Youth-Focused Full Service Agency
Head of Department Hires
The Brief
Originally rooted in digital and social, this agency has won pitches against their larger counterparts for their strong understanding of Gen Z and Millennial culture. Based out of East London, they are an agency covering culture, insights and content with a strong lean towards centric to women and marginalised voices.
Throughout the years we have worked to place several senior hires, the most recent placements include sourcing their CEO, Strategy Director, and Director of Talent + Community.
CEO
With the Founder stepping into a more overarching Creative role, the time came for The Digital Fairy’s first CEO to take the business and develop them further into a fine-tuned, culturally-relevant and award-winning powerhouse for youth communications.
This person needed a proven track record of business development and growth within an agency, as well as strong financial acumen and experience managing P&Ls across four divisions as well as the skills to manage a team of 20+ people.
Strategy Director
The client was looking for a Strategy Director to come on board to fill a Head of Department role. This person would be part of the leadership team and responsible for owning the strategy division arm of the business.
Director of Talent + Community
This role required a candidate that had commercial ability and solid experience managing talent who could spearhead the agency’s Networks division.
The Process
CEO
The creative industry in the UK has a limited number of small to medium sized agencies that focus on youth culture from a female-centric and marginalised perspective.
After assessing the market and speaking with talent, we concluded that candidates from larger agencies tended to fall into one of three categories: over-qualified, over budget, or too commercial. As a result, we shifted our focus to small and mid-sized businesses for our search.
This role demanded an individual with exceptional leadership skills who would need a strong sense of empathy in order to serve as a mentor to a growing young team, and demonstrated a deep understanding of youth culture through the right lens.
Strategy Director
We considered talent from creative, advertising, media and publishing in order to find the right calibre of candidates who could deliver culture-focused insights and strategy in the form of reports + forecasts, campaigns, and brand consultancy.
Director of Talent and + Community
The candidates most viable for this position were those that were working or have previously worked at a talent/influencer agency. This role revolves around collaborating with partners in order to amplify content and campaigns via influencer marketing and paid social.
We explored talent from influencer and talent agencies, as well as digital and social platforms.
The Results
CEO
The successful candidate had over a decade's experience driving reach, relevance, and revenue for some of the world's biggest brands. Their experience working in the audience, creative and content space in the UK, Australia and the US demonstrated their commitment to ensuring that cultural nuance and intersectionality is at the centre of how they collaborate with brands to deliver the most culturally resonant content for their clients.
Strategy Director
We placed a super switched on Strategy Director that came from an academic background, had thirteen years of media and culture research across consumer insights, cultural strategy, academia, and policy environments. They had an impressive career trajectory having worked agency side, for small startups, all the way through to Silicon Valley tech giants.
Director of Talent + Community
The candidate we sourced for this role came from an Influencer Marketing background and had 10 years of experience developing and implementing innovative creative strategies. Having managed talent and worked for multiple new-gen agencies/business, this candidate was a clear winner for the position.