Director of Performance Creative Full Time NEW

ABOUT LLAMA NATURALS:

Llama Naturals makes whole food vitamins for kids and families that are closer to real food than candy. No synthetic fillers, no added cane sugar, no junk — just real fruit and vegetable-based nutrition parents can trust. We’re an 8-figure brand with a dominant Amazon business and a fast-growing DTC channel we’re betting the next chapter on.

THE ROLE:

Own performance creative end to end at Llama Naturals — the strategy, the system, the team, and the output. You’ll lead what people see in the feed: every concept, hook, script, UGC video, founder ad, static, and carousel that runs across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging channels. You’ll build the creative engine that turns our science and our story into ads that stop the scroll and convert at scale.

This is a leadership role with real ownership. You’ll build and manage a team of strategists, creators, editors, and designers. You’ll partner directly with the Head of Growth on what gets tested, why, and what we learn from it. And you’ll be the person responsible for making sure our creative is the reason we win — not the reason we plateau.

WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW:

We’re spending six figures a month on Meta with one proven angle carrying the account. The product is exceptional. The creative engine hasn’t caught up yet.

That’s the opportunity. You’re not optimizing an existing function — you’re building it. You’ll have a lean team, direct access to founders and the Head of Growth, AI tooling pre-wired into the workflow, and the runway to make this function as big and as influential as you can. For the right operator, this is a path to VP of Creative as we scale.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE:

First 90 days: A diversified creative portfolio in market — at least 5 distinct, validated angles beyond ingredient comparison. Founder-led content launched and iterating. A documented modular creative system (hooks, bodies, proofs, CTAs as testable units) with a weekly testing cadence the team operates from. Measurable lift in thumbstop rate, CTR, and creative-driven CVR.

First 12 months: Performance creative is a competitive advantage, not a bottleneck. We have a portfolio of 8–10 winning creative territories, a UGC creator network producing on-strategy content at velocity, a founder content engine running on a predictable cadence, and a feedback loop where creative analytics directly inform what we test next. CAC is trending down. Subscription attach is trending up. The team is bigger, sharper, and shipping more.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN:

Creative Strategy & Concepting

• Set the creative strategy for paid social across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging channels

• Build out a diversified portfolio of creative angles, hooks, and storytelling frameworks — moving us beyond a single winning concept into a system that can withstand fatigue and CPM volatility

• Develop persona-specific creative — different messages for different parent psychographics, mapped to funnel stages

• Own the weekly creative pipeline: concept volume, format mix, testing priorities, and what makes it into production

• Translate product science (whole food vitamins, phytonutrients, no added cane sugar, award-winning taste) into emotional, consumer-facing narratives

Production & Team Leadership

• Build and lead the performance creative team: Performance Creative Strategist(s), UGC Talent Manager/VA, Video Editors, and Graphic Designer(s)

• Build and manage the UGC creator network — recruiting, vetting, briefing, compensation models, and quality control

• Stand up a founder-led content production system — formats, batch filming workflows, prompter setups, b-roll strategy, and editing pipelines that make founder content sustainable and iterative

• Own production workflow end to end: brief → script → shoot → edit → QA → launch — with clear timelines, ownership, and tooling

Modular Creative System & Testing

• Build a modular creative architecture where hooks, bodies, proofs, CTAs, and visual treatments are independent, reusable, combinatorial building blocks

• Define and operate a structured creative testing methodology — variable isolation, sample size standards, decision criteria for scale/iterate/kill

• Build the asset library and tagging taxonomy so winning elements compound across the portfolio instead of disappearing into folders

• Run rapid iteration loops on winners — hook swaps, format variations, persona reframes, and refreshes that extend the life of high performers

Performance Feedback Loop

• Partner closely with the Head of Growth to read creative data and diagnose why things work — not just whether they do

• Identify winning hooks, angles, and proof structures and translate those patterns into the next round of tests

• Sunset underperformers fast and reallocate production capacity to what’s working

• Maintain a deep, evolving understanding of our customer, their objections, and the psychology behind why parents buy (or don’t buy) Llama

Subscription-Forward Creative

• Sell the subscription in the ad, not just at checkout. Build creative concepts where subscription is the hero value proposition, not a footnote

• Develop retargeting creative specifically designed to convert one-time buyers, cart abandoners, and lapsed subscribers

• Ensure every creative concept has a clear subscription CTA path, even when subscription isn’t the lead

Ad-to-Landing Page Continuity

• Treat the ad and the landing page as one persuasion sequence

• Partner with the Head of Growth on LP strategy — angle-specific and persona-specific landing experiences that complete the argument the ad starts

• Maintain congruence between ad hook, ad proof, and LP messaging so the click doesn’t break the sale

Compliance & Brand Voice

• Ensure every concept complies with Meta/TikTok/YouTube policies, FTC endorsement guidelines, and FDA rules for dietary supplement advertising

• Hold the line on Llama’s brand voice — warm, playful, credible, benefit-driven. Educational, never preachy. Confident, never condescending

• Keep the team out of fear-based comparison marketing, disease claims, and clinical/pharmaceutical language

WHAT YOU BRING:

• 5+ years in performance creative, with at least 2 years leading or directly building a creative function at a DTC brand

• Proven track record producing high-volume, test-ready performance creative at $50K–$500K+/month Meta spend

• Deep expertise in UGC production, creator management, and founder-led content systems

• Strong fluency in modular creative — you’ve built (or want to build) systems where hooks, bodies, and CTAs are independent testable variables, not bundled into monolithic ads

• Expert with hooks, scripting, storytelling, concepting, and reverse-engineering winning ads in the wild

• Analytical operator — you make creative decisions from thumbstop rates, hold rates, CTR, CVR, and CAC, not gut feel

• Strong people leader — you’ve managed strategists, creators, editors, or designers and gotten meaningful output from them

• Production-minded — you understand what it takes to shoot, edit, and ship at velocity, and you’ve built systems that make production sustainable instead of heroic

• Comfort with Meta Ads Library, TikTok Creative Center, Motion (or equivalent creative analytics), Slack, Google Drive, and Asana/Notion

• Daily, operational comfort with AI tools as workflow accelerators (Claude, Claude Cowork, and similar) — for script drafting, hook generation, copy iteration, and creative analysis

WHAT SETS YOU APART

• You’ve worked in supplement, consumables, kids, or health and wellness DTC

• You have deep experience with subscription-first commerce and know how to make subscribing feel like the obvious choice in the creative itself

• You’ve built (not inherited) a performance creative function from scratch — including the team, the workflow, and the testing system

• You’ve personally run founder-led content programs and know how to coach a smart, credible, non-trained founder into being compelling on camera

• You’ve built and managed a UGC creator network at scale and have a playbook for sourcing, briefing, and quality control

• You think in systems — modular creative, compounding asset libraries, repeatable testing loops — not just one-off concepts

• You’ve used AI tooling to accelerate creative production and have strong opinions on where it helps and where it hurts

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS:

• $150,000 – $200,000 base salary, depending on experience

• Equity compensation with meaningful upside

• Remote-first with a preference for Chicago-area candidates

• Direct access to founders, Head of Growth, and fast decision-making

• AI tooling budget — use whatever makes you and your team faster

• Benefits and bonus

• Opportunities for accelerated responsibility and advancement as we scale (path to VP of Creative for the right operator)

HOW TO APPLY:

• Send your resume and a short note (under 200 words) on the most impactful performance creative win you’ve driven at a DTC brand — what the angle or system was, what the data showed, and what you’d do differently. Bonus points if it involved a supplement or subscription-first brand, a modular creative system you built, or founder-led content you produced. Send to hr@llamanaturals.com with the subject line “Director of Performance Creative.”