Head of Creative Services
ECD Business Unit 2 | Performance Creative | Social Commerce
Reports to: Chief Creative Officer
Function: External Creative Division (ECD), Business Unit 2
Location: Hybrid, Central London (Camden)
Compensation: Competitive Salary + Benefit Scheme + 28 days Paid Holiday + Private Health
The Opportunity
This is a senior creative leadership role at the heart of one of the UK’s fastest-growing paid social and creative agency groups.
Our first ECD Business Unit has grown to 12 pods and become one of the most formidable creative strategy teams in the country, reflected by a nomination for Meta’s Creative Diversity Award in 2025 and the group being named the UK’s #1 independent Meta agency. Now it’s time to build our second. BU2 represents the next chapter of our growth, expanding our capacity, increasing our market share, and proving the model scales.
As Head of Creative Commerce, you will own and lead ECD Business Unit 2 from the ground up. You’ll operate as one of two senior creative leaders within the Creative Strategy department alongside our Head of Creative Strategy (who runs BU1), with full ownership of your unit’s creative strategists, client accounts, and creative output across High Production, UGC, and Static.
This role also bridges our TikTok Shop department and the wider creative strategy function, driving cross-pollination between social commerce and performance creative. You’ll bring TikTok Shop’s speed, creator-led thinking, and commerce-first mindset into the broader ECD, while ensuring your BU2 team delivers the same depth of strategic rigour and creative quality that defines our agency.
This is a service leadership role, not an execution role. You’ll set the strategic direction for your business unit, lead department-level service development, and drive the commercial growth of the ECD alongside the CCO. You’ll work in close partnership with the Head of Creative Strategy, who owns the execution layer, coaching, and performance standards across the CS team. Your focus is the bigger picture: scaling the service, evolving the product, and building a team that operates at the highest level.
What You’ll Own
Business Unit Leadership
- Full KPI ownership of ECD Business Unit 2, responsible for the creative output, client satisfaction, and performance outcomes of your unit’s pods
- Line management and development of the creative strategists within BU2, setting expectations, running 1:1s, conducting performance reviews, and building a high-performance culture
- Ownership of the creative quality bar within BU2 across all three service lines: High Production, UGC, and Static
Department Strategy & Service Development
- Owning the department strategy and service roadmap for BU2, identifying where the ECD product needs to evolve, what new service lines or capabilities should be built, and how the department scales from here.
- Supporting the commercial growth of the ECD, alongside the CCO and senior leadership.
- Championing process improvement and product innovation across the Creative Strategy function, identifying bottlenecks, gathering feedback from the team on what’s working and what isn’t, and collaborating with the Chief Creative Officer to drive product changes that make the service sharper, faster, and more effective.
- Acting as a feedback loop between the CS team and leadership, translating on-the-ground insights into service improvements, product innovation, and operational changes that make the department more effective.
Client Performance & Risk Mitigation
- Ensuring BU2 delivers commercially impactful creative strategy across Meta and TikTok, with accountability for client retention, satisfaction, and growth outcomes.
- Acting as a senior strategic partner and risk mitigator on the largest and most complex client accounts, providing oversight and a second layer of strategic direction to protect and grow key relationships.
- Leading and contributing to tier 1 client discussions around creative performance, strategic recommendations, and growth opportunities where required.
TikTok Shop & Cross-Pollination
- Bringing genuine, working knowledge of TikTok Shop mechanics including live commerce, GMV Max, affiliate programmes, and creator-led content and staying ahead of platform evolution to ensure FYA’s Social Commerce offering remains best-in-class (not essential).
- Bridging the TikTok Shop department and the wider Creative Strategy function, ensuring insights, creator strategies, and commerce-first thinking flow between both
- Identifying opportunities where TikTok Shop learnings (creator-led content, live commerce, affiliate strategy) can inform and enhance performance creative across Meta and TikTok paid media.
- Supporting with affiliate brief system for TikTok Shop clients, applying a coaching-led approach to drive consistent, high-quality content output at scale, and continuously refining the frameworks that allow the wider team to brief, manage, and evaluate affiliate performance.
- Collaborating with the TikTok Shop team on shared creator relationships, content formats, and cross-platform creative testing.
Team & Culture
- Building a culture of ownership, curiosity, and relentless improvement within BU2. Your team should feel challenged, supported, and clear on what great looks like.
- Acting as a motivating voice and visible leader across the department, not just within BU2. You drive buy-in, build belief in the direction of travel, and create an environment where people feel empowered to take ownership and do their best work. Great strategy starts with great energy, and you set the tone.
- Contributing to department-wide rituals (Monthly Momentum, training sessions, cross-BU knowledge sharing) as a co-leader, not a passenger.
- Working closely with the Head of Creative Operations to manage capacity, utilisation, and production pipeline across your unit.
- Collaborating cross-functionally with Account Management, Media Buying, Design, and Production teams to deliver seamless client experiences.
Who We’re Looking For
This role demands someone who can lead from the front, raise the bar on creative thinking and leadership, and take ownership of outcomes, not just output.
Experience & Skills
- Proven experience leading a creative strategy, paid social, or performance creative function within an agency or in-house D2C environment
- Experienced in management and leadership of high-performing teams
- Experience leading and scaling creative strategy teams within a performance-driven, D2C, or paid social environment, ideally managing 10+ people across multiple sub-teams. You’ve built teams, not just managed them
- Deep understanding of what makes creative convert across Meta and TikTok
- Strong track record of building high-performance teams through hiring, structure, and leadership. You know how to design a team that scales, not just coach the one you inherit
- Comfortable in commercial and new business settings, with experience contributing to pitches, client growth plans, or service development at a department level
- Commercially minded with fluency in performance data, comfortable interpreting ROAS, CPA, CTR, and creative testing results to inform strategy
- Experience across multiple creative formats: UGC, high-production video, static design, and ideally social commerce or TikTok Shop
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, confident in client-facing settings, team critiques, and cross-functional collaboration
- Strong understanding of the D2C eCommerce landscape, consumer psychology, and platform evolution
Attitude & Mindset
You take complete ownership of your successes and failures. You’re outcome-obsessed, not task-obsessed. You hold yourself and your team to a high bar because you believe that’s what great work requires. You’re energised by the intersection of creativity, technology, and commerce. You’re deeply curious about what’s next, and you don’t wait to be told to go find it.
About the Soar Group
The Soar Group is one of the UK’s fastest-growing performance agency groups, home to three specialist agencies. On the inside, we work as one:
- Hambi Media: Performance creative agency for Meta, delivering High Production, UGC, and Static ads. The UK’s largest performance creative division.
- For You Advertising: The UK’s #1 independent TikTok agency, specialising in TikTok paid media, TikTok Shop, and creator-led content at scale.
- Soar With Us: Paid social and paid search, managing media buying and growth strategy across the group’s client portfolio.
Together, the group manages over £100M in ad spend, works with category-leading D2C brands, and operates the UK’s largest Creative Strategy department with design, production, strategy, and UGC all under one roof.
What Sets Us Apart
- Nominated for Meta’s Creative Diversity Award 2025, the only independent agency recognised
- Highest independent agency spend on Meta in 2025
- Official TikTok Agency Partner, Creative Partner, and one of the only TikTok Shop Partners across UK and US
- Two production studios (London and Manchester)
- Creators of D2C Diaries, one of the UK’s leading eCommerce podcasts
- Partnered with Meta, TikTok, Foreplay, and Triple Whale
Benefits
- 28 days paid holiday including birthday leave, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve
- Long-service holiday scheme: after 2 years’ service, you’ll receive 1 extra day of annual leave for every year of service
- Flexible and hybrid working (2 days in office)
- Regular team socials
- Company Private Health and life insurance scheme
- Company pension scheme
- Work abroad for 1 month a year
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