Creative Strategist

thelab is looking for a Creative Strategist (4+ years relevant experience) to support creator casting and talent management for our performance marketing creative while also providing support and insight to the Senior Creative Strategist – Performance Marketing in managing strategy for social media.

We are:

An agency of makers with deep expertise in solving creative, production, and technology challenges. Our focus is on making better work, to help brands work better. We partner directly with clients to think big, build from scratch, and design for reality. From branding & design to ecommerce builds or anything in between, thelab mixes inspiration and hard work to produce results that mean business. Oh, and we host a mean barbecue too.

You will:

Join our growing Performance Marketing team while creating a process for sourcing and managing all UGC content creators across multiple clients, with the goal of building a large, reliable network of creator partners. In addition, as our influencer offering expands over the next several months, this role will grow to include influencer management.

Alongside continuous talent sourcing and ownership of all creator/influencer relationships, you’ll also produce regular UGC ad creative deliveries for Meta, TikTok, Youtube, and Pinterest. For these, you’ll set production timelines & schedules, coordinate creative briefing & scripting, collect team feedback on creator deliverables, serve as the liaison between agency and line producer, schedule any re-shoots, handle contracts & invoicing, and pass off final footage to our in-house editors for post-production and archiving.

You’ll be responsible for ensuring we are following creative best practices and adhering to a testing methodology that is strongly rooted in data. This role will be key to helping our clients unlock aggressive business growth by helping us deliver the right creative at the right time- spanning digital, social, and more.

You’ll be comfortable digging into digital analytics and marketing tools (we use Motion!) to pull insights, learning and new concept ideas to deliver ROI and translate those metrics into optimization strategies that drive performance improvement.

This role is equal parts creative and analytical, bridging the gap between media, our creative team, and clients and is a discipline we are excited to expand

The ideal candidate has experience with creative strategy, project management, talent management/casting, and influencer marketing. Familiarity with social media content creation & marketing is required, as you’ll be producing creative for paid & organic social.

Job Requirements:

The Creative Strategist will collaborate with producers, strategists, creative directors, copywriters, and project managers on new and current Creator/Influencer projects for our growing portfolio of performance and brand marketing clients.

Qualifications:

• Equipped with 4+ years of experience as a Creative Strategist or UCG Content Producer in an agency or in-house setting
• Experience coordinating freelance talent & maintaining positive long-term relationships with actors, creators, or influencers
• Experience sourcing talent manually and via creator/actor sourcing platforms like BeeRoll and Backstage.
• Experience managing influencer partnerships, including:
  • Experience with influencer management platforms like Aspire
  • Experience crafting influencer relationship terms & contracts
  • Experience negotiating content usage rights
• Strong understanding of performance marketing best practices and the marketing funnel as it relates to paid ad creative.
• Comfortable working within a creative team, with a knowledge of the creative process
• Experience producing social-native creative for paid channels. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube ads will make up the bulk of your work.
• Proficient and comfortable using technology aids to support planning, routing and collaboration
• A grown-up attitude: we don’t do drama here

You Are:

• Very in-tune with social media trends. (So when you’re casting, you instantly know who’s going to resonate or not on TikTok or Reels.)
• A natural leader with excellent motivation and conflict management skills
• Highly organized! You thrive managing lots of moving parts, keeping careful track of many relationships and projects.
• Able to own assigned projects from start to finish, ensuring successful delivery against deadlines
• Adept and passionate about rolling with the punches of a project, and being proactive and available
• Attention to detail, accuracy and follow-up
• Able to learn quickly and comfortable asking questions
• Collaborative, self-managing, and able to partner well with others
• Familiar with production processes in video and digital workstreams and able to incorporate implications to schedule building and maintenance
• Comfortable directing work with influencer or UGC creators
• Able to manage the implementation of a strategic campaign within the social media space
• Analytical - you can digest data and turn insights into actionable creative strategy that drives growth. You are comfortable operating across spreadsheets and storyboards and enjoy using data to tell a story

We’ll be:

Thrilled to have you on the team, and excited to nurture and grow your skills. We all love what we do at thelab—we pride ourselves on craftsmanship, thoughtfulness, and flexibility. We’re inherently curious. We’re scrappy problem solvers. We revel in unexpected solutions. Most of all, we’ll care about you, the work you do here, and the career we’ll help you grow.

Details:

• Salary is $80,000-$90,000 commensurate with experience
• Role is hybrid - with 3 days expected in Manhattan office (currently being renovated) starting in March 2025