Ads Creative Strategist - Lead Gen

We’re looking for an exceptional Performance Creative Strategist to help us systematically find and scale winning creative for a high-volume lead generation brand in the finance space. We currently spend approximately £250,000 per month on paid acquisition. This is not an early-stage account looking for basic ad ideas. We have significant spend, conversion data, an established funnel, and an internal production system capable of creating creative at scale. What we need is someone who can turn research, data, customer psychology and performance insights into strong creative hypotheses and fully production-ready briefs. WHAT YOU’LL OWN PHASE 1 — RESEARCH & CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE Before creating anything, we want a deep understanding of the market. This should include: * Competitor creative audit * Analysis of recurring competitor angles and concepts * Audience psychology mapping * Pain point and objection analysis * Voice-of-customer research * Platform and creative trend analysis * Hook and visual pattern analysis * Landing page and funnel analysis * Identification of gaps competitors are not currently exploiting The goal is to understand: What is working? Why is it working? What psychology is it tapping into? Where are the opportunities for us to outperform it? PHASE 2 — CREATIVE ANGLE GENERATION From the research, you will develop some core creative hypotheses or angles. Each should be: * Clearly differentiated * Based on evidence rather than personal preference * Ranked by expected probability of resonance * Connected to a specific audience motivation, pain point or objection * Capable of generating multiple concepts and executions * Structured so we can test and learn systematically We don’t want: “Founder videos are trending, so let’s make a founder video.” We want: “This audience repeatedly demonstrates X objection. Competitors currently address it using Y mechanism. Customer language consistently references Z frustration. Therefore, we believe this angle has a high probability of resonance.” We are looking for evidence-based creative strategy, not gut instinct. PHASE 3 — PRODUCTION-READY CREATIVE BRIEFS Once an angle is selected, you should be able to turn it into a complete brief that our production system can execute without additional strategic work. Our production team should be able to take your brief and create the ad without having to interpret or finish your thinking. AI VIDEO EXPERIENCE We have built an internal creative system capable of producing almost any style of video. We actively work with modern AI video generation and are looking for someone who understands models and tools such as: * Kling * Seedance * Veo You do not necessarily need to personally produce every finished video. However, you should understand how AI video generation works and be capable of translating a creative brief into structured generation prompts. PERFORMANCE MARKETING EXPERIENCE This is fundamentally a direct-response and performance marketing role. You should understand: * CTR * Hook rate * Hold rate * CPC * CPL * CVR * CPA * Creative fatigue * Angle vs concept vs hook vs execution * Testing velocity * Creative iteration * Landing page conversion You should be comfortable looking at performance data and answering: What should we create next, and why? LEAD GENERATION EXPERIENCE Experience with lead generation is highly desirable. We are particularly interested in people who have worked in business finance. You should understand that lead generation creative is different from e-commerce creative. Experience with funnels where the conversion is an application, enquiry or qualified lead rather than an immediate purchase is a major advantage. LANDING PAGE / CRO EXPERIENCE Ideally, we want someone who can think beyond the ad itself. You should be capable of reviewing landing pages and identifying: * Message-match issues between ads and landing pages * Weak propositions * Trust gaps * Friction * Poor information hierarchy * Weak CTAs * Objection handling opportunities * Form-flow issues * Conversion opportunities * Areas where the landing page fails to continue the promise made in the creative You do not need to be a designer or developer, but you should understand conversion psychology and CRO. WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR You’ll probably be a strong fit if you: * Have developed creative strategy for meaningful paid-media budgets * Can show examples of creative that actually performed * Think in hypotheses rather than random ideas * Are strong at customer and audience research * Understand direct-response advertising * Can separate an angle from a hook, concept and execution * Can research deeply rather than spending an hour in Meta Ad Library * Understand AI-generated creative * Can write strong scripts * Can communicate visual ideas precisely * Understand landing pages and funnels * Can use performance data to determine the next creative iteration We are not looking for a generic social media manager, brand strategist or copywriter who occasionally writes ads. We’re looking for someone who thinks like a combination of: Performance marketer Creative strategist Researcher Creative director Conversion strategist TO APPLY Please answer the following questions in your application: 1. What is the largest monthly paid-media budget you have developed creative strategy for? 2. What percentage of your experience is lead generation versus e-commerce? 3. Share 2–3 examples of ads or creative strategies you developed and explain the results. 4. Walk us through how you would research a completely new market before developing creative. 5. How do you determine whether poor performance came from the angle, hook, execution, offer or landing page? 6. What experience do you have with AI video models such as Kling, Seedance, Veo or Runway? 7. Please share an example of a production-ready creative brief you have created. 8. What experience do you have in finance, financial services or other regulated industries? Please do not send a generic application. We are looking for someone who can become a significant part of our creative acquisition engine, not simply deliver a handful of ad concepts.