Head of Performance Creative

Empire Today, LLC; Northlake (IL); On-site; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Paid time off and holiday pay

Wellness program

Professional development & career

Lots of perks

Job summary

Empire Today, LLC seeks a senior leader to own our performance creative engine across paid social, search, video, display, and CTV. You will set AI-enabled standards, scale output, and drive strategic alignment with marketing and brand leadership.

You will build a hybrid internal/external creative model, oversee vendor relationships, and sponsor a testing framework that links performance data to creative decisions. This role reports to the Chief Marketing & Growth Officer and is executive-level.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in performance creative, creative strategy, or performance marketing with clear accountability for measurable outcomes.
• 5+ years in a senior leadership role with direct reports across creative, strategy, or production functions.
• Demonstrated experience operating at an executive level, presenting to C-suite stakeholders.
• Deep hands-on experience with paid digital channels (social, search) and creative best practices.
• Fluency with AI creative tools and deploying them at production scale.
• Experience managing a hybrid internal/external creative model, including AI-native vendors or freelancers.

Responsibilities

• Architect a hybrid creative organization aligning internal strategists and designers with external AI-native resources.
• Select, implement, and evolve the AI toolset for design, video production, copy variation, and asset adaptation.
• Use AI to scale production speed while maintaining quality across channels and markets.
• Establish guardrails and standards to keep output on-brand and performance-ready.
• Present creative performance and future strategy to C-suite with clarity and confidence.
• Partner with paid media leaders to translate performance signals into creative direction.
• Lead end-to-end creative testing roadmap across concepts, variables, formats, and audiences.

Skills

Performance creative

Leadership

Executive presentation

Digital channels

AI tools

Hybrid internal/external model

Data-driven decisions

Tools

AI tools (generative)

CTV/digital video tools

Job description

The Head of Performance Creative is a senior leadership role with enterprise-wide accountability for the creative engine behind our marketing, beginning with our paid media program (paid social, paid search, digital video, display, and connected TV) and extending to the creative and content that bring the Empire Today brand to life. This role reports to our Chief Marketing & Growth Officer. This is not a functional manager position. This is an executive owner of one of the most consequential levers in our growth model.

This person will define what high-performing, AI-powered creative looks like at Empire Today, set the organizational standard for how creative is built, scaled, and evaluated, and operate as a strategic peer to our most senior commercial and marketing leaders. The core challenge is simple to state and hard to solve: we need an order of magnitude more creative output, engineered for performance from the first pixel. AI is central to the answer, alongside strong creative strategy and craft, and this role is the one who wires it all together.

We offer:

• Health benefits.
• Paid time off and holiday pay.
• Wellness program.
• Professional development & career advancement opportunities.
• Lots of perks.

Compensation: $200K -$250K annually plus bonus

Responsibilities:

• Architect a hybrid creative organization: internal creative strategists and brand-literate designers working in concert with a curated bench of external AI-native designers and production resources.
• Select, implement, and continuously evolve the AI toolset, covering generative design, video production, copy variation, and asset adaptation.
• Use AI as a design tool, a production accelerator, and a testing multiplier, enabling the team to produce at a volume and iteration speed that would be impossible through traditional production alone.
• Build the guardrails and quality standards that keep AI-assisted and human-made output on-brand and performance-ready across all channels and markets.
• Stay ahead of the AI creative landscape and bring a sharp, informed point of view to the C-suite on where the category is headed and what to adopt next.
• Partner with paid media leads and commercial leadership to translate performance signals (CTR, CVR, hook rate, cost per booked appointment) into creative direction.
• Build a closed-loop system from brief to launch to iteration, ensuring creative learnings compound across campaigns and channels.
• Compress creative production cycles without sacrificing quality, bringing a velocity-first mindset to every workflow.
• Establish review cadences that keep the organization moving fast without sacrificing rigor.
• Develop and own the creative testing roadmap across concept, variable, format, and audience dimensions.
• Leverage AI to dramatically expand testing volume, running more variables simultaneously than a traditional team could produce.
• Build SOPs, briefs, and production workflows that drive consistency and speed across markets and channels.
• Maintain a living research library of hooks, angles, and formats so learnings are accessible and actionable across the organization.
• Be the senior bridge between Empire Today brand positioning and conversion-optimized creative, working in close partnership with brand and marketing leadership; neither can be sacrificed for the other.
• Develop creative principles and guardrails that let your team, including AI-assisted production, move fast without going off-brand.
• Build creative that works across the full consumer journey, from awareness through a booked in-home appointment.
• Partner with brand, content, and field marketing leaders so creative and content tell one consistent Empire Today story across paid, owned, and in-home touchpoints.
• Manage creative simultaneously across national and geo-targeted local campaigns in our 75 metropolitan markets.
• Own creative strategy and output across paid social (Meta, TikTok), paid search, digital video, display, and CTV.
• Develop platform-specific creative that is genuinely native to each channel, not repurposed from a single master asset.
• Balance high-production and lo-fi approaches, including AI-generated formats, knowing when each earns more trust and converts better.
• Manage agency, AI design vendor, and production vendor relationships to supplement and scale in-house output.
• Operate as a strategic peer to senior commercial, brand, and media leaders, not just a creative executor.
• Present creative performance and forward strategy to C-suite and executive stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
• Build and develop the performance creative team, including hiring, coaching, and organizational design as the function scales.
• Influence resource allocation, vendor strategy, and technology investment decisions at the enterprise level.
• Help shape the long-term vision for Empire’s creative and content function, including how its scope and organization evolve as it scales.
• Frame creative recommendations in terms of business outcomes and ROI, and hold the function accountable to those metrics.
• Define and track the creative KPIs that matter: hook rate, hold rate, CTR, CVR, cost per booked appointment.
• Use data to challenge assumptions and build the case for creative investment at the executive level.
• Find the story in the numbers and use it to drive creative decisions, including decisions about where AI-generated creative is winning or falling short.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

Required

• 12+ years in performance creative, creative strategy, or performance marketing with clear accountability for measurable outcomes.
• 5+ years in a senior leadership role with direct reports across creative, strategy, or production functions.
• Demonstrated experience operating at or near the executive level, including presenting to and influencing C-suite stakeholders.
• Deep hands-on experience with paid digital channels, particularly paid social and paid search, and creative best practices across each.
• Demonstrated ability to build creative testing frameworks that generate actionable signal at scale.
• Fluency with AI creative tools (generative image, video, copy) and a concrete point of view on deploying them at production scale.
• Experience building or managing a hybrid internal/external creative model, including AI-native vendors or freelancers.
• Comfort reading and interpreting performance data; you find the story in the numbers and use it to drive creative and business decisions.
• Proven ability to influence resource allocation, organizational design, and technology investment decisions.

Strongly Preferred

• Background in a direct-to-consumer business, ideally one with an appointment- or location-based model.
• Experience managing creative simultaneously across a national brand and geo-targeted local markets.
• Track record building or scaling an in-house performance creative function from an early stage.
• Experience leading broader creative, content, or brand creative teams, or a clear readiness to grow into that scope.
• Experience managing agency and production vendor relationships for high-production formats such as CTV or digital video.
• Proven ability to use AI as both a design tool and a production accelerator, with examples of measurable output improvement.
• This position is hybrid.

Why Empire Today?

We empower our employees to strive for their unique goals. Within such an inclusive company with unlimited growth opportunities, how far you go is up to you.

We take care of our people. We start investing in you from day one. The perks and benefits we offer help you live well, both at work and at home.

We have an unmatched company culture. We’ve won multiple awards for employee and customer satisfaction, and we believe it all comes down to our culture of teamwork, creativity, and growth.

We’re one of the nation’s most recognizable brands. You’ll enjoy the stability that comes with a national company and a sense of pride when you’re a part of our team.