Director Of Creative Strategy Jobs in California

About the Role:

Dr. Squatch is seeking a Director of Growth Creative to own our direct response creative strategy across paid social, with deep specialization in Meta and TikTok/TikTok Shop. This is not a traditional creative director role - it's an operator role that demands equal strength in creative craft, analytical fluency, and the organizational discipline to lead a high-velocity creative team.

The ideal candidate is as comfortable reading a performance dashboard as they are developing a creative framework, and is genuinely energized by both. This person must come from a creative background themselves - someone who has practiced the craft of writing, filming, producing, or performing, not solely managed those who do. 

Reporting directly to the VP of Growth, the Director will sit within our broader e-commerce organization and work in close partnership with brand, performance marketing, and TikTok Shop teams, and lead a team.

This is a full-time, hybrid role with company benefits, based in Marina Del Rey, CA, that requires 3 days per week at Dr. Squatch HQ.
The anticipated base compensation range for this role will be $190,000 to $210,000. Compensation will be commensurate with the candidate's experience and local market rates.

What You'll Do:

• Direct Response Creative Strategy
  • Own and drive a direct response creative strategy and dynamic roadmap tied directly to revenue objectives, establishing clear frameworks for how creative investment translates to commercial outcomes
  • Develop creative frameworks, hook libraries, and concept pipelines built specifically for performance, creating reusable, scalable infrastructure that elevates the output of the entire team
  • Lead structured testing roadmaps across hooks, formats, angles, and offers; translate winning concepts into scaled production with speed and precision
  • Evolve our Creative Playbook to reflect current platform realities and algorithm shifts, including Meta's Andromeda algorithm and TikTok's Symphony AI tooling, ensuring the team never operates on yesterday's assumptions
  • Define a new generation of signature content hooks tied to Dr. Squatch's core product offerings - distinct, instantly recognizable creative that audiences associate immediately with the brand
• TikTok & TikTok Shop Creative Leadership
  • Build Dr. Squatch's TikTok creative engine from the ground up, spanning organic-feel content, creator pipelines, and TikTok Shop-specific formats that drive measurable revenue, not just reach or engagement
  • Serve as the in-house expert on TikTok-native direct response creative: platform trends, UGC pipelines, creator and affiliate partnerships, and conversion-driving formats that actually perform
  • Build and scale a TikTok Shop creative engine, developing shoppable video, affiliate and creator workflows, and Shop-specific content that bridges discovery and purchase
  • Bring a genuine, current understanding of Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumer behavior, content consumption patterns, and the cultural signals that drive resonance with younger audiences on short-form platforms
• Meta Creative Leadership
  • Lead the evolution of our Meta creative strategy in response to the Andromeda algorithm, rebuilding our approach from first principles where necessary
  • Develop and test new creative frameworks optimized for current Meta distribution and performance dynamics, moving beyond playbooks built for a different era of the platform
  • Maintain a high-velocity testing cadence across hooks, formats, and offers to stay ahead of creative fatigue and capitalize on emerging performance signals before competitors
• Creative Analytics
  • Read performance data fluently - thumbstop rate, hold rate, CTR, CVR, and ROAS by concept, angle, and format - and use it to drive the next round of creative investment with confidence and specificity
  • Partner with growth and analytics teams to build creative reporting infrastructure that surfaces what's working, what's fatiguing, and where to place the next bet
  • Make data-informed decisions on what to kill, scale, or iterate; defend creative direction with evidence and bring the team along with clarity
• Team Leadership
  • Build and develop a high-performing team of performance creative professionals; hire critical roles with urgency and manage capacity proactively to match the pace of the business
  • Lead and inspire a team of creative people with an understanding that this function requires a distinct management approach, one rooted in craft, trust, and high standards, not just process and output metrics
  • Operate with a scrappy, resourceful mentality - this team moves fast, produces at low cost, and finds creative solutions where others would default to expensive production
  • Manage external agencies, creators, and freelance production resources; build and maintain a strong network of creative talent that can be activated quickly
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Serve as the primary voice for performance creative across growth, brand, and channel teams, ensuring DR creative is represented and prioritized across the organization's most important initiatives
  • Partner with the brand team on larger integrated campaigns, including high-profile celebrity and talent partnerships, contributing a distinct growth creative perspective to shoots and executions
  • Translate channel manager needs into creative solutions; surface risks and trade-offs proactively rather than absorbing them silently
  • Work in close partnership with e-commerce, performance marketing, and TikTok Shop teams to ensure creative output is optimized for platform, funnel stage, and audience
• Market Expansion
  • Build a performance creative infrastructure capable of scaling across international markets as the business grows, establishing frameworks and workflows that travel beyond the U.S. without sacrificing speed or quality

About You:

• Required Experience
  • 6+ years in performance or growth creative, with 2+ years in a team leadership capacity, ideally at a high-growth DTC or B2C brand operating at the $50M-$200M revenue scale
  • Deep, hands-on expertise in TikTok and Meta direct response creative, with a demonstrated track record of scaling brands on both platforms through creative-led growth strategies
  • Genuine, current knowledge of TikTok, its culture, content formats, creator ecosystem, and commerce features, is a hard requirement
  • Strong direct response creative fundamentals, with the ability to show winning work you personally shaped on both platforms
  • Fluency in creative analytics; comfortable reading performance dashboards and translating data into the next creative decision with confidence and specificity, without losing the creative instinct or hypothesis that drove the test
  • A personal creative background in writing, production, filming, or content creation - this role requires someone who has practiced the craft, not solely managed it
  • The ability to articulate and own a 6-12 month creative strategy tied to business outcomes and translate it into a prioritized, executable roadmap the team can operate against
  • Experience managing agencies, creators, and freelance production resources, with a network of relationships that can be leveraged immediately
• Qualities
  
  • You're energized by direct response creative and the performance loop around it - you find genuine excitement in the data, not just the creative concept
  • You're scrappy, resourceful, and fast-moving, with an operator's mentality. You move toward ambiguity, make decisions with the information available, and ship creative without waiting for perfect conditions, the perfect brief, or the perfect budget. Our team has produced TV-quality work for $2K, and you understand and champion that standard
  • You're intellectually curious and non-dogmatic - able to challenge your own assumptions and adapt as platforms, algorithms, and consumer behaviors evolve
  • You're highly collaborative and low-ego, with the credibility and communication skills to align stakeholders across brand, performance, and e-commerce
  • You're plugged into culture, particularly the content formats, creators, and conversations that resonate with Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers, with genuine fluency rather than surface-level awareness
  • You're deeply motivated by building teams, systems, playbooks, and creative engines that outlast any single campaign or platform moment

#LI-TC1 #LI-HYBRID #LI-FULLTIME