The opportunity

Paid media creative has changed more in the last three years than in the previous twenty. The gap between brands that get this and brands that do not is now visible in their results. The people driving that gap are not traditional creatives and they are not media buyers. They are a new kind of operator: someone who understands culture well enough to know what will stop a scroll, thinks with the discipline of a strategist, and is hands-on enough to produce and iterate at pace using the latest AI-powered tools. Not brief and review. Make, test, learn, repeat.

Velstar is a full-service ecommerce agency with offices in Liverpool, Leeds, and Edinburgh. We work with fast-growth DTC brands, high street retailers, and complex B2B businesses across paid and owned channels.

As Lead Creative Strategist, you will be the senior creative voice in our Performance Creative team. You will be embedded in one of our cross-functional client squads, responsible for the creative strategy across that squad's full client portfolio. You will lead personally on several of our key accounts, setting the standard for what great performance creative looks like at Velstar.

Alongside your client work, you will line-manage the Performance Creative team and act as the escalation point for creative questions, blockers, and development needs across the function.

This is a rare opportunity to build and lead a performance creative function at an agency with the scale, client base, and commercial backing to make it genuinely significant. If you have proved yourself at senior level and want the space to shape something from a position of real seniority, rather than inherit someone else's approach, this is that role.

How you will work

Velstar operates through cross-functional squads. Each squad is coordinated by a Success Manager who manages client relationships and day-to-day client communication. You sit inside one squad as the senior creative lead, responsible for the creative strategy across its full client portfolio, including direct ownership of key accounts.

Client queries are resolved within the squad. Creative questions, development needs, and anything requiring senior input from within the Performance Creative team come to you. That clear structure means you can focus on the work that matters most without being pulled in every direction.

Some clients are further along this journey than others. You will need to be equally comfortable managing paid social campaigns in a more traditional sense while helping those clients evolve toward a performance creative model.

As the team grows, your direct client workload will reduce and your leadership responsibilities will increase. That transition is planned, not accidental.

What you will do

Client work

• Own the creative strategy across your squad's client portfolio, from brief to delivery.

• Lead personally on several key client accounts, acting as the most senior creative voice on those relationships.

• Develop compelling ad concepts across paid media channels, with Meta and TikTok as the primary focus.

• Write detailed creative briefs that draw on brand guidelines, client tone of voice, buyer personas, and AI avatar direction, producing work that creators can act on without ambiguity.

• Launch, manage, and optimise paid media campaigns at pace, using performance data to drive creative decisions rather than instinct alone.

• Build and manage testing frameworks: hypothesis, execution, analysis, and rapid iteration.

• Analyse on and off-platform performance data to identify what is working, what is not, and what to do next.

• Brief and direct AI-powered and human creators clearly and at volume.

• Design and lead workshops or structured sessions with senior client stakeholders to align on creative direction and strategy.

• Present creative performance and strategic recommendations to clients in collaboration with the Success Manager.

Team leadership

• Line-manage the Performance Creative team, including regular one-to-ones, development planning, and ongoing coaching.

• Be the escalation point for creative questions and blockers across the team.

• Set the standard for creative quality, testing rigour, and output velocity.

• Own end-to-end hiring for the Performance Creative team: brief recruiters, review candidates, and make recommendations to senior leadership.

• Define the tools, processes, and frameworks the function runs on.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Demonstrable experience in performance creative or paid social creative strategy, with a track record that speaks for itself.

• Proven ability to produce high-volume creative output across paid media channels, particularly Meta and TikTok.

• Strong grasp of paid social performance and the relationship between creative decisions and commercial outcomes.

• Proven hands-on experience with AI-assisted production tools, including Creatify, Arcads, ElevenLabs, CapCut Pro, or equivalents.

• Confident working knowledge of Meta Ads Manager and TikTok Ads Manager, including campaign setup, optimisation, and analysis.

• Experience working directly with DTC ecommerce brands.

• Ability to run multiple client accounts simultaneously without losing quality or pace.

• Clear, structured written communication. You write briefs that creators can act on without a follow-up call.

• Strong presentation and communication skills. You can walk a senior client through a creative strategy and make it land.

Desirable

• Experience managing or mentoring junior creatives.

• Knowledge of Motion, Foreplay, or similar creative analytics tools.

• Agency background with exposure to a range of brand categories.

• Understanding of how creative strategy connects to media buying, offer development, and wider growth objectives.

• Experience running client workshops or structured creative sessions.

The right person for this role is comfortable at pace, thrives in an iterative environment, and brings genuine hands-on experience with performance metrics and AI tooling. If that describes how you already work, we would like to hear from you.