Hiring Creative Leaders: Lessons From Grey London

Most startups treat creative leadership as a “later” problem. Then they hit the classic scale-up wall: performance marketing gets more expensive, brand recall stalls, and every new channel feels like starting from zero.

That’s why a small people-move in UK advertising is worth paying attention to. Grey London has appointed two executive creative directors (ECDs), the first under chief creative officer Helen Rhodes (as reported by Campaign). On the surface it’s an agency staffing update. Underneath, it’s a clear signal about how serious organisations are getting about creative direction as a growth lever.

This post is part of our Technology, Innovation & Digital Economy series, where we look at what strengthens the UK’s innovation-led growth. Creative leadership might not sound like “digital economy” on paper—but in practice, it’s how tech businesses turn product advantages into stories people remember, trust, and buy.

Why creative leadership matters more in 2026

Answer first: In 2026, creative leadership is a growth constraint because attention is scarce, paid channels are saturated, and AI-generated content has raised the baseline while lowering differentiation.

Two forces are colliding in UK startup marketing right now:

1. Paid acquisition is harder to scale predictably. CPM volatility, cookie loss, and platform automation mean you can’t “spreadsheet” your way to brand love.
2. Content supply is infinite. Generative tools make it easy to produce assets, but not easy to produce meaning. The output is plentiful; the signal is rare.

An ECD’s job—whether in an agency or an in-house team—is to make sure your creative work isn’t just “more content”. It’s distinctive, strategically aligned creative that compounds over time.

A practical rule: if your ads can be swapped with a competitor’s logo and still make sense, you don’t have a creative strategy—you have a media strategy.

What Grey London’s ECD appointments signal (and how to read it)

Answer first: Adding senior creative leadership is usually a response to complexity—more clients, more channels, more brand systems—and a desire to raise the quality bar without slowing delivery.

The Campaign item notes these are the first ECD appointments under Helen Rhodes. That detail matters. New top creative leadership often triggers three moves in sequence:

1) Clarifying “what good looks like”

When a new CCO steps in, the first issue is rarely talent. It’s inconsistency. Different teams define “good” differently. ECDs help standardise:

• Creative principles (tone, humour, edge, restraint)
• Craft expectations (writing, design, film, social)
• Decision-making (who approves what, and why)

Startups feel this too, especially after a growth spurt. One product launch goes well, then suddenly every team wants a campaign, and the brand becomes a patchwork.

2) Building a leadership layer that scales

Adding ECDs is also about span of control. One creative leader can’t personally steer everything once output expands across:

• Always-on paid social
• Creator partnerships
• Product marketing launches
• Employer brand (still marketing, whether you call it that or not)
• New formats (short-form video, podcasts, experiential)

A leadership layer keeps quality high while maintaining speed.

3) Rebalancing “innovation” with “effectiveness”

The best creative leadership doesn’t chase novelty for its own sake. It connects the creative idea to measurable outcomes: recall, consideration, conversion, retention.

For UK startups, this is the sweet spot: distinctive work that still respects unit economics.

What a successful ECD-style hire looks like in a startup

Answer first: A startup “ECD equivalent” succeeds when they can translate strategy into a repeatable creative system—without turning the team into a slow, approval-heavy machine.

You might not hire someone with the title “ECD”. But you will eventually need someone who plays that role. I’ve found the key is focusing on outputs rather than pedigree.

The 5 outcomes you should expect in 90 days

A strong creative leader should produce visible improvements quickly. In a growth-stage startup, look for:

1. A sharper brand narrative (1–2 pages, not a 40-slide manifesto)
2. A creative territory you can execute across channels (not just a tagline)
3. A better briefing process (clear inputs, fewer “vibes”)
4. A repeatable feedback loop (what’s subjective vs what’s strategic)
5. Faster iteration because the team knows what they’re aiming for

If you don’t see movement on at least three of these, you didn’t hire “creative leadership”—you hired “senior hands”.

The non-obvious skill: creative judgment under constraints

Startups don’t need creative leaders who can only do their best work with:

• unlimited time
• a full production crew
• perfect data
• multiple agency partners

They need someone who can make trade-offs and still protect the brand.

A good interview prompt:

• “Show me a campaign you shipped in two weeks. What did you cut, what did you protect, and what did you measure?”

Building a creative team that scales with your startup

Answer first: Scaling creative output requires roles, process, and measurement that match your stage—otherwise you get either chaos or bureaucracy.

Here’s a simple model that maps well to UK scaleups in the digital economy.

Stage 1 (Seed–Series A): One creative owner, tight loop

At this stage, you’re proving messaging and finding channels that work.

• One creative lead (could be a designer, content lead, or founding marketer)
• Direct line to founders
• Weekly shipping cadence

Watch-out: founders as permanent creative directors. It works until it doesn’t.

Stage 2 (Series A–B): Add creative direction + production capacity

This is the inflection point. You’re now running multiple campaigns and launches.

• Add a creative director / head of brand
• Add production support (content creator, motion, freelance bench)
• Build a “minimum viable brand system” (templates + rules)

Watch-out: hiring three juniors instead of one experienced leader. You get volume, not clarity.

Stage 3 (Series B+): ECD-style leadership layer

Now the organisation needs a creative function that can handle complexity.

• Senior creative direction (ECD-equivalent)
• Clear ownership between brand, product marketing, and growth
• A test-and-learn framework for creative, not just targeting

Watch-out: approval chains that slow shipping. Creative leadership should remove friction, not add it.

The metrics creative leaders should own (yes, metrics)

Answer first: Creative leadership should be accountable to business outcomes through a small set of brand-and-demand metrics that connect to revenue.

One reason startups delay creative leadership is fear of “unmeasurable brand work”. That’s outdated. You can measure brand without pretending it’s performance marketing.

A sensible scorecard:

• Creative effectiveness in paid: thumb-stopping rate, hook retention, cost per qualified visit, creative fatigue rate
• Brand demand: branded search volume trend, direct traffic trend, share of search (where available)
• Message comprehension: landing-page message testing, sales call win/loss notes tagged by theme
• Conversion quality: activation rate, trial-to-paid, churn cohorts by acquisition creative

If you’re only looking at ROAS, you’ll optimise toward short-term sameness. If you’re only looking at “awareness”, you’ll drift into vanity.

The goal is simple: creative that people remember, tied to metrics that finance respects.

Common mistakes when startups try to “copy the agency model”

Answer first: The biggest mistake is importing titles and hierarchies without importing the decision rights and operating rhythm that make them work.

Grey London can appoint two ECDs because the agency environment has:

• clear client briefs
• defined deliverables
• established craft disciplines
• a culture of critique

Startups often don’t. So avoid these traps:

1. Hiring a big-name creative leader with no mandate. If founders won’t let go of final say, the role becomes performative.
2. Treating creative as a service desk. “Can you make this look nicer?” isn’t a strategy.
3. Briefing by committee. If five stakeholders own the brief, nobody owns the outcome.
4. Measuring only what’s easy. Clicks are easy. Memory is harder—but it’s what compounds.

What to do next if you’re scaling marketing in the UK

Answer first: Decide whether your bottleneck is strategy, creative direction, or production—and hire for the bottleneck, not the job title.

A quick self-check you can run this week:

• If your team argues about what the brand stands for, you need strategic brand clarity.
• If you know the strategy but the work looks inconsistent, you need creative direction.
• If the ideas are strong but shipping is slow, you need production capacity.

Grey London’s move is a reminder that serious organisations invest in leadership layers to protect quality at scale. For UK startups competing in the technology and digital services economy, this isn’t about winning awards. It’s about building distinctive brand assets that reduce paid dependency and increase trust.

If you had to make one change in Q1 2026: would you rather ship 30% more content, or ship the same volume with a creative standard people actually recognise?