Creative Strategy Manager – Creator Content (all genders)

Role: Creative Strategist - Creator & Entertainment Content (individual contributor). You set the strategy for creator content across offsite and onsite, acting as the expert counterpart for in-house creators and external agencies. You shape the strategic vision behind large-scale campaigns, O&O events, partnerships, and brand activations, translating it into clear creative direction that leaves room for creators' authentic voice. Your work builds recognisable creator profiles, establishes repeatable entertainment formats, and turns offsite attention into onsite results, guiding users from discovery on social platforms through to inspiration, engagement, and conversion on Zalando. Responsibilities: - Set the strategic and creative direction for creator content across offsite and onsite, defining what creators make, why, and how it ladders up to brand and commercial goals. - Shape Zalando's onsite creator formats with Product teams, adapting the content vision as new creator surfaces launch. - Develop recurring content concepts (series, franchises, formats) that build creator fame and bring audiences back. - Align cross-functional stakeholders (Creator Management, Social Media, Go-To-Market Marketing, local market teams, external agencies) behind one briefing approach. - Own the standards, templates, and workflows for a scalable briefing system that turns strategy into creator-ready briefs. - Act as creative sparring partner for internal stakeholders and creators, elevating ideas to distinctive, culturally relevant content concepts. - Codify winning content formats into structural creative guidance and repeatable format playbooks. - Define impact measurement across the offsite-to-onsite journey, connecting engagement signals to consideration and conversion. - Assess new format opportunities against audience needs, platform trends, and strategic fit. - Partner with content, live, and social teams to strengthen the overall content portfolio. - Treat offsite-to-onsite as the operating spine of creator content, mapping and refining how formats play across the customer journey. - Identify gaps and hand-off moments where content can move audiences from watching to shopping. - Collaborate with Product, Data & Analytics, and CRM teams to ensure creator content is placed, formatted, and sequenced to perform. - Ground briefs and format decisions in data: audience insights, platform analytics, content performance, and cultural trend signals. - Design and run structured content tests to validate creative approaches and turn learnings into sharper briefs and playbooks. - Build and maintain creative guidelines, format playbooks, and best-practice examples. Qualifications: - 5+ years of relevant experience in creative strategy, content strategy, social/creator marketing, or a creative agency environment, ideally with hands-on exposure to creator or influencer content. - Proven track record of setting creative or content direction at brand, platform, or agency level. - Experience writing briefs that creative people love working from. - Social-first native with sharp instinct for what performs on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. - Ability to think in journeys and funnels, understanding how content works in discovery, consideration, and conversion contexts. - Comfortable with data, reading content and audience analytics, framing hypotheses, and turning test results into creative decisions. - Proven track record of leading complex, cross-functional projects independently and steering external creative or influencer agencies. - Articulate communicator and confident presenter; fluency in English required, additional languages a plus. - Growth mindset, curiosity about culture and the creator economy, and genuine passion for fashion and lifestyle content. What We Offer: - 27 days of holiday a year to start for full-time employees (+1 day for every calendar year up to 30 days) - 40% off fashion and beauty products sold and shipped by Zalando, 30% off Lounge by Zalando, discounts from external partners - Family support, including counselling and dedicated services for parents and carers - Company pension scheme - Employee shares programme - Health and wellbeing options, including Wellhub - Mental health support and coaching - Development through our training platform and biannual peer-to-peer review - 2 paid volunteering days a year