Group Director, Creator & Influencer

VML, part of WPP, is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and human-first, award-winning work for blue chip client partners including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's. The agency is recognized by the Forrester Wave™ Reports, as a Leader among Marketing Creative and Content Service Providers, Commerce Services, Global Digital Experience Services, Global Marketing Services, and, most recently, Marketing Measurement & Optimization. In addition, VML’s specialist health network, VML Health, is one of the world’s largest and most awarded health agencies. VML’s global network is powered by 26,000 talented people across 55+ markets, with principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney.

About the role

The Group Director, Creator & Influencer will be a senior leader within VML’s growing creator and influencer marketing capability. This person will help translate VML’s creator vision into repeatable client strategy, operational excellence, and high-quality delivery across North American accounts, with connectivity to global and WPP partner teams as needed. They will be both a strategic advisor and hands-on operator — someone who can shape a client’s creator approach, guide cross-functional teams, strengthen ways of working, and ensure creator programs are built to drive measurable business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of creator and influencer strategies for major North American clients, including campaign-based, always-on, ambassador, UGC, subject matter expert, social commerce, and performance-led creator programs.

• Translate client business objectives into clear creator roles, audience strategies, platform approaches, content pillars, KPIs, creator network designs, and activation plans.

• Oversee end-to-end creator and influencer program delivery, ensuring work is strategically grounded, operationally consistent, and delivered to VML standards.

• Guide teams through creator sourcing, vetting, outreach, negotiation, contracting, briefing, content development, approvals, publishing, paid amplification, reporting, and optimization.

• Partner closely with Business Affairs, Legal, Finance, Data, Media, Creative, Strategy, Client Engagement, and Delivery teams to ensure influencer work is properly scoped, staffed, governed, and executed.

• Serve as a trusted senior advisor to clients on creator and influencer marketing, helping them understand the strategic role of creators across brand, social, content, media, commerce, and community.

• Identify growth opportunities within existing client relationships and help shape proposals, scopes, staffing plans, RFP responses, pitch narratives, and strategic recommendations.

• Partner with the Managing Director to strengthen VML’s creator and influencer capability, with a focus on quality, consistency, talent development, and scalable delivery.

• Manage, coach, and develop team members, helping them build deeper fluency in creator strategy, platform behavior, creator evaluation, campaign operations, negotiation, measurement, and client leadership.

• Collaborate with VML, WPP, and specialist partner agencies where needed to deliver the right solution for each client, while ensuring partners are integrated into VML-led strategy, process, governance, and quality standards.

Skills & Experience

• 10+ years of experience in social, influencer, creator marketing, content, digital, or integrated marketing, with deep specialization in creator and influencer strategy.

• Proven experience leading complex creator and influencer programs for enterprise clients, ideally across multiple brands, categories, markets, or business units.

• Strong understanding of the full creator marketing lifecycle, including strategy, creator network design, sourcing, vetting, negotiation, contracting, briefing, content development, approvals, publishing, paid amplification, reporting, and optimization.

• Ability to connect creator strategy to broader brand, social, media, commerce, content, and customer experience objectives.

• Experience developing creator playbooks, operating models, strategic frameworks, POVs, RFP responses, client presentations, and measurement narratives.

• Practical understanding of creator negotiations, usage rights, exclusivity, compensation models, contracting workflows, FTC disclosure requirements, brand safety, and compliance considerations.

• Proven ability to coach, manage, and develop direct reports and cross-functional teams.

• Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex creator marketing topics for senior clients and internal stakeholders.

• Commercial mindset with experience identifying growth opportunities, shaping scopes, supporting pitches, and contributing to agency revenue growth.

• Builder mentality: comfortable creating structure in ambiguity, improving processes, and helping scale a fast-growing agency capability.

The base salary range for this position at the time of this posting is indicated below. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications. We offer a competitive benefits package, click WPP Benefits for more details.

_ $100,000—$230,000 USD

We believe the best work happens when we’re together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That’s why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

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