Associate Director, AEO Creative Strategy
About The Position
The Associate Director, AEO Creative Strategy will help build and deliver Influencer’s Creator-First AEO capability while contributing to the broader Creative Strategy practice. The role sits at the intersection of AI search intelligence, creator strategy, cultural insight, and client strategy. It translates data about how brands are understood, surfaced, and cited across AI-driven discovery into actionable creator strategies, in partnership with Marketing Science and other teams. The position develops creator-first recommendations that address brand narratives, consumer questions, creator profiles, platforms, formats, and content approaches. It also acts as a strategic partner to clients, presents findings to senior stakeholders, supports pitches and workshops, and connects strategy to activation, measurement, and ongoing learning. Beyond AEO, the Associate Director leads or supports strategic work across priority clients, pitches, and proactive opportunities, and contributes frameworks, points of view, and thought leadership. The position reports to the SVP, Global Creative Strategy & Cultural Insights. It is based in New York and is hybrid, with in-person work two days per week.
Requirements
- At least 7 years of experience across creative strategy, brand strategy, social strategy, digital strategy, insights, or creator marketing.
- Strong ability to turn complex data and insights into simple, compelling strategic recommendations.
- Deep understanding of creator marketing, social platforms, consumer behavior, and digital culture.
- Experience developing creator briefs, strategic frameworks, and client-facing narratives.
- Strong commercial instincts and confidence presenting to senior clients.
- Comfort working with analysts and quantitative data without being the technical measurement owner.
- Ability to operate across emerging innovation work and established BAU client responsibilities.
- Strong collaboration skills across strategy, measurement, performance, creator, and commercial teams.
Nice To Haves
- Curiosity and working knowledge of AI-driven search, AEO, SEO, or emerging discovery behaviors.
- Direct AEO experience is advantageous but not essential.
Responsibilities
- Partner with Marketing Science and analytics teams to understand how brands appear across AI-driven discovery.
- Interpret AEO intelligence, including prompts, citations, competitive positioning, sources, topics, and visibility gaps.
- Identify important questions and narratives for brands, categories, and consumers, and assess competitor authority and contributing content or sources.
- Monitor developments in AI search, consumer discovery, and creator behavior and translate them into client implications.
- Turn AEO intelligence into actionable creator strategies, recommendations, and briefs.
- Identify narratives to strengthen, questions creator content should answer, and relevant creator profiles, platforms, formats, and content approaches.
- Develop creator-first strategies that balance AEO objectives with authenticity, cultural relevance, and brand priorities.
- Build client narratives explaining what AI currently understands about a brand, why it matters, and recommended actions.
- Present AEO findings and recommendations to senior client stakeholders; support pitches, workshops, audits, and proactive opportunities.
- Partner with Commercial teams to identify opportunities to expand AEO engagements and broader strategic relationships.
- Work across Creative Strategy, Creator, Performance, and Marketing Science to carry AEO insights into briefs and campaigns.
- Establish hypotheses and measurement approaches before activation with Marketing Science, and review post-activation findings to inform future strategy.
- Build repeatable frameworks and methodologies to scale Creator-First AEO across clients and markets.
- Lead and support strategy development across priority client briefs, pitches, and proactive opportunities beyond AEO.
- Translate audience, cultural, platform, and category insights into creator-first strategies and develop briefs and strategic narratives.
- Support senior strategists on major integrated opportunities and independently lead appropriate client workstreams.
- Contribute strategic frameworks, points of view, and thought leadership across the Creative Strategy & Insights practice.
Benefits
- Medical benefits through Insperity.
- Wellbeing support, including EAP and mental health cover.
- 401(k) with match opportunity.
- 22 days of paid time off, plus federal holidays that can be flexed to your needs.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
