Senior Marketing Manager I, Ad Creative Strategy

Overview

Are you a digital marketer who can apply a brand marketing lens to data-driven performance marketing? Can you translate big idea concepts into clear ad creative briefs? Are you as comfortable working with analysts and designers? We're looking for a dynamic Creative Strategy Lead to blend creativity with growth across all channels. This role is a fantastic opportunity to drive business growth by shaping and executing data-driven creative strategies while championing innovation, cultural relevance, and performance rigor. 

In this role, you’ll be responsible for creating and executing high-impact, performance-driven creative strategies and launching assets that deliver measurable results. You will partner with cross-functional teams to ensure that Instacart’s direct response media creative and campaigns align with our broader marketing objectives, while constantly optimizing the creative strategy based on performance learnings and insights.

You will be the primary point of contact between Instacart’s growth marketing and creative teams, playing a critical role in shaping the creative strategy that fuels our paid media performance and collaborating to align creative best practices, in-market insights, and strategic messaging. You'll act as the crucial link between creative and growth teams, transforming insights into powerful creative briefs and guiding cross-functional teams and partners to deliver top-performing assets. This role requires a strong testing mindset, ability to proactively identify new opportunities, generate hypotheses, and translate insights into bold new creative directions.

You’ll take requests from channel leads and strategic marketing partners to develop a pipeline of creative assets that can be tested and scaled across multiple digital marketing channels. Your work will play a key role in shaping business decisions, driving growth, and deepening our connection with customers. 

The growth marketing team accelerates topline business growth by driving highly qualified traffic to Instacart via Paid, Owned and Organic channels, as efficiently as possible. We promote growth across each stage of our customer lifecycle by leveraging our earned channels (Email, Push, In-App, etc) as well as paid and digital channels (SEM, Paid Social, Connected TV, etc). This role will report into the Director of Media, alongside a team of channel managers.

About the Job 

• Develop and manage the roadmap for all media creative assets, ensuring advanced planning and alignment with company priorities, new messaging, and iterations of top-performing creative.
• Implement a test-and-learn methodology that unlocks scalable wins through experimentation, A/B testing, and iteration to continuously improve creative performance.
• Analyze creative results to identify scalable wins, optimization opportunities, and provide actionable insights and recommendations to media channel partners and other marketing teams. 
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product Marketing, Brand, Creative, Product, and Data teams to integrate creative strategies into broader growth initiatives.
• Own the growth creative briefing process by writing compelling, insight-driven creative briefs that align with business objectives and guide internal teams, agencies, and influencer partners to deliver high-performing assets.
• Collaborate closely with media buying and growth teams to analyze ad performance data and identify opportunities for creative testing and iteration
• Stay on top of trends and competitor strategies, identifying the next breakout format or platform to gain a competitive edge
• Review all creative assets (copy and design) for message clarity, strategic alignment, and adherence to direct response best practices
• Provide clear, actionable feedback to the creative team to ensure assets are optimized for performance on each platform
• Coordinate with leads from all paid channels to gather their creative needs and execute a rhythm of iterations of creative assets for always-on media campaigns.
• Lead weekly brainstorming session with key internal creative team members,agency partners and media strategists to develop an ongoing cadence of new creative messages and assets for testing.
• Partnering with data analytics, channel leads, and Instacart’s web team, understand best practices and top converting pages for our media campaigns. Iterate, develop new pages, and A/B test paid landing pages in coordination with key campaigns 
• Partner with Compliance and Legal teams to ensure all assets follow regulatory guidelines. Track asset progress through the approval process and deliver final approved versions to channel leads for launch.
• Use media performance and marketing analytics to uncover what’s resonating with audiences, identify creative optimization opportunities, and translate insights into new creative that drives better results across paid channels..
• Provide direction and support to internal teams and external agencies, ensuring creative assets meet performance goals and align with Instacart’s brand guidelines.
• Monitor campaign performance and deliver actionable insights to leadership on key metrics.
• Install a monthly media review mechanism that reviews channel creative performance by funnel stage at an appropriate level of detail (for relevant stakeholders), is scalable and repeatable over time, and captures durable learnings to continue to up our game and deliver top decile creative across the full funnel.
• Platform Expertise: Develop strategies tailored to the nuances of major platforms, including Facebook, Google, TikTok, YouTube, and more.

About You

Minimum Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience and subject matter expertise spanning the digital and traditional marketing funnel across brand content and awareness strategies, reach-based tactics vs. precision tactics, organic vs. paid execution, online vs. offline, in-person experiential vs. digital, on-site and offsite content, earned media and affiliate/influencer content
• Deep knowledge of direct response (DR) best practices and a track record of creating high-performing ad creative
• A strong blend of creative thinking and data-driven decision-making, with a track record of demonstrating how creative impacts campaign performance.
• Passion for identifying trends in digital and paid media and generating bold new creative ideas.
• Strong project management skills with experience delivering a high volume of creative assets across multiple channels under tight timelines.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate strategic rationale and provide constructive feedback to a creative team
• Proven track record of developing and executing successful creative and messaging strategies that deliver against core growth KPIs, with deep platform and creative best practice knowledge.
• Ability to analyze campaign performance metrics, distill insights, and translate data into actionable creative testing roadmaps.
• Experience with A/B and multivariate creative testing
• Up-to-date knowledge of industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies in the creative and growth marketing space.

Preferred Qualifications

• A natural "can-do" attitude who thrives in fast-paced environments.
• Strong commitment to embracing and leveraging AI tools 
• Understanding of digital marketing technologies, media buying strategies, and audience targeting.

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