Senior Strategist, Performance Creative at Dentsu · Chicago…

Senior Strategist, Performance Creative

Location: Chicago - N. State

Job Description:

Dentsu Creative US is comprised of audacious thinkers and award-winning collaborators across the United States who blend local knowledge with global expertise.

Choosing substance over stunts, our Modern Creative mandate is about unlocking sustained growth and holistic impact for brands in ways that Create Culture, Change Society and Invent the Future. We do it daily for notable brands.

Our borderless approach allows us to assemble the best talent around each brief, tapping into the expertise of the 9,000+ people in Dentsu international's global creative network. This integrated model also allows our talent to learn about and explore the breadth of career possibilities within Dentsu Creative.

Job Description

The Senior Strategist, Performance Creative sits at the intersection of data, creativity, media, and modern performance marketing. This person turns complex information into clear, actionable strategy and helps teams understand not only what is working, but why it is working and what to do next. Working across Strategy, Creative, Media, Analytics, Client Services, and Technology, the Senior Strategist independently develops client-ready briefs, testing plans, learning agendas, performance narratives, and strategic recommendations. They are expected to formulate original insights, confidently present their thinking, and build trusted relationships with clients and internal partners.

What success looks like: The Senior Strategist brings clarity to complexity, originates insights that create business value, and converts performance signals into practical direction for briefs, creative development, testing, and optimization.

Responsibilities

• Compile, analyze, and present relevant primary and secondary research with limited direction.

• Formulate clear hypotheses and recommend appropriate testing methods, including A/B, multivariate, sequential, or platform-specific approaches as appropriate.

• Develop creative test plans and learning agendas that connect audience, message, visual, format, channel, and business objectives.

• Analyze test and always-on campaign results, identify initial patterns and implications, and translate findings into recommended next actions.

• Partner with Media and Analytics to align test design, campaign setup, measurement, and interpretation.

• Synthesize performance data, audience intelligence, cultural signals, category context, competitive activity, and channel behavior to identify meaningful patterns.

• Develop actionable insights and confidently present them to clients and internal teams.

• Originate insights that improve creative relevance, campaign effectiveness, customer experience, or business value.

• Distinguish observations from insights and connect findings to a clear implication for strategy, creative, media, or measurement.

• Turn complex or unstructured inputs into clear, compelling, and error-free client deliverables.

• Lead the development of creative briefs, performance narratives, content and messaging frameworks, audience and journey strategies, testing roadmaps, and optimization recommendations.

• Tell a persuasive story with data, making the strategic implication and recommended action easy to understand.

• Ensure creative strategy reflects audience needs, channel context, journey stage, brand considerations, and measurable business goals.

• Maintain strategic continuity from briefing through creative development, activation, measurement, and iteration.

• Bring working knowledge of performance marketing channels, including social, display, video, programmatic, search, CRM, and emerging formats.

• Engage clients confidently and add value to conversations about creative effectiveness, audience behavior, testing, optimization, and platform trends.

• Stay current on research tools, AI-enabled workflows, DCO and creative technology platforms, measurement practices, and changes in channel behavior.

• Apply expertise to real client challenges while knowing when to involve specialists across Media, Analytics, Technology, UX, and Customer Strategy.

• Participate confidently in structured and unstructured conversations about the client’s business, customers, category, and marketing ecosystem.

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with clients beyond individual assignments.

• Act as a connector and integrator across disciplines, creating shared clarity on the problem, hypothesis, strategic direction, and next step.

• Proactively identify opportunities to strengthen the work, improve the process, or expand the value of Performance Creative Strategy.

• Support the development of junior strategists through clear feedback, knowledge sharing, and collaborative working practices.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional experience in performance marketing, creative strategy, digital strategy, media, audience strategy, analytics, or a related field.

• Demonstrated ability to develop and present client-ready strategic deliverables with limited supervision.

• Experience turning research and campaign data into actionable insights, hypotheses, and recommendations.

• Working knowledge of performance channels and the role creative plays across the customer journey and conversion funnel.

• Strong written, verbal, analytical, storytelling, and presentation skills.

• Ability to manage multiple workstreams while maintaining accuracy, organization, and attention to detail.

• Comfort collaborating across Creative, Media, Analytics, Customer Strategy, Client Services, UX, Technology, and Production.

• Experience with research tools and methodologies, social listening, third-party audience data, creative analytics, or experimentation platforms.

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, communications, business, analytics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Experience

• Experience developing creative test-and-learn roadmaps, learning agendas, or optimization frameworks.

• Familiarity with Dynamic Creative Optimization, creative intelligence platforms, ad servers, or content activation technology.

• Experience working across multiple consumer touchpoints and translating strategy by audience, channel, journey stage, and message role.

• Experience supporting pitches, organic growth opportunities, or thought leadership.
  

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Additional Information

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office.

The annual salary range for this position is $85,000 - $115,000. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.

Benefits available with this position include:

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance,

• Life insurance,

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance,

• 401k,

• Flexible paid time off,

• At least 15 paid holidays per year,

• Paid sick and safe leave, and

• Paid parental leave.

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com.

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.

Location:

Chicago - N. State

Brand:

Dentsu Creative

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent