Director, Influencer

We’re VaynerMedia! VaynerMedia is a global integrated creative and media agency, built for today's consumers. As the Modern Agency of Record, it understands the nuances of today's attention landscape, empowering brands to win attention, drive relevance, and deliver business results. Founded in 2009, by Gary Vaynerchuk, the independently owned agency operates in 15 offices worldwide, including Amsterdam, Bangkok, Chicago, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, New York, Tokyo, Toronto, Singapore, and Sydney. VaynerMedia is part of the VaynerX family of companies.

Culture is our key and Empathy is how we build it. VaynerMedia EMEA is strong with a world-class combination of diverse backgrounds collaborating to put forward innovative, creative and strategic solutions to the one advantage that stands the test of time – PEOPLE. Day in and day out, we propel some of the biggest brands in the world to the intersection of attention and culture.

The PITCH.

The Director of CAIT (Creators, Affiliates, Influencers, & Talent) helps oversee the EMEA CAIT team (priority markets UK & DE), reporting in to the VP of CAIT EMEA + dotted line into the SVP, CAIT @ VaynerX.

This role is a leader who goes beyond simple procurement to set the standard from the initial brainstorm through to the final assets, ensuring the department’s output is cast for relevance, directed for quality, and optimised for views, working hand in hand with our Creative department.

You will oversee the strategy and operations for sourcing diverse makers and talent to fuel our clients’ brand channels and beyond. You will bridge the gap between the CAIT team and the cross-functional team, ensuring that our external CAIT network is integrated directly into the AIM (Analyse, Ideate, Make) and PAC (Platforms, Algorithms, Culture) workflows to drive Production Excellence.

Leading a specific key account/s - driving efficiencies and proactive problem solving to deliver productions that joins the dots between cultural signals and relevance across SMA’S, CAIT, Production, Live Shopping, Experiential + incremental ideas.

Here’s where you come in…

• Collaboration: Partner with Client Partnerships, Strategy, and Creative leadership to architect CAIT-led campaigns. You will translate high-level brand concepts into casting strategies (diversity, volume, authenticity), ensuring we use CAIT profiles and partners to solve briefs and create ideas.
• Leadership: Train the team to proactively pitch CAIT-led concepts in sync with Creative to drive business results, moving the CAIT team from an "order taker" to a strategic partner, internally & externally.
• Quality Control: Define and enforce the standard for Excellence. Ensure the team understands the distinction between "Creator as Talent" (delivering raw performance/assets) and "Veditor" (technical assembly), ensuring delivered assets are creatively effective and commercially safe.
• Virtual Directing Protocols: Establish the frameworks and training for Modern Production empowering your team to guide creator talent toward the right performance metrics and optimisation.
• Mentorship: Manage and develop our CAIT team. Train them to think less like project managers and more like Casting Directors & Producers.
• Pipeline Management: Oversee the end-to-end operations of the CAIT pillars. While CAIT Managers handle day to day execution, you are accountable for the systems regarding contract negotiations, payment processing, and project timelines to ensure speed and compliance.
• Margin & Efficiency: Monitor the financial health of CAIT projects for EMEA. Optimise workflows to reduce rounds of revisions and ensure we are delivering high-volume assets at a margin that works for the business.
• Risk Management: Serve as the escalation point for CAIT negotiations or usage rights issues, protecting the agency and client from liability.
  The Subject Matter Expert: Serve as VaynerMedia’s internal authority on CAIT. Working closely with our internal Creative team, you are the person internal teams call to help sell a CAIT incremental scope to a hesitant client, and the person Strategy looks to for the latest on platform creator trends.
• External Representation: Represent VaynerMedia at industry panels, events, and new business pitches, articulating our unique "Creators as Talent" philosophy.
• Trend Analysis: Turn trends from the creator economy into actionable business opportunities for our clients.

We treasure Personality and Experience yet we do know that these qualifications lead to what WE KNOW as a success:

• 7-10 years of experience in social media, creative advertising, or talent management.
• Creative/Operator Hybrid: You have the taste level to improve a piece of creative work and the operational brain to manage the budget and timeline behind it.
• The Seller Mindset: You are comfortable in a room with clients, articulating the business value of creators and defending creative decisions.
• Practitioner Empathy: You understand the friction points of making content (because you’ve done it) and can build workflows that remove barriers for both the creator and the agency.
• Servant Leadership: You work for your team, not the other way around. You are responsible for creating an environment that fosters health, development, and inclusivity.
• Emotional Intelligence: You catch stress, fear, and anxiety in your team and convert it into practical optimism. When you need an outlet, you let it flow up, never down or across.
• Recruiting Partner: You actively partner with recruiting to support Vayner’s talent practices and build the best possible team.
• Clouds and Dirt: You are a practitioner who balances high-level strategy (clouds) with execution (dirt). You understand that the work matters, but how you get there matters even more.
• Social-First Lens: You are accountable for carrying out your role with a social-first mindset, ensuring all output meets the Vayner standard of excellence.
• Ownership: You take responsibility for actions and impact, pointing thumbs (at yourself) and not fingers (at others). You navigate the team through challenges without placing blame.
• Kind Candor: You deliver feedback that is clear, direct, fair, and empathetic. You view feedback as a gift and a catalyst for personal growth.
• Persuasion & Clarity: You can lead complex conversations and presentations at a moment’s notice, delivering messages in a clear, authentic way to get buy-in from stakeholders.
• Navigating Difficulty: You prioritise and navigate difficult conversations effectively, setting the example for the team.
• "Yes, And": You practice a mindset where all voices are valuable. You view challenges as opportunities to create something better.
• Change Management: You help guide teams through change, collaborating with senior levels to share what’s working and accelerate growth across the company.
• Risk Taking: You identify opportunities for junior team members to take risks and give them the permission to challenge themselves.

Here’s how We Support You

We regularly review our benefits and are committed to providing a comprehensive programme for our people. Here’s what we have to offer:

• Unlimited Holiday + 1 Day Birthday Leave
• YuLife (online discount platform)
• Enhanced Parental Leave
• Unlimited Coaching sessions, which can be private and team class sessions
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee Assistance Program (Financial, Mental and Physical Wellbeing)
• Cash Plan with Medicash - Level 1 cover, option to add partner, 4 children can be added for free
• Virtual GP, Skinvision, 24/7 Health and Stress Helplines, Discounted Gym, Medicash Extras
• 2 weeks Work From Anywhere
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Group Personal Pension

What you SHOULD KNOW about VaynerMedia

Think “lab” and not “agency”. We get excited about solving business problems, not creating advertising for the sake of making advertising. Our entrepreneurship DNA runs deep. We’re willing to break rules, try new things, and test hypotheses if it means better understanding our craft. It’s fun!

We believe 100% that brands can be built on digital platforms and part of our model is built bottom up, flipping the traditional advertising model and process on its head. We don’t play to agency/industry norms and our culture and energy reflects that.

Our environment (and pace) feels much more like a start-up than most agencies you might be used to. Hopefully that, and the opportunity to collaborate with the talented and enthusiastic crew, work with big brands excites you, as it does us. We can’t wait to meet you.

VaynerMedia is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This means that VaynerMedia provides equal employment opportunities to all staff members and job applicants without regard to gender, pregnancy, marital or civil partnership status, gender reassignment, race, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief, part time or fixed term employment, age or any other legally protected class.

Candidates must be authorised to work in Germany.

Originally posted on Himalayas