Everyone is hiring a creative strategist right now.
Job boards. My DMs. My strategists' DMs. All of it.
And the brands that actually land a good one are paying serious money to keep them.
Here's the part most people skip past.
A few years back you targeted ads through Meta. You narrowed the audience, picked your placements, and the media buyer decided who saw what. All the weight sat with them.
That's gone.
Meta reads the creative now. The creative decides who gets served. Which means the person making the ad is the person choosing the audience.
That's the creative strategist. That's why the role exploded, and why media buying agencies have been quietly turning themselves into creative agencies for two years.
I've hired strategists. I've worked as one. And I still review every single piece of creative that leaves Fraggell, founder or not, because the role carries that much weight.
So I made a video on what the job actually is in 2026 and what I look for when I'm hiring.
Some of it will annoy people:
→ Creative strategists don't make ads. They decide what ads get made. Most brands have this backwards and it's costing them a strategist every 8 months.
→ The skills that paid well in 2023 mostly don't anymore. AI took a big bite out of them. What's left is worth more, not less.
→ There's one skill I rate above data literacy that almost nobody hires for. Everyone gets this wrong because they promote media buyers into the role.
→ Brand vs freelance vs agency, with actual numbers on each. Including the one that can pay nothing some months.
→ How to build a portfolio when you have no clients. It's not comfortable advice. It's how I did it.
If you're hiring a strategist, treat it as the checklist.
If you want to be one, it's the honest version of the path.
Fraser
