Director of Creative Strategy

Kikoff: The Fintech Powering Financial Security at Scale Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company on a mission to empower everyone to achieve financial security. With record revenue growth in 2025 and a unicorn valuation, we've built a suite of products that help millions of people build credit, access liquidity, and save money. We're scaling fast. Join us if you want to build something meaningful and help millions of people move forward financially. Why Kikoff: This is a consumer fintech startup, and you will be working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products. We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships. Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact. About the Role Kikoff is looking for a Director of Creative Strategy to lead the strategic direction of our performance creative and develop the team behind it. Reporting to the Senior Director of Brand & Creative, you’ll connect consumer needs, business priorities, and performance insights to a clear creative strategy that drives acquisition and conversion. With a primary focus on paid social, you’ll establish a structured learning agenda, broaden the messages and formats we explore, and ensure individual tests contribute to a deeper understanding of what motivates our customers. You’ll also guide strategy across TV and creator content, partnering closely with Growth, our Creative Director, and production leads. You’ll manage and coach our creative strategy and copy team, setting direction and strengthening their thinking while they lead individual concept development, and writing. You’re a structured thinker, thoughtful creative partner, and strong people leader who can translate the big picture into clear priorities and better creative decisions. What you’ll do Creative strategy and messaging • Own performance creative strategy across our product portfolio, with a primary focus on paid social, translating business priorities and brand positioning into clear audiences, consumer needs, value propositions, and messaging priorities. • Build a deliberate mix of creative approaches across messages, formats, and channels, balancing iteration on proven work with exploration of new opportunities. • Ground strategic direction in consumer research, customer feedback, competitive insights, and performance learnings, ensuring creative addresses meaningful motivations and barriers to conversion. • Establish messaging frameworks and briefing standards that give the team clear direction and room to develop compelling concepts. • Guide concept selection and provide critical feedback on ideas, scripts, and copy, strengthening the connection between consumer insight, product benefit, and action. • Partner with the Creative Director to connect strategy with effective execution, and guide TV messaging and strategic priorities through the team members leading concept development and writing. Learning agenda and continuous improvement • Set and maintain accountability for the creative learning agenda in partnership with Growth, defining the questions and hypotheses that will most improve our understanding of what drives conversion. • Guide the team in translating that agenda into testing roadmaps, briefs, and concepts, ensuring individual tests contribute to broader learning. • Oversee the team’s synthesis of results and preparation of learning reviews and quarterly reporting, challenging conclusions and ensuring recommendations are supported by the evidence. • Partner with Growth to interpret broader performance patterns and determine their implications for creative priorities, messaging, and invest