Senior Creative Strategist - Performance Marketing

thelab; New York (NY); On-site; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Healthcare

Dental

Vision

401k company match

Snacks

Job summary

thelab is seeking a Senior Creative Strategist - Performance Marketing to lead paid social creative strategy and performance reporting across Meta, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.

This hybrid role blends creative and analytical work, partnering with media, creative, and client teams to drive growth for clients. The ideal candidate combines data fluency with creative vision to translate insights into scalable campaigns.

Qualifications

• 5-7 years in-house or top-tier agency experience leading performance creative strategy across paid social.
• Proven ability to translate data into actionable creative strategies that drive growth.
• Expertise across Meta, YouTube, TikTok and emerging platforms.
• Strong presentation and client-facing report skills.

Responsibilities

• Creative reporting with in-depth performance analysis and clear explanations of account performance.
• Own strategic components of client relationships and lead with public speaking.
• Develop sophisticated quarterly testing strategies using market research and historical data.
• Translate high-level strategy into tactical briefs and roadmaps for the creative team.
• Act as a strategic touchpoint for the internal creative team, logging test results and building playbooks.

Skills

Paid social

Creative strategy

Performance marketing

Data analysis

Public speaking

Client management

Presentation skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Spreadsheets

Storyboards

Job description

thelab is looking for a Senior Creative Strategist - Performance Marketing to join our team working on paid social ad creative.

The ideal applicant has 5-7 years of paid creative strategy experience across a variety of digital channels, including Meta, Pinterest, Youtube, and TikTok, with a primary focus on Meta. This role is key to driving aggressive growth for our clients by delivering the right creative at the right time, on the right channels. This is a hybrid role–both creative and analytical–that bridges media, creative, and client teams. We’re looking for a unicorn candidate who brings not only a sophisticated understanding of performance data, but also the creative expertise to translate that data into actionable creative strategies and tactics that push our clients forward.

About thelab:

We are an agency of makers with deep expertise in solving creative, production, and technology challenges. Our focus is on making better work, to help brands work better. We partner directly with clients to think big, build from scratch, and design for reality. From social media, digital marketing, branding, copy & design, and strategy, to full e-commerce builds, thelab mixes inspiration and hard work to produce results.

About the Role:

The Senior Creative Strategist role will encompass:

• Creative reporting, involving in-depth performance analysis.You’ll explain the state of our paid ad accounts, designate top/bottom performers across channels, and thoughtfully analyze creative trends based on performance. Because you’ve got both data and creative expertise, you’re able to translate performance into actionable go-forward creative strategies & tactics.
• Owning strategic components of client relationships… which involves a lot of public speaking!You’ll pitch strategic & tactical ideas, share creative live, present detailed creative reporting to large groups of clients, and field client questions about strategy and platform data on the fly.
• Developing sophisticated quarterly testing strategies for your clients. For us, this involves analyzing inputs like competitor & market research, historical performance, and upcoming brand priorities to craft compelling net-new messaging and audience hypotheses.
• Translating high-level strategy into tactical testing plans & concept roadmaps.You’ll write tactical briefs for the creative team, scale top performers via smart iteration flights, and provide strategic feedback on edits.
• Acting as a strategic touchpoint and source of truth for our internal creative team.You’ll
  translate reporting for creative teams, maintain logs of test results for team reference, and build tactical “playbooks” to help streamline our production processes and educate the creative team on top-performing ad formats for each client.

About You (Mandatories):

• 5-7 years in-house or top-tier agency experience with a proven track record of leading performance creative strategy across paid social channels.(Please note: we are looking for paid social experience, not organic social.)
• A trusted partner for our clients who can guide them with paid social strategies that help them achieve their marketing and business goals
• Deep expertise of the digital landscape and knowledge of platform-specific best practices on Meta, YouTube, TikTok and additional/emerging platforms.
• Proven analytical ability - you can digest data and turn insights into actionable creative strategy that drives growth. You are comfortable operating across spreadsheets and storyboards and enjoy using data to tell a story
• Understanding of media buying best practices across social channels
• Demonstrated history of achieving and exceeding paid social media campaign goals
• Expertise across capabilities (creative, media, analytics), engaging with the larger team
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, and can summarize insights to create easy-to-understand client-facing reports
• Experience creating and implementing long-term testing and optimization practices

• The ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with a consistent “can-do” attitude, seeing ambiguity as a challenge and not a deterrent
• Strong attention to detail and a proven ability to manage multiple work streams at once
• Very experienced and comfortable with presenting to clients

Job Details:

• Hybrid work environment - Tues-Thurs in the Madison Square Park office
• Salary range $100k-$120k will ultimately be decided at the offer stage, based on an individual candidate’s level of skills and experience aligned with the needs of this role
• Benefits include unlimited PTO, Healthcare/Dental/Vision, 401k company match, and the best snacks in town