Performance Creative Lead

Clearoute; Markham; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Clearoute Inc. is hiring a senior Performance Creative Lead to own creative direction and messaging across paid media, email, SMS, and WhatsApp. You will build and lead a high-velocity testing engine, guide video, design, and copy specialists, and drive outcomes across channels with a data-driven mindset.

You will lead cross-functional teams, establish frameworks, and partner with media, analytics, and lifecycle teams to optimize ROAS and revenue while maintaining high creative quality.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in performance or direct-response creative, including at least 3 years leading a team.

Responsibilities

• Define and own creative direction and messaging across paid ads, email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Skills

Performance creative leadership

Owned creative for paid media

High-volume creative testing

Motion analytics

Asana

Direct-response principles

Generative media tools

Team leadership

Attention to detail

Balance quality/speed

Tools

Motion

Asana

Job description

Clearoute Inc. is a professional services company that helps businesses grow through various offerings, including branding, marketing, web development, and consulting. We have been in the industry for over 25 years, establishing ourselves as a trusted growth partner. We pride ourselves on innovative solutions, effective communication, and rigorous planning to ensure our client's requirements are met in a timely and effective manner.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

You’ve made ads that moved the numbers, and you can show the results. At Clearoute, performance is the standard the work is judged by.

We’re a direct-response growth agency running large-scale paid media and communications across Meta, Google, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and other channels for nonprofit and commercial clients. Creative and messaging are among our biggest growth levers, and we’re hiring a Performance Creative Lead to own them end to end: the creative direction, the messaging strategy, the team behind the work, and the testing engine that keeps it winning.

This is a senior, high-ownership role. You will not wait on briefs from a brand team or simply polish someone else’s vision. You will set the performance creative and messaging direction, build the operating system, lead specialists across video, design, and copy, and be accountable for what the work returns across paid media, email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

You will be measured on metrics such as hook and hold rates, CTR, conversion rate, CPA, ROAS, revenue, click-through rate, and creative longevity, depending on the channel and campaign objective.

What You’ll Own

Creative and messaging direction

You are accountable for the quality, consistency, and performance of video, static, and copy across paid ads, email, SMS, WhatsApp, landing pages, and related campaign touchpoints. You will guide the concepts, hooks, offers, appeals, subject lines, message sequencing, calls to action, and visual direction, while directing the specialists responsible for execution. You will hold the quality bar and ensure every asset and message is built for the channel, audience, offer, and objective.

A high-volume testing engine

Build and manage a rolling calendar of hooks, angles, formats, offers, and concepts. Scale what wins, refresh what fatigues, retire what does not perform, and keep the next meaningful test ready for market.

Performance-led briefs and messaging frameworks

Turn campaign data, audience insights, winning patterns, and client objectives into sharp, actionable briefs and messaging frameworks. These should guide paid creatives as well as email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns, reducing ambiguity, improving first-round quality, and shortening revision cycles.

Team leadership

Lead a distributed team of editors, designers, and copywriters, including craft leads working across time zones. Set clear standards, develop talent, delegate effectively, and hold the team accountable for both quality and output.

AI-enabled creative production

Establish how the team uses generative image, video, copy, and editing tools across ideation, variations, localization, production, and iteration. You should be hands-on, current, and capable of helping the team adopt better workflows rather than simply requesting more AI use.

Media, lifecycle, and analytics partnership

Work closely with media buyers, email and SMS teams, project managers, and analytics to understand what is driving performance, identify creative and messaging gaps, and ensure fresh concepts consistently feed paid media and direct-response communications.

Creative operations

Build an approval and quality-control system that maintains a high standard without making you the permanent bottleneck. Over time, clear delegation and strong craft leads should allow the function to move quickly under your leadership.

Your First 90 Days

Day 30

You understand our key accounts, offers, audiences, campaign objectives, and creative and messaging history across paid media, email, SMS, and WhatsApp. You have mapped the current pipeline, team structure, approval process, and major production constraints.

Day 60

You own the briefing and production system. Priorities are clear, craft leads are operating with stronger accountability, and avoidable revision cycles are declining.

Day 90

Your testing system is live and consistently producing structured learnings and new winners. Creative standards, approvals, and delegation are operating under your leadership, with a reliable flow of new concepts entering market.

What You Bring

• 6+ years of experience in performance or direct-response creative, including at least 3 years leading a team, discipline, or creative function
• A track record of owning creative for significant paid-media programs, ideally involving multi-million-dollar annual spend, with CTR, CPA, conversion, or ROAS results you can explain
• A creative testing system you have built and operated at volume across paid social, Google, YouTube, or other performance channels
• Familiarity with creative analytics tools (like Motion) and project management software (like Asana) is highly preferred.
• Strong understanding of direct-response principles, including hooks, offers, audience awareness, creative fatigue, platform-native execution, and conversion
• Hands-on experience using generative image, video, copy, and editing tools to accelerate ideation, production, localization, and iteration
• The maturity to lead specialists who may be stronger than you in their individual craft, while giving clear feedback that improves the work
• Strong attention to detail across video, design, copy, and final delivery
• The ability to balance creative quality, production speed, testing discipline, and commercial outcomes

Bonus Points

• Experience with Asana, Motion or similar creative analytics platforms, and paid-social ad libraries
• Experience leading distributed or offshore creative teams
• Working proficiency with Arabic is a nice-to-have (some raw source material is in Arabic), but absolutely not required. We have processes in place to support non-Arabic speakers.

Why This Role

Real ownership

This is a core growth function within the agency, and you will have the authority to shape how it operates.

Scale from day one

You will work across large budgets, high creative volume, varied audiences, and meaningful testing opportunities.

A team that ships

You will lead people who care about the craft, the pace, and the numbers.

This Role May Not Be for You If

This role will not suit someone who prioritizes personal creative preference over performance data, requires long production cycles to produce strong work, or is uncomfortable rapidly testing, retiring, and iterating concepts.

This is a Performance Creative Lead role, not a traditional brand Creative Director position.