokesperson‑led creative experience.
• Hands‑on familiarity with editing or design tools.

What Success Looks Like

• CDM consistently introduces genuinely new creative ideas instead of recycling the same concepts and formats.
• Creative iterations are more deliberate, strategic, and evidence‑based.
• Media Buyers and editors produce stronger briefs and creative recommendations on their own.
• Learnings are captured, shared, and applied across accounts.
• AI‑supported research and creative workflows are adopted department‑wide.
• CDM has a repeatable creative‑strategy engine that gets stronger with every test.

Benefits of Working at CDM

• Competitive base salary + performance‑based bonuses
• Flexible remote work environment with option for in‑person collaboration (Vaughan, ON)
• Group Benefits - Medical, Dental, Vision, RRSP/401k Plan w/matching, more.
• Company‑provided MacBook computer
• Home office budget and Clever merch delivery to get you started
• Work Abroad Policy: Need a new working environment? Our work abroad policy supports this!
• The chance to shape and grow a high‑performing Client Success team
• A culture of performance and respect where the best work happens with extreme ownership and accountability meets collaboration.

Clever Digital Marketing values the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the team. We are happy to provide reasonable accommodations to candidates in need of support during the recruitment and selection process. Please note that artificial intelligence (AI) may be utilized during the interview or candidate evaluation process to support the fair and efficient screening, assessment, and selection of applicants.