Creative Strategy Lead

Campfire; Salford; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

Bank Holidays

Christmas shutdown

Birthday entitlement

Loyalty holidays (extra days)

Wellness days or £100 allowance

Hybrid working (2 days in office, 3 at

Flexi-hours core hours 10–4

Discretionary Bonus

Quarterly value awards

Fruit, snacks and beverages

Social events (summer/christmas)

Enhanced parental leave policies

Enhanced sick pay

Employee assistance programme

Job summary

Campfire, a social-first digital agency, seeks a Creative Strategy Lead in Salford to shape the future of our creative strategy for beauty and FMCG brands. You will counsel senior clients, define strategic frameworks, and mentor the team, driving bold, culture-forward work that travels across platforms and audiences.

You will lead new business pitches, translate trends into innovative client strategy, and foster continuous improvement in how the department operates.

Qualifications

• Strong expertise in internet culture and ability to challenge status quo at all levels.
• Proven ability to source and interrogate data from multiple sources to uncover meaningful patterns.
• Track record of counseling senior clients and acting as a strategic partner.
• History of developing ideas that scale and deliver measurable results.
• Outstanding presentation and storytelling skills with senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated leadership and mentoring experience.
• Ability to translate innovative thinking into real client impact or department change.
• Comfortable being a point of escalation and earning trust under pressure.
• Strong commercial awareness and link between strategy and business outcomes.
• Sharp eye for market and industry trends guiding better workflows.

Responsibilities

• Counsel senior clients, building strategic partnerships and shaping their creative agenda.
• Challenge briefs to uncover the real client problem before proposing solutions.
• Act as a cultural antennae, sourcing trends and fresh thinking from the social space.
• Set creative ambition for the whole team, developing ideas that scale across platforms.
• Translate creative ideas into strategic frameworks to guide execution across channels.
• Define objectives and measurement, managing expectations up and out.
• Lead strategic threads in new business pitches with authority.
• Translate future trends into innovative client strategy and processes.
• Work with leadership to standardize internal and external strategy communications.
• Mentor and develop the Creative Strategy team with clear reviews and plans.
• Champion cross-team collaboration and ensure smooth handovers between departments.

Skills

Internet culture expertise

Data-driven insights

Senior client counsel

Idea scaling

Presentation & storytelling

Leadership & mentoring

Innovation to change

Escalation comfort

Commercial awareness

Market trend analysis

Senior strategy experience

Job description

Company Overview

Campfire is an award winning Social first digital agency, founded on values of Honesty & Integrity, Exceeding Expectations and First Principle Thinking. Holding some of the world’s leading brands on our client roster, we pride ourselves on innovating and creating performance driving firsts for our clients.

We believe in meritocracy. If you want to work for an agency who will invest in you and your career, Campfire is the right place for those willing to step up and deliver as part of the team and for our clients. With quarterly PDPs rather than annual, your career can move as quickly as you do.

Position Overview

We’re looking for a Creative Strategy Lead to help define the future of Creative Strategy at Campfire, and for our clients.

This role calls for someone who doesn't just craft strategies rooted in culture, but inspires and directs creative work that earns attention and moves the needle for the brands we work with. You're an authority on the social and creative space, deeply embedded in culture, and consistently ahead of the next platform shift, format or trend. You understand how insight, idea and strategic framework come together, and know how to hold that thread from the first workshop through to the work going live.

As a senior figure in our Creative Strategy team, you'll provide strategic counsel and creative direction to senior clients and internal teams across our beauty and FMCG portfolio. You'll lead our new business pitches, shape ambitious creative programmes, and build a culture of continuous innovation and bold thinking within the team.

What are the key responsibilities for the role?

• Counsel senior clients, building strategic partnerships and shaping their creative agenda
• Challenge the brief where it needs challenging, getting to the real client problem before jumping to solutions
• Act as one of the agency's cultural antennae, sourcing trends, innovation and fresh thinking from the social space and beyond
• Set the creative ambition for the whole team, not just your own accounts, developing ideas that scale from a single social asset to a multi-platform, Cannes-winning campaign, and know the difference between an idea that will genuinely cut through and one that only looks good on a page
• Lead the translation of a creative idea into the strategic framework that keeps it intact through execution, across every platform it lands on
• Set the standard for how the team defines objectives and measurement, managing expectations upward and outward so nobody is surprised by what success does or doesn't look like
• Lead the strategic thread of new business pitches, structuring and presenting with authority
• Translate future trends and market shifts into genuinely innovative client strategy, and lead initiatives that improve how the department operates, co-creating new tools or processes with clear use cases
• Work with the Head of Creative Strategy to lead the department's communication standard, from how strategy is written up internally to how it's presented externally, and guide the team on giving effective feedback
• Look to mentor and develop the Creative Strategy team, delegating with clarity and driving performance through regular reviews and clear development plans where appropriate
• Champion collaboration across Creative Strategy, Delivery and Client Services and setting the standard for how strategy is handed over

Required Skills For Our Team..

• An authority on internet culture, with a natural instinct to challenge the status quo at every level, from a first draft to a client's long-held assumption
• A strong track record sourcing and interrogating data across multiple sources, spotting the patterns that matter, and finding innovative ways to dig out insight that isn't sitting on the surface.
• Proven ability to counsel senior clients and act as a genuine strategic partner
• A track record of developing ideas that have scaled and performed, backed by real results and credible measurement
• Outstanding presentation and storytelling skills, confident in front of senior stakeholders and new business panels
• Strong leadership and mentoring experience, with a genuine investment in developing others
• A proven track record of translating an innovative mindset into real change, whether that's genuinely new client strategy or a better way for the department to work
• Comfortable being a point of escalation for the team, someone people trust with bad news as much as good
• Strong Commercial awareness and the ability to connect Creative Strategy to measurable business outcomes
• A sharp eye for market and industry trends, and a track record of turning that into better ways of working
• Extensive experience in creative or social strategy at a senior level, ideally within a social-first creative agency or brand environment

What do we expect from our team?

At Campfire we are committed to providing all our team with a healthy, safe and supported work environment, where everyone is able to be themselves, work freely and express their creative passion. We do ask that in order for us to do so, you comply with our behaviour expectations.

Our values?

Campfire share their values, not as words on a wall but as something we naturally live and breathe every single day, and as part of our recruitment process we will ask specific questions around culture to ensure all new campers are aligned with our three core values: Clarity, Honesty & Integrity | Exceeding Expectations | First-Principle Thinking

• What do we offer our team?
• 25 days annual leave, plus Bank Holidays, christmas shutdown, the day for your birthday
• Loyalty Holidays (accrue 1 extra day per anniversary year up to 5 extra days)
• X2 wellness days or £100 allowance
• Hybrid working (2 days in the office, three days from home)
• Flexi-hours, our full hours are 9-5:30, but core hours are 10-4:00, the remaining hours outside of this (if you're an early bird or night owl) are up to you to decide when to work
• Discretionary Bonus (this will be part fixed salary % and part flexi % based on performance metrics - all bonuses are subject to business performance)
• Quarterly Campfire value awards
• Free fruit, snacks and plenty of beverages to keep you full for the day
• Regular social events including the big summer and christmas parties
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption leave, shared parental and fertility journey support policies
• Enhanced company sick pay
• Employee assistance programme - with access 24hrs a day on an array of topics that you may benefit from seeking additional support.

Equal Opportunities Statement

Campfire believes that everyone should be treated with respect and dignity, and that’s why we embrace equity as part of our values. We strive to prevent discrimination in all aspects of the employee cycle, in particular in the recruitment process. We understand that no “one size fits all” and we are committed to ensuring everyone feels welcome, at ease and supported.

Disability Confident Employer

At Campfire, we are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive and supportive workplace where everyone can thrive, regardless of disability or long-term health condition.