Senior Director, Creative Strategy

California, MO (Hybrid)

$160K/yr – $220K/yrSenior Level6+ years expFull time

Posted 9 hrs ago

Job Summary

Own the brand's creative strategy and lead end-to-end campaigns across paid, social, and retention while shaping messaging, testing, and team leadership.

  • Own brand positioning and campaign execution
  • Lead cross-channel creative strategy and team leadership

Job Description

Responsibilities

  • Brand & Creative Positioning: Own creative positioning for the brand and its new product launch. Turn brand strategy, audience insight, and competitive context into a clear point of view on what a brand says and how it looks and sounds.
  • Copy & Messaging: Lead copy and messaging end to end, from messaging frameworks, taglines, and campaign lines to ad copy, email, and SMS. Flex tone by channel and funnel stage, and be the person who delivers when a client asks you to "punch up the copy."
  • Full-Funnel Creative Strategy: Lead creative strategy across paid (Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Amazon), organic social (Instagram, TikTok), and retention (email, SMS, lifecycle), so every channel ladders up to one brand story.
  • Campaigns: Concept and lead the launch campaign and the large, integrated campaigns that follow, from the big idea through briefs, production, launch, and measuring what they actually did.
  • Testing & Learning: Own the testing roadmap: what gets tested, in what order, against what hypothesis, and what a real win looks like before spend goes live. Balance brand-building work with performance.
  • Hands-On Creative Direction: Work directly with Designers and Editors, briefing statics, motion, short-form video, UGC, and storyboards. Give sharp, tactical feedback on design, pacing, and edit structure, and jump into Figma or an edit yourself when it's faster. This isn't the role for strategy-only folks.
  • Data Analysis: Read performance data across paid, social, and retention, from ad metrics to open rate, click rate, and repeat purchase, and turn it into the next concept.
  • Executive Presentation & Client Leadership: Present creative strategy and campaigns to the client's leadership with clarity, confidence, and strategic rationale. Own the creative relationship on the account and navigate pushback with ease.
  • Cross-Team Partnership: Work daily with Paid Media, Analytics, and the client's own program leads so creative and media run as one program.
  • Team Leadership: Lead the creative team on the account, raise the bar on craft, and build the processes, frameworks, and AI-enabled workflows that keep quality high as volume grows.

Requirements

  • 6+ years in creative strategy, brand marketing, or creative leadership, including 3+ years at Director level or above.
  • Brand marketing experience. You've shaped positioning, messaging, and brand voice for consumer brands, in-house or agency side.
  • Creative experience across paid, social, and retention. You've led work on Meta and TikTok ads, organic social, and email/SMS, and you understand how each channel works and where they connect.
  • You've directed large-scale, integrated campaigns, including OOH, from the big idea through launch and results.
  • You're a strong writer and lead copy and messaging yourself.
  • A portfolio of proven brand-scale and go-to-market case studies, showing brand, performance, and campaign work across statics, short-form video, motion, OOH, and lifecycle, with context on the results it drove.
  • You've owned production end to end, from brief and pre-production through shoot, post, and delivery, on time and on budget.
  • You speak in hooks, angles, and metrics. You know thumb-stop rate, 3-second hold, hook retention, CTR, and CPA, and you use them to decide what to test next.
  • You're comfortable working directly with designers and editors. You can storyboard, give frame-by-frame feedback, and jump into Figma or Adobe Creative Suite to polish assets.
  • You already use tools like Claude, Midjourney, Perplexity, Runway, or similar to increase speed and volume. You have shipped work with AI-assisted elements, not just experiments.

Benefits

  • Unlimited PTO + US holidays: Rebooting is part of the work. Take the time you need to stay sharp.
  • Remote-First Culture: Many roles are fully remote. Employees based in or near our New York or Lisbon HQs are expected to work hybrid with weekly in-office time. Hub locations include Brazil and Spain.
  • Health & Wellness: Company-sponsored medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Finances, growth, and retirement: Darkroom offers a robust 401(k) program with company match and profit-sharing opportunities to help you save and grow as the company grows.
  • Parental Leave: Flexible parental leave to support new parents during this important transition.
  • Growth: Our interdisciplinary model gives every Darkroomer exposure far beyond their core role. Grow your skills, expand your influence, and stay at the forefront of the industry.
  • Compensation: The base salary range for this role is $160,000 to $220,000 per year. This range represents the anticipated minimum and maximum for this position and applies to candidates based in New York, including New York City, in compliance with the New York State Pay Transparency Law and the New York City Salary Transparency Law. Actual compensation within this range will be determined based on experience, skills, and qualifications.
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Darkroom

Darkroom is a technology-driven growth marketing firm focused on growth-stage consumer companies. We were founded in 2017 out of a conviction that the iconic ad agencies of tomorrow would look very different. Darkroom is a human services firm built on a universal AI commerce layer called Matter. Our model deploys a unique blend of senior, human resources enriched by an agentic technology stack that enhances output, efficiency, and revenue generation for our clients. Our team has been responsible for billions of dollars in trackable revenue across the various e-commerce marketplace, direct-to-consumer, and social commerce programs under management. Using research aggregated across these engagements, we accelerate results for our portfolio by developing high-impact digital strategies that unlock gateways to revenue growth, transform marketing operations, and prioritize profitability.What started as a boutique design agency evolved into one of the fastest-growing private companies in America (Inc. 5000), one of the most successful results-driven performance media agencies of the 2020s (Varos), and esteemed recognition by Forbes 30 Under 30 for our founders’ contribution in Marketing & Advertising (Forbes).SERVICES:Darkroom strictly focuses on developing the next-generation of digital services. We choose to add impact in the areas where brands presently need them most and over-index on e-commerce marketplace, direct-to-consumer, and social commerce services that deliver trackable revenue. Core Darkroom service verticals include E-commerce Marketplace Management, Retail Media, Paid Media Management, Performance Creative, Social Commerce, and Customer Retention, among others. We are the only performance agency with a design-grade creative team and a certified Chief Creative Officer. These creative sensibilities are infused into our growth marketing.Darkroom is sister to Matter, our commerce technology layer.

Founded in 2017
New York, New York, USA
125 employees (59 in marketing)

Salaries

Posted range

$160K/yr – $220K/yr

Taken straight from the job posting.

Creative median pay in the United States

$109K/yr

Most pay falls between $83K and $155K. Based on 2,579 salaries.

See all Darkroom salaries

Marketing Team

Marketing Team Size
33 (26% of company)
Median Career Experience
5 years
Median Tenure
5.8 years
Marketing Roles Posted (Last 30 Days)
6

Traffic Signals

Monthly Visitors
23.6K
Traffic Source Mix
Search
34.6%
Direct
47.4%
Referral
9.6%
Social
7.2%
Paid
1%

Headcount Trend

Current headcount: ~125
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Senior Director, Creative Strategy

Darkroom · California, MO · Hybrid