Senior Creative Strategist - DIY Art Club

Creative Strategist - DIY Art Club (SMT Group)

Remote | $7,000–$8,000 gross per month + uncapped performance bonus

DIY Art Club / SMT Group is hiring its first in-house Creative Strategist to take ownership of paid social creative across three international paint-by-numbers brands.

SMT Group is an international arts and crafts eCommerce group founded in 2016. It operates through local brands in each market rather than a single global storefront, allowing the team to build propositions, creative and customer experiences around individual markets.

Today, the group has:

• More than five million customers across 20+ countries.

• Over 150,000 new customers every month.

• 6 figure profitable daily Meta spend.

• More than 100 new product designs launched each week.

SMT’s ambition is to become the world’s leading eCommerce group for creative hobby products, making creativity accessible and encouraging people to spend more time creating rather than scrolling.

The business is flat, fast-moving and highly commercial. People are trusted to own their area, make decisions and remain accountable for the outcome.

You’ll be joining SMT Group, supporting across the below brands;

Schilder op Nummers - Netherlands

DIY Malen nach Zahlen - Germany

DIY Art Club - US, UK, Australia, Canada and France

The Role

The Creative Strategist will own the in-house creative running across SMT Group’s three paint-by-numbers brands.

This is a senior, commercially important appointment within a group approaching 9 figure revenue and spending 6 figures a day on Meta, profitably.

That level of spend has been managed without a dedicated internal Creative Strategist. The founders, internal team and external agencies have built a successful operation, but there is significant untapped potential in how creative concepts are identified, produced, tested and scaled.

The person joining will be given access to the data, customer research, budget and production resource required to make a material impact. They will not inherit a finished creative playbook. They will be expected to build it.

Meta represents approximately 85% of paid media spend and will be the primary focus of the role. At the current level of investment, creative quality is the main constraint on how far the business can increase spend while remaining profitable.

The central responsibility is finding the right creative bets.

You will go into the performance data, customer research and existing account history, identify meaningful opportunities and turn those insights into specific, testable concepts. You will then brief the production team, launch the work and use the results to determine what should be scaled, iterated or stopped.

This is not a role where somebody else provides the strategy or hands you a list of briefs. The closest description is an entrepreneur building and running their own creative department.

What you will own

• The paid social creative strategy across all three paint-by-numbers brands.

• Identifying new concepts, angles, personas and use cases from performance data and customer insight.

• Building a scalable system that moves from analysis to hypothesis, briefing, production, testing and learning.

• Establishing which angles and customer personas are commercially viable and where the business should expand.

• Using evidence to disprove weak assumptions as well as identify opportunities. Stopping an angle with clear data is considered a valuable result.

• Creating original concepts rather than relying exclusively on competitor research or recycled briefs.

• Writing clear, commercially grounded briefs for editors and designers.

• Directing a creative pod consisting of a video editor, AI video editor and designer.

• Taking responsibility for the quality and commercial performance of the pod’s output.

• Improving the volume, speed and consistency of creative testing.

• Raising the ceiling on profitable Meta spend across the group.

• Building the foundations for an internal creative strategy function as further Creative Strategists join the business.
  

What SMT Group is looking for

This is a senior appointment for somebody who has already built and scaled performance creative within a high-growth company.

You must be able to show that you have:

• Built a creative system or function rather than simply inheriting an established one.

• Worked at a meaningful level of paid media spend, where creative decisions had a measurable commercial impact.

• Developed customer personas, creative angles and use cases from scratch for another brand.

• Created original concepts and can explain which ideas were yours, how they were tested and what happened commercially.

• Strong experience with Meta advertising and direct-response creative.

• The ability to read performance data, understand what earned spend, identify why creative failed and form a testable hypothesis independently.

• Directed video editors and designers, including within a remote working environment.

• Worked professionally in English.

• The confidence to enter a large, profitable account and determine where to focus without being shown.

Experience in the following areas would be particularly valuable:

• DTC or direct-response eCommerce.

• Weekly creative and performance accountability.

• Ad copywriting and scriptwriting.

• AI-assisted creative production.

• Running creative across multiple international markets, particularly the Netherlands, Germany and English-speaking territories.

Team and reporting line

You will report directly to Sil , Co-founder and Co-CEO of SMT Group.

A supporting creative pod consisting of a video editor, AI video editor and designer is currently being hired. Further Creative Strategists are expected to join within months.

The intention is to create an open, performance-led environment in which strategists can see which work is moving the account and learn from one another. The first person joining will have a genuine opportunity to establish the standard for the function and, over time, lead it.

Package and working arrangements

• Base: $7,000–$8,000 gross per month, full-time.

• Bonus: 5% of the ad spend running on creative you originated, paid from the day you join.

• Bonus potential: Uncapped and expected to exceed the base salary for somebody producing successful, scalable creative.

• Contract: SMT Group can accommodate either an employee or contractor arrangement.

• Location: Fully remote.

• Working style: High trust and output-led. SMT does not clock-watch; you own your schedule while remaining reliable to the wider team.

• Time off: Flexible and coordinated around the team and key commercial launch periods.

• Team meetings: Quarterly in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with travel arranged and paid for by SMT Group.

• Start date: As soon as possible.

Culture

SMT Group operates around four clear principles:

• Ownership over hierarchy: You are trusted to run your domain, regardless of title.

• Data over opinions: Ideas are tested, measured and improved.

• Speed through clarity: Learning from execution is more valuable than prolonged debate.

• High standards and accountability: This is a fast-paced environment with a significant amount still to be built.

This opportunity will suit somebody who wants genuine autonomy, substantial budgets and a direct connection between the quality of their thinking and the commercial result.

It will not suit somebody looking to inherit a finished playbook or wait for another person to define what should be tested.

If this sounds like you, hit apply or email Sam at View email address on aiapply.co to find out more!