Senior DTC Creative Strategist — Embedded, Long-Term

We are a small DTC brand house running several brands across Shopify, Bol.com and Amazon. We do our own media buying, run a network of nine tested video and static editors, and produce roughly two new video briefs per day across the group. We're hiring a senior creative strategist to own creative strategy for one of our established brands: a cordless heated styling brush sold in the Netherlands, targeting women 55+. This is not a retainer where you send over a monthly batch of scripts. We want one person, embedded in one brand, who owns the full loop: research → hypotheses → concepts → briefs → production feedback → performance analysis → iterations THE HONEST SITUATION The brand has real volume, proven winning concepts, months of creative performance data, an established editing team and active Meta spend. You are not starting from zero. But the Shopify side of the business is currently running below break-even. Our marketplace channels carry the profit right now. Our cost per acquisition rose sharply while our creative output slowed at the same time. Your first mandate is creative efficiency: better concepts, faster iteration, lower CPA. Store economics also depend on offer, PDP and media buying — those are worked on in parallel and are not solely your responsibility. But creative is the biggest lever we have right now, and it's the one we're hiring for. If you want a brand where everything already works and you optimise at the margins, this isn't it. If you want a brand with proven mechanics, a real budget and a clear number to move, it is. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Study customer reviews, comments, competitors and market research, and turn that into a genuine understanding of who this customer is and what she actually wants - Turn that research into clear, named hypotheses and genuinely distinct creative angles — not header variants of one idea - Write detailed, editor-ready briefs for our existing team - Work directly with video and static editors to improve execution - Follow performance after launch and extract real learnings - Build on proven winners without producing superficial variations - Work across formats: UGC, VO-over-b-roll, statics, advertorials and pre-landers, AI-assisted creative - Improve our creative strategy process as we learn, and document what works WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR You should already have meaningful experience doing creative strategy for performance-driven DTC brands running Meta ads. Ideally: - You have owned creative strategy for a DTC brand, not only written scripts - You have worked with meaningful paid social spend - Strong grasp of direct-response advertising and customer psychology - A structured approach to research and creative testing - Experience briefing editors - You can tell the difference between a new angle and a creative variation, and can explain why - Excellent written English - Comfortable disagreeing with the founder when you think there's a better direction Our primary market is the Netherlands. All internal work, briefs and communication are in English. You'll be working with Dutch-language customer reviews — translation is fine, you don't need to speak Dutch. Experience with women-focused products, beauty, personal care, older demographics or European markets is useful but not required. Experience in hair tools, beauty devices or adjacent categories is a strong advantage, provided there is no direct competitive conflict. We'd rather hire someone who already knows what wins in this space. FOCUS MATTERS MORE THAN HOURS We're not asking for exclusivity and we're not asking for full-time hours. We are asking for depth in one brand. Ideally, you have no more than two other active client engagements. If you're managing a larger roster, this role is not a fit. What that depth looks like in practice: - You stay close enough to the account to know what is running, what is changing and what is being produced week to week - You know the creative history — what we've tried, what won, what died - You reply within 24 hours on working days - One fixed weekly call If this works, there is room for scope and responsibility to grow over time. HOW THIS WORKS You'll work alongside me, the founder, who currently runs creative strategy myself. That's deliberate: I want to compare thinking, have my hypotheses challenged, and learn from someone who works differently than I do. Responsibility moves toward you based on the quality of your decisions and the performance of the creative coming from your strategy. We run several brands, and our model is one strategist per brand — we are not looking for someone to spread across them. Over the long term there are opportunities to grow within the company, but this role is about going deep on one brand and staying there. WHAT ALREADY EXISTS You will not need to build a production team. We have: - Nine tested video and static editors - Documented SOPs for creative recreation, static analysis and briefing structure - A pacing and briefing standard your briefs will follow - Existing winning ads, concepts and performance history - Customer and market research, including a verbatim customer review library - Active Meta campaigns and existing workflows to get briefs into production Your job is to make the thinking feeding that machine better. PROCESS Shortlisted candidates receive a paid assignment (€200, fixed) before any offer. It's a real strategic problem from our brand, not a spec script. Expect it to take a few hours. We then do a 30-minute call about your thinking. TO APPLY Answer these four questions in your proposal. Short answers are fine — we're reading for how you think, not length. 1. Tell me about one DTC brand where you personally owned creative strategy. What exactly was your responsibility, and roughly what monthly ad spend was the brand running? 2. Give me one creative hypothesis or angle you developed that materially improved performance. What was the insight behind it, and how did you arrive at it? 3. How do you go from customer research to deciding which specific concepts get produced? Walk me through the last time you actually did this. 4. How many clients are you currently working with, and what would your availability for this role realistically be? If you have actual briefs, research documents or creative testing systems, include them. A portfolio of finished ads tells us much less than seeing how you think.