About the RoleForbes Advisor is hiring a Creative Director of Paid Social to own end-to-end creative across our Health vertical, a portfolio that today includes weight loss medications, hair loss, hearing, TRT, and dating. You will concept, write, direct, and supervise editorial on the paid social and native creative that drives acquisition for Forbes and its partners, and you will lead a pod of creatives doing the same. This is a direct-response storyteller's role layered with creative management responsibility.
The role reports into the VP Creative and partners with our Paid Social and Native Buyers, who direct the spend, and vertical General Managers, who own category outcomes.
The successful candidate is a senior creative leader. You are fluent in the modern direct-response canon, comfortable in regulated health categories, and produce video and copy at performance-marketing pace without sacrificing craft. You have built and led creative teams before, and you can run a small team of senior individual contributors (creative leads and editors) and personally taking on high priority projects yourself. You move fluently across content modes (remote UGC, in-studio and on-location shoots, AI-generated content) and pick the right mode for pipeline needs. Above all, you are equally at home concepting on a page, directing on set, supervising an edit, and reviewing your team's work with sharp, useful notes.
We are a human-led shop that uses AI to accelerate output without diluting craft, and you will be expected to operate that way from day one. You can articulate where AI sharpens video storytelling and where it weakens it. In short, AI fluency is a baseline expectation. You already use it to improve the quality and efficiency of your work.
RESPONSIBILITIES:- Own end-to-end creative for the Health vertical: concept, copy, direction, post, and the operating system(s) that produces it.
- Lead the Health creative pod (Creative Leads, editors, producers). Hire, develop, and raise the bar across the team. Partner with the VP Creative on org design as the team grows.
- Concept new storytelling angles and write or supervise scripts from blank page to final cut across paid social and native video. Stay hands-on for hero or category-defining work.
- Produce across the full range of content modes the vertical demands: remote UGC, in-studio and on-location shoots, and AI-generated content. Match production mode to pipeline needs.
- Direct documentary-style, on-camera interviews with doctors, telehealth providers, patients, and UGC creators. Coach others on the team to direct interviews to the same bar.
- Collaborate with editors from pre-production through delivery. Own the cut on hero work, supervise the rest.
- Analyze performance data and use it to drive incremental and step-change creative optimizations that scale.
- Work fluently inside compliance rails (FDA-style health claims, regulated category guardrails, partner overlays). Keep persuasion and compliance aligned rather than in tension.
- Provide regular updates on creative performance, hiring, and craft initiatives to the Creative leadership team and to Health vertical stakeholders.
- Available to travel to locations to film, gather footage, and conduct interviews.
REQUIREMENTS:- 10+ years of direct-response creative experience in performance-driven environments (supplements, health, telehealth or comparable), with at least 3 years in a creative management role.
- Demonstrated experience leading and growing a creative team of 5+ individual contributors across writing, directing, and post.
- Portfolio of video ads with clear performance attribution. We want to see the actual work and hear the actual results, including work your team produced under your direction.
- Mastery of direct-response narrative architecture: hook, problem, mechanism, proof, transition, offer, and CTA. Working command of the modern direct-response canon.
- AI-augmented creative fluency. Regular use of AI tools across ideation, scripting, and post.
- Production fluency across multiple content modes: remote UGC at volume, in-person studio and location shoots, and AI-generated or AI-assisted content. You can pick the right mode for the brief.
- Strong on-set craft. You can run a shoot yourself, direct non-actor talent, and hold the bar from concept through final cut.
- Editorial voice fluency. You can direct an interview that feels like a real conversation and shape a story that feels like a story, not a sales letter shot on camera.
- Demonstrated speed and volume in performance marketing environments. Comfortable shipping multiple cuts and tests a week across multiple categories and iterating from data.
- Comfort working inside compliance rails (FDA-style health claims, regulated health category language, partner brand guardrails).
- Strong collaboration skills across Creative, Buying, vertical GMs, Editorial, Brand, and Legal.
- Self-starter with an entrepreneurial mindset, comfortable in a start-up style operating environment.
- Excellent communication and organizational skills.
STRONG PLUSES:- Direct experience with GLP-1, weight loss, hair loss, telehealth, or comparable regulated health DR categories.
- Quiz funnel and branching-narrative video experience.
- Familiarity with the publisher and native-ad ecosystem (Outbrain, Taboola, sponsored content).
- Comfort reading performance dashboards (Looker, Tableau, in-platform reporting).
- Experience building reusable AI workflows for creative production: templates, Claude Projects or custom GPTs, prompt libraries, or agentic tooling that compounds team output without diluting craft.
- Screenwriting or long-form visual storytelling background.
