Freelance Creative Strategist: Performance & UGC Ads (m/f/d)

Hi, we’re Doonails!

We’re a fast-growing beauty startup rethinking the world of manicure. With innovative products, a strong community, and a presence in our own online shop as well as at leading retail partners, we bring studio quality straight to your home: simple, fast, and stylish.

And this is exactly where YOU come in.

We’re looking for a freelance Creative Strategist who thinks in hooks and lives for performance: someone who turns insights and trends into thumb-stopping ad concepts for Meta and helps us launch TikTok Shop. Right now, all eyes are on the US market!

Your Role & Impact

As a Freelance Creative Strategist for Performance & UGC Ads, you deliver the concept from the first idea to a crisp, ready-to-produce brief. Your hooks set the direction for every edit that follows. Your impact is direct and measurable:

• Increase testing volume: More well-thought-out concepts equal more shots at Level-1 and Level-2 hits in our hit-rate framework.
• Boost performance: You lift our thumb-stop rate through strategically grounded, more varied hooks and actively counter the current ad fatigue on Meta.
• Empower & Inspire the team: You give our existing Creative Strategy team room to breathe by taking briefing volume off their plate, while actively bringing fresh perspectives and new impulses to the table to inspire the whole crew.
• Optimize production: Your clear, actionable briefs shorten the feedback and production cycle with our video editors.
• Drive US expansion: You help us scale in the US and launch TikTok Shop (US + DE) with native concepts that have real strategic depth.

Your Core Responsibilities

Concepting

• You develop ad concepts with strong, varied hooks for performance/UGC ads (Meta + TikTok Shop).

Briefing

• You write the creative briefs (Notion) for our video editors, usually 1-3 (in some cases 4-5) script variants with hook + body per project. Expect around 3-5 briefs per week, trending upward.

Feedback

• You review finished edits and give concrete, actionable feedback via Frame (usually 2 feedback loops) before approval/upload.

Naming & Compliance

• You create the final ad namings yourself following the Doonails naming table and run the upload check on finished ads.

Performance Analysis

• You evaluate running and completed ads (hit-rate framework, Klar attribution) to pull fresh learnings into new concepts.

Trend & Competitor Research

• You track formats, trends, and competitor ads as input for new concepts.

Proactive Input & Fresh Angles

• You bring your own strategic ideas to lift performance-not just working through orders. We want you to challenge the status quo and actively share fresh input and perspectives with our in-house team.

What You'll Bring to the Table

• US Market Expertise: All eyes are on the US! You are ideally based in the United States or are heavily immersed and experienced in the US market, its consumer behavior, and pop culture.
• Proven Track Record: Experience as a Creative Strategist / Performance Marketer in ad concepting for Meta, ideally also TikTok / TikTok Shop.
• Platform Expertise: A strong sense for hook psychology, thumb-stop rate, and performance-marketing mechanics.
• Copy × Visual Thinking: You know a hook is only half the thumb-stop-you pair every line with a visual idea (shot, transition, on-screen text) and brief both together.
• Briefing Skills: Very strong writing skills to create clear, concretely actionable creative briefs for video editors.
• Video Ad QA: Experience giving constructive, specific feedback on finished video ads.
• Ownership & Inspiration: An independent, proactive way of working with strategic thinking and the drive to inspire others.
• Data Affinity: You can read ad performance data and translate it into new, better concepts.
• Communication: Native or highly fluent English is an absolute must. German is a strong plus, but our main priority is the US market.

What We Offer

• Competitive Pay: Tailored to your qualifications and experience.
• Performance Bonus: A performance bonus on winning ads!
• Pro Tool Stack: You won't be researching blind-Foreplay, Euka, and our in-house ad-intelligence and analytics tools are ready for you from day one.
• Creator Pool on Demand: Established UGC creators ready to shoot custom footage for your concepts - brief it, and it gets filmed.
• True Ownership: A role with a high degree of trust and room to shape things your way.
• Growth Potential: Take on responsibility and bring your ideas directly to the table.