Creative Strategist, Brand Partnerships

Substack•New York, NY

18h•$130,000 - $170,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Substack is building a new economic engine for culture, giving the brightest, most interesting, and most creative people on the internet the power of their own publishing platform. The terms of our culture should not be set by gate-keeping legacy media or chaos-fueling social media, but by the people who make and participate in that culture. Substack's model, based on direct subscriptions, has fueled an explosion of independent publishing. It empowers creators with economic autonomy, creative ownership, and a direct connection to their most engaged audiences. Brand Partnerships at Substack We're building Substack's sponsorships business from the ground up. The Creative Strategist sits between the sales team, brands and their agencies, and the writers on Substack. Your job is to turn a brand's goal into a campaign idea, find the writers who can carry that idea credibly, and stay with it from the first pitch through the work going live. This is a founding role on a small team, so the frameworks are yours to write.

Requirements

5+ years in creative strategy, branded content, or content strategy, at a publisher, an agency, or a platform
A portfolio of campaign ideas you've taken from concept to live work, ideally involving creators or publishers
A feel for the RFP process and for writing proposals that win
Real instincts for the creator and media space, and a sense for what's fresh versus what's played out
The range to hold a creative conversation with a CMO and a practical one with a writer, sometimes on the same day
Strong writing, and the organization to run several campaigns at once without dropping the details

Responsibilities

Come up with campaign ideas that work for a brand and feel native to Substack, rather than an ad bolted onto someone's newsletter
Match brands with the right writers and publications, using judgment about audience, voice, and what a given writer will actually agree to
Own the creative side of the pre-sale: read the brief, build the proposal, and respond to client feedback with new concepts and pivots
Run campaigns from idea through execution, keeping the brand, the writer, and our sales lead pointed in the same direction
Join client and agency calls to pitch ideas and pull out the information you need to sharpen them
Write the pitch materials, thought starters, and points of view that help brands picture what they can do on Substack
Watch what's working across the platform and feed real examples back into the next round of ideas