Director, Head of Performance Creative

GeistM; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work with NY office

Job summary

GeistM is seeking a Director, Head of Performance Creative in New York to lead the creative function hands-on. You will move between developing concepts, reviewing data, directing production, and coaching the team to improve workflow and outcomes.

You’ll own the connection between strategy, execution, testing, and performance, ensuring high-quality creative at speed and scale for paid campaigns, while collaborating with Growth Marketing, Content, and leadership.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in performance creative, creative strategy, or direction.
• Hands-on in creative execution while leading a team.
• Strong understanding of paid-social on Meta, TikTok, Pinterest.

Responsibilities

• Own creative strategy across GeistM's client portfolio with testing priorities.
• Lead and coach the Creative team, ensuring quality and speed.
• Manage creator network, production, and scale of campaigns.
• Present strategies and results to clients and internal teams.

Skills

Performance creative

Creative direction

Paid social

Portfolio storytelling

Job description

Title: Director, Head of Performance Creative

Location: New York, New York

Salary: $90,000 - $110,000

This is a hands-on, player-coach leadership role, not a strategy-only position. You'll lead GeistM's creative function while remaining directly involved in the work, moving comfortably between developing concepts, reviewing performance data, directing and producing creative, briefing creators, coaching the team, presenting to clients, and improving how the function operates.

You’ll own the connection between creative strategy, execution, testing, performance, and iteration, ensuring we consistently produce high-quality creative at the speed and volume performance marketing requires.

You’ll work closely with Growth Marketing, Content, and company leadership to understand what's working, why it's working, and what we should test next, then turn those insights into stronger creative and measurable growth.

What You'll Own

Creative Strategy, Performance & Execution

• Own creative strategy across GeistM's client portfolio, translating business objectives, customer insights, and performance data into actionable creative plans.
• Develop concepts, hooks, scripts, briefs, messaging angles, formats, and testing priorities for our content-based paid-social campaigns.
• Analyze creative performance and turn results into clear decisions around what to scale, iterate, stop, and test next.
• Build structured creative testing frameworks and ensure learnings are documented and shared across clients and verticals.
• Personally create, edit, direct, or refine performance creative, including short-form video, static ads, UGC, creator-led content, and campaign variations.
• Ensure creative is built for the specific platform, audience, funnel stage, and campaign objective.
• Stay ahead of consumer behavior, platform trends, emerging formats, and changes across the paid-media landscape.

Team & Creative Quality

• Set and own the creative standard across the function from concept through final delivery.
• Lead, coach, and develop the Creative team, establishing clear expectations around quality, ownership, execution, and performance.
• Lead creative brainstorms, reviews, and performance discussions, providing specific, actionable feedback that improves the work.
• Balance creative quality with the speed, volume, and responsiveness required in a performance marketing environment.

Creator Network, Production & Scale

• Own and grow GeistM's creator network, including sourcing, vetting, onboarding, briefing, relationship management, and performance evaluation.
• Build a reliable creator roster based on brand and audience fit, content style, vertical expertise, availability, cost, and historical performance.
• Oversee creator production from brief through final delivery, ensuring quality, timelines, and performance expectations are met.
• Build scalable systems across creative intake, prioritization, production, review, QA, testing, and iteration.
• Continuously evaluate new tools, formats, and production methods that can strengthen GeistM's creative capabilities.

Client & Commercial Growth

• Translate client objectives and performance challenges into creative opportunities.
• Confidently present creative strategies, concepts, performance results, and recommendations to clients and internal stakeholders.
• Identify opportunities to expand creative support through increased testing, new formats, creator programs, and emerging capabilities.
• Bring senior creative leadership to pitches and new-business opportunities.
• Partner cross-functionally to ensure creative contributes directly to campaign performance, client growth, retention, and GeistM's broader competitive advantage.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of experience in performance creative, creative strategy, or creative direction, ideally within a performance marketing or digital agency environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading and developing creative teams while remaining hands‑on in creative execution.
• Deep understanding of paid‑social and performance creative across platforms such as Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest.
• A strong portfolio of performance creative with demonstrated results and the ability to explain the insight, hypothesis, execution, performance, and iteration behind the work.
• Hands‑on experience with concepts, hooks, scripts, short‑form video, UGC, static creative, creator‑led campaigns, and performance‑driven iteration.
• Strong creative judgment combined with fluency in performance data and creative testing.
• Experience building or managing creator, influencer, or UGC networks.
• Experience building scalable creative workflows and high‑volume production pipelines.
• Practical experience using AI, automation, and emerging creative technologies.
• Strong client‑facing communication, presentation, organizational, and problem‑solving skills.
• Commercial mindset with the ability to connect creative decisions to customer behavior, campaign performance, and business growth.
• Collaborative, proactive, and comfortable moving quickly and making decisions with imperfect information.

Portfolio Requirement

Candidates should be prepared to share examples of high‑performing paid‑social and short‑form creative and explain their personal contribution, the insight behind the work, performance results, key learnings, and what they tested or changed next.

What Success Looks Like

• Creative quality and campaign performance improve consistently across the client portfolio.
• Creative testing becomes systematic, with clear learnings driving what we scale, iterate, stop, and test next.
• The Creative team develops stronger judgment, execution, ownership, and consistency.
• GeistM builds a scalable, performance‑informed creator network across client categories and audiences.
• Creative production becomes faster and more scalable through stronger systems, AI, and automation.
• Creative contributes directly to client performance, account growth, retention, and new business.

Why GeistM

• Collaborative, fast‑moving environment.
• Hybrid work with one required day per week in our New York office.
• Opportunity to lead and shape a growing creative function.
• Opportunity to work with clients globally.