Brave Bison
Performance Director
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Role Overview
Brave Bison Performance & Commerce is looking for a Performance Director to lead the strategy, planning, and activation for some of our flagship accounts.
This is a high-visibility, high-impact role for someone who lives and breathes performance media, understands how modern consumers actually behave, and can translate that into cross-channel strategies that punch above weight. You'll bring depth in Paid Search, Paid Social, and Programmatic Display, paired with a test-and-learn mindset and a passion for building future-fit performance ecosystems.
You'll sit at the heart of one of the fastest-growing agency groups in the UK, partnering directly with senior client stakeholders and leading a team of talented specialists across channels and markets. You'll also play an active role in shaping Brave Bison's paid media proposition - contributing to new business, thought leadership and the agency's wider growth.
If you love solving complex performance problems and pushing brands forward through digital excellence, this role is for you.
Key Responsibilities
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Lead Performance Strategy
- Own the vision and execution of performance media strategy across Paid Search, Paid Social, Display, and emerging channels.
- Partner closely with senior stakeholders to shape seasonal plans, commercial responses, product-launch frameworks, and full-funnel thinking.
- Translate brand moments, athlete partnerships, and product priorities into data-driven, audience-first media plans that drive measurable outcomes.
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Cross-Channel Planning & Innovation
- Build performance frameworks that link new audiences through traffic focused campaigns with lower-funnel conversion and retention.
- Create integrated planning approaches that combine media, creative, retail, and commerce signals.
- Stay ahead of platform innovation and bring Brave Bison-level energy to identifying new opportunities, formats, partnerships, and betas.
- Champion AI adoption across the department - identifying where automation, predictive tooling, and AI-enabled optimisation can meaningfully improve performance and efficiency.
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Paid Search, Social & Display Excellence
- Provide senior technical leadership across Google Ads, SA360, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, DV360, and other key platforms.
- Ensure world-class campaign architecture, optimisation routines, automation strategies, and measurement frameworks.
- Partner with analytics and creative teams to continually improve performance through audience segmentation, dynamic creative, and predictive modelling.
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Senior Client Leadership
- Act as the primary performance partner - seen as a genuine extension of clients senior marketing leadership.
- Lead strategic presentations, quarterly business reviews, performance deep dives, and annual planning cycles.
- Deliver clear, story-driven insights that cut through complexity and focus on commercial impact - with a particular emphasis on ROI storytelling that connects media activity to business outcomes.
- Proactively unlock new opportunities to strengthen performance engines.
- Balance assertiveness and diplomacy to constructively challenge client thinking where needed, driving better outcomes through structured problem-solving and well-evidenced recommendations.
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Team Leadership & Development
- Lead, inspire, and challenge a multidisciplinary team of search, social, and programmatic experts.
- Foster a culture built on curiosity, innovation, experimentation, and operational excellence.
- Support learning pathways, certifications, platform training, and ongoing career development.
- Drive a growth mindset across the team - modelling resilience, encouraging proactive development, and holding yourself and others accountable for continuous improvement.
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Measurement, Insight & Performance Growth
- Elevate measurement frameworks that integrate platform data, attribution, incrementality testing, and business outcomes.
- Work closely with analytics to build dashboards, reporting suites, and predictive tools.
- Champion test-and-learn programmes across markets, continually raising the performance bar.
- Own portfolio-level forecasting and oversee QA frameworks to ensure budgets, pacing, and quality standards are consistently airtight across all markets.
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Business Development & Thought Leadership
- Contribute to Brave Bison's paid media new business strategy - supporting pitches, crafting compelling narratives, and coordinating cross-functional input to help win work.
- Represent the agency externally through thought leadership, industry events, and marketing activity that reinforces Brave Bison's performance credentials.
Skills & Experience Required
Essential
- 7–10+ years' experience in performance media with deep specialism in Paid Search, Paid Social, and Programmatic Display.
- Proven track record leading large or global accounts.
- Highly confident working with senior marketing stakeholders.
- Strong analytical capability and ability to convert data into commercially relevant insights.
- Exceptional communication and storytelling skills with a bias for clarity and impact.
- Experience managing and growing high-performing teams.
- Confident constructively challenging senior stakeholders and driving structured problem-solving across client and agency teams.
- Demonstrable experience championing AI adoption and automation within performance media.
Expert understanding of:
- Google Ads, SA360, Microsoft Ads
- Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn
- DV360 or similar DSPs
- GA4, tracking infrastructure, attribution models
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Desirable
- Experience in global or multi-market media structures.
- Familiarity with retail media, product feed optimisation, and commerce platforms.
- Exposure to predictive modelling or advanced automation tools.
- Experience developing performance-creative frameworks.
- Involvement in new business pitches or agency thought leadership activity.
What Makes This Role Special
- You'll lead performance strategy for some of the world's most iconic brands.
- You'll shape the future of performance marketing, partnering at the highest levels.
- You'll be part of a brave, independent, fast-moving agency group that empowers people to experiment, challenge norms, and create standout work.
What you’ll get
Our people make us who we are, so to make sure we attract and retain the best and brightest in the industry, we offer an attractive benefits package.
But not only that, we are the UK’s first carbon neutral agency (a status we have held since 2018), with a serious commitment to monitoring and reducing the impact our work has on the planet across three core sustainability pillars of Greenhouse Gases, Waste & Recycling and Sustainable Consumption.
Then there’s a whole host of benefits – from discounted gym memberships and free eye tests to an employee pension scheme and enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption package. Here’s a snapshot of just some of the benefits we think you might also like:
- Dynamic working: To keep that work-life harmony in check, we're flexible on where and when you work
- Private medical insurance: To keep you fighting fit and give you and your family peace of mind.
- Income protection: We know it feels good to be covered, just in case.
- Calm Subscription: Now more than ever, it’s important to mind your mind!
- 25 days annual leave: This increases to 27 days after three years with us, and then increases every subsequent year up to a max. of 30 days
- Christmas closure: No need to save holiday days for the Christmas closure period. It's on us!
- Birthdays off: One extra day to celebrate your big day
- Summer hours: Between June and Aug we finish at 15.00 every Friday.
- Online coaching and mental health support: Unlimited via OpenUp
- Remote Working: Work abroad for up to one month a year.
- Performance & Salary: Reviewed twice a year for everyone.
Finally, we’re proud and committed to being an equal opportunity workplace, providing equal opportunities for all and treating all existing employees and all job applicants in the same way, regardless of their age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity status and marital & civil partnership status.
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