Senior Manager, Creative Strategy

Tinuiti•Remote -IL, IL

2d•$100,000 - $120,000•Remote

About The Position

As Senior Manager, Creative Strategy, you will lead Creative Strategy across a larger or more complex client scope while managing and developing Creative Strategists. You will translate business goals, audience insights, cultural context, and performance learnings into stronger messaging, testing plans, creative briefs, CABs, and strategic recommendations. You will serve as a senior day-to-day Creative Strategy lead, provide quality control for strategist work, and help ensure Creative Strategy outputs are clear, rigorous, actionable, and integrated with Creative Studio, Media, Client Partnership, Analytics, and Communications Planning.

Requirements

7-10+ years of experience in creative strategy, marketing, brand strategy, advertising, or a related field.
3+ years of people management, mentoring, or formal team leadership experience.
Strong experience developing campaign strategy, messaging recommendations, creative briefs, testing roadmaps, and performance-informed creative recommendations.
At least 3 years of client relationship experience, collaborating with in-house or agency creative teams through strategy, ideation, production, and review.
Proficiency analyzing data from platforms such as Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and similar environments to inform creative strategy.
Familiarity with email, web, display, streaming, social, commerce, and related channels, with a focus on innovation and optimization.
Strong understanding of A/B and multivariate testing methodologies.
Demonstrated ability to use AI tools to improve personal and team effectiveness, with strong judgment in validating outputs and handling sensitive data.
Excellent client-facing communication and presentation skills, including senior stakeholder presentations.

Nice To Haves

Agency experience and/or category experience in health and wellness, beauty, ecommerce, retail, apparel, home services, or financial services.

Responsibilities

Define and oversee creative strategy for assigned clients and campaigns, ensuring alignment with business objectives, marketing goals, audience needs, and measurable outcomes.
Translate client business goals into actionable communication, messaging, and creative objectives that support both brand and performance priorities.
Build trusted relationships with client and internal stakeholders by bringing clear strategic rationale, strong recommendations, and practical creative direction.
Lead client presentations, pitch support, and strategic discussions within assigned scopes as the senior Creative Strategy lead.
Identify when client asks require deeper Creative Strategy involvement, different staffing, tighter scoping, or cross-functional escalation.
Apply and help improve Creative Strategy templates, processes, and frameworks, including briefs, CABs, audits, testing roadmaps, and performance synthesis.
Help build new approaches to creative strategy, including content and creative strategy synergies, AI-enabled performance creative, creative analytics, and platform-informed testing.
Partner with Creative Studio to improve briefing, strategic handoff, review quality, and alignment from strategy to execution.
Surface process and workflow opportunities that can improve delivery quality, reduce rework, and strengthen cross-functional collaboration.
Contribute to pitch materials, case studies, and examples that demonstrate Creative Strategy value.
Leverage platform, channel, creative performance, and research data to refine creative strategy and improve performance over time.
Guide the development of audience-specific testing plans and learning agendas across paid social, video, display, streaming TV, email, web, and related environments.
Interpret campaign results and creative testing outcomes to identify what is working, why, and what should change next.
Ensure strategist recommendations connect to client KPIs, hypotheses, and measurable learning rather than only summarizing performance.
Coach direct reports on how to move from observations to sharper strategic conclusions.
Partner closely with Creative Studio, Media Planning, Client Partnership, Analytics, and Communications Planning to ensure Creative Strategy is integrated into broader campaign planning and execution.
Review creative concepts and strategic outputs to ensure consistency with brand standards, channel best practices, audience strategy, and client objectives.
Help distinguish between Creative Strategy ownership, Studio execution, tactical asset QA, performance reporting, and channel-team responsibilities.
Stay ahead of creative, cultural, platform, and AI trends and translate them into practical opportunities for client work.
Raise the quality and consistency of Creative Strategy outputs across assigned clients.
Take accountability for the quality, timeliness, clarity, and strategic usefulness of the team’s outputs.
Proactively identify gaps in scope, staffing, process, or client expectations and recommend solutions.
Balance hands-on strategic leadership with the need to coach, review, and develop the team.
Encourage experimentation and innovation in creative testing, messaging approaches, and strategic thinking.
Create clarity in ambiguous situations and help the team focus on the work Creative Strategy is best positioned to own.
Manage and develop Creative Strategists and Senior Creative Strategists, providing clear direction, feedback, and development support.
Maintain accountability for the quality and strategic soundness of work produced by direct reports before it reaches clients or senior stakeholders.
Coach team members on insight development, storytelling, testing logic, client communication, and cross-functional collaboration.
Support hiring, onboarding, performance feedback, and career development in partnership with more senior Creative Strategy leaders.
Foster an inclusive, people-first team culture rooted in curiosity, accountability, experimentation, and high standards.