Lead - Creative Strategist (Video & Social Formats)

About The Role We are looking for a senior Lead - Creative Strategist to head our creative thinking layer across all major video channels. You are a pure thinker, story architect, and platform strategist who determines what content we build before production starts - bridging complex financial topics, audience psychology, and platform-specific mechanics. Whether designing a 15-minute YouTube deep dive or a 30-second Instagram Reel, you own the creative concepts, hooks, packaging, and narrative structures that capture attention and build brand affinity. In addition to driving cross-platform strategy, you will manage our team of writers and strategists, setting the standard for creative quality, strategic alignment, and execution speed. Focus Area 1: Team Leadership & Creative Direction Team Management & Operations: Lead the day-to-day operations of the creative strategy team, taking full accountability for creative quality, strategic alignment, and output speed. Mentorship & Quality Control: Guide writers and strategists through concept development, story arcs, hook design, and script reviews. Raise the bar for creative rigor across the team. Cross-Layer Alignment: Partner with production, growth, channel intelligence, and project management leads to ensure creative concepts move smoothly from idea to final publish. Workflow Standard Operating Procedures: Build and refine processes for research, brief generation, packaging reviews, and performance retrospectives. Focus Area 2: Multi-Platform Strategy & Format Innovation YouTube Strategy & Packaging: Drive deep-dive long-form video concepts, defining title strategies, thumbnail direction, and retention-focused opening hooks (first 30 seconds) to maximize CTR and watch time. Short-Form & Reel Strategy: Oversee fast-paced, high-reach formats for Instagram Reels and Shorts, leveraging social trends, audio hooks, visual text overlays, and text-on-screen frameworks to drive scroll-stopping engagement. Format Ownership & Beat Sheets: Design distinct, repeatable video series and content IP across ecosystems, writing concise beat sheets, script outlines, and visual edit notes (specifying text placement, b-roll, and pacing) for production teams. Real-Time Trend Capture: Monitor financial feeds, market shifts, and social sentiment to translate breaking conversations into ready-to-produce creative briefs within hours. Focus Area 3: Performance Feedback & Creative Testing Retention & Drop-Off Analysis: Analyze audience retention charts, completion rates, shares, and click-through rates alongside the intelligence team to translate raw numbers into actionable creative fixes. Iterative Feedback Loops: Treat every video as a creative experiment, running regular creative post-mortems to double down on winning hooks, test new pacing styles, and drop formats that underperform. What We Are Looking For Senior Creative Experience: 8+ years of experience in content strategy, creative direction, or lead scriptwriting for high-scale digital platforms, with proven experience managing creative teams. Multi-Platform Mastery: Deep understanding of modern video platforms (YouTube, Instagram, Short-Form), including their distinct algorithms, packaging principles, narrative pacing, and retention drivers. Information Distillation & Finance Literacy: Ability to take dense financial, economic, or market concepts and turn them into simple, visually engaging content frameworks for retail audiences. Analytical Creativity: Ability to look at audience drop-off charts and platform data, translating raw numbers into immediate creative adjustments. Mindset To Succeed Pure Thinker & Decisive Leader: You take pride in structural storytelling, concept generation, and platform strategy, while confidently guiding and unblocking your team. High Agency: You treat channels like your own products, proactively spotting content gaps and bringing new concepts to the table without waiting for a brief. High Volume Idea Engine: You gen