Creative Director Startup Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Our customer is the maker of the world's first carbon fiber performance insole trusted by 600+ professional and collegiate sports programs, Olympians, and hundreds of thousands of athletes striving to improve performance and recovery.

As the company continues to scale its direct-to-consumer business beyond a $45M+ run rate, they are expanding into additional recovery and footwear products including clogs and slides while investing heavily in creative performance marketing across Meta and TikTok.

The company operates with a lean, fast-moving, highly collaborative culture where creative execution, testing velocity, and performance insights directly impact business growth.

We are seeking a Performance Creative Strategist to help drive scalable direct-response creative across Meta and TikTok advertising channels. This role will work closely with the VP of Marketing and Director of Content to develop high-performing creative concepts rooted in biomechanics, athlete performance stories, recovery insights, and real customer outcomes.

This position owns the creative testing roadmap, angle development, creative briefing process, and post-launch performance analysis. The strategist will collaborate directly with internal editors, UGC creators, athlete talent, and external agencies to ensure creative execution aligns with performance goals and brand standards.

This is a hybrid role based in Milford, Connecticut with in-office collaboration required Tuesday through Thursday.

Key responsibilities include:

• Build and maintain a living "angle library" including hooks, objections, athlete insights, reviews, and creative concepts

• Develop and manage a weekly creative testing roadmap with 5–10 new concepts per week

• Write detailed creative briefs and storyboard concepts for editors and creators

• Provide detailed creative direction and frame-level feedback on video content and ad variations

• Collaborate with internal content teams, freelancers, athlete talent, and external agencies

• Manage external creative agency relationships including briefing, review, feedback, and performance alignment

• Analyze Meta and TikTok ad performance data to identify winning concepts and iterate quickly

• Lead post-launch reviews and creative post-mortems to improve future testing and campaign performance

• Support rapid concept iteration and scaling of winning ads across paid social channels

• 3–5+ years of experience in DTC creative strategy, performance marketing, or direct-response advertising

• Strong understanding of Meta and TikTok creative best practices

• Experience building and testing creative concepts tied to performance marketing outcomes

• Ability to independently develop hooks, messaging angles, and creative hypotheses

• Strong direct-response marketing understanding including hook, problem, mechanism, proof, and CTA structure

• Exceptional attention to detail across pacing, text overlays, timing, and creative execution

• Strong communication and briefing skills with the ability to guide editors and creators independently

• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-output startup or growth-stage environment

• Experience reviewing creative performance metrics and translating insights into future concepts

• Ability to manage multiple creative projects and stakeholders simultaneously

Preferred candidate backgrounds may include:

• DTC ecommerce brands

• Performance sports or athletic brands

• Supplements, wellness, or fitness products

• Consumer health or recovery products

• Paid social creative strategy

• Creator-led ecommerce or UGC environments

• Creative testing and scaling systems

Preferred experience includes:

• Working with athlete-focused UGC or creator campaigns

• Science-backed or performance-based product marketing

• Building creative testing systems from scratch

• Hands-on experience with media buying or ad account management

• Creator or content production background

Tools and platforms include:

• CapCut

• Adobe Premiere

• Frame.io

• Meta Ads Manager

• TikTok Ads Manager

• Google Sheets and data analysis tools (Motionapp)

• Base salary range: $100,000–$120,000 + 25% performance bonus opportunity

• Full benefits package

• Flexible hybrid work structure, schedule TBD based on candidate location

• Opportunity to directly influence creative strategy and ad performance at scale

• Clear growth path into leadership within the creative department

• High-visibility role working directly with senior marketing leadership

• Fast-paced, high-growth DTC environment with strong investment in creative production and testing
  #LI-JM1 #li-Hybrid