Creative Lead (Nigeria) at BBC Media Action

Duration: 2 years
Reports to: Head of Production

Job purpose

• The BBC Media Action office in Nigeria is seeking a Creative Lead for a multi-component Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) programme focused on reproductive health and family planning in Northern Nigeria.
• Under this programme, the Creative Lead will work with the Head of Production to shape the creative vision, brand, quality and delivery of BBC Media Action's media content.
• The role will develop compelling, audience-centred creative ideas and ensure the BBC MA brand is consistently and effectively represented across all platforms.
• Working closely with the Senior Digital Producer and the wider digital content team, the Creative Lead will translate programme and communication objectives into strong creative concepts, digital campaigns, and social-first content.

Key Responsibilities
Creative Leadership & Brand:

• Provide creative direction and approval for all creative outputs.
• Protect and strengthen BBC MA's brand identity, ensuring consistency across all creative outputs and platforms.
• Establish and maintain effective creative processes, standards and quality controls within the team
• Lead the overall creative vision and creative direction for BBC MA's digital content.
• Provide creative leadership across campaigns, projects and ongoing digital content.
• Set creative standards, tone, visual direction and storytelling principles for the digital team.

Creative Strategy & Concept Development:

• Translate programme objectives, audience insights and communication challenges into compelling creative opportunities.
• Lead the development of creative concepts, campaign ideas and content territories
• Work closely with the Senior Digital Producer to ensure creative strategy and digital strategy are aligned.
• Ensure creative ideas are audience-centred, culturally relevant, engaging and appropriate to the platforms on which they will appear.
• Develop creative approaches that make complex development issues accessible, relevant and compelling to audiences.

Digital-First Content:

• Provide creative direction for social-first and digital-first content across relevant platforms.
• Ensure content is designed specifically for the behaviours, expectations and formats of digital audiences rather than simply adapted from traditional media.
• Guide the development of short-form video, social content, visual storytelling, campaigns, digital assets, graphics, animations and other creative formats.
• Oversee the development and adaptation of creative content across platforms while maintaining a consistent brand and creative idea.
• Foster experimentation and innovation in formats, storytelling and creative approaches.
• Ensure content is both creatively strong and appropriate for the technical and creative requirements of different digital platforms.

Creative Team Leadership:

• Set expectations for creative quality, delivery and professional standards.
• Lead, motivate and develop the in-house creative and digital content team.
• Provide clear direction to the Senior Digital Producer, Art Director / Visual Designer and wider production team.
• Foster a collaborative environment in which strategy, creative development and production work closely together.
• Review team performance and identify skills gaps and opportunities to strengthen internal capability.
• Build a culture of creative problem-solving, experimentation and continuous improvement.

Content Production & Quality Assurance:

• Oversee the creative development and production of digital content from brief through to final delivery.
• Identify when specialist external creative or production support is required and provide the creative brief and oversight for such work.
• Work with the Senior Digital Producer to ensure production plans, timelines and resources support the creative ambition.
• Provide creative direction to the Art Director / Visual Designer, Video Producer / Editor and Digital Producer.
• Review and approve key creative outputs before publication.
• Ensure that all internally produced and externally commissioned content meets agreed creative, brand and editorial standards.
• Ensure content is delivered to the required quality, within agreed timelines and available resources.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Management:

• Work closely with programme, research, communications and technical teams to translate organisational objectives into effective creative outputs.
• Work with the Senior Digital Producer to incorporate audience insights, platform intelligence and performance data into creative development.
• Collaborate with the Research team, where appropriate, to ensure audience insights and evidence inform creative decisions.
• Build strong working relationships across BBC MA to ensure the creative function is responsive to programme needs.
• Engage and manage external creative specialists, freelancers and production partners where required.

Performance, Learning & Innovation:

• Use audience feedback, content performance and digital insights to inform creative decisions and improve future content.
• Encourage a test-and-learn approach to digital content and creative development.
• Ensure learning from campaigns and content production is captured and applied to future work.
• Champion innovation and identify new approaches to digital storytelling and audience engagement.

Budget & Resource Management:

• Ensure creative activity is delivered within agreed budgets and available resources.
• Work with the Senior Digital Producer to prioritise production requirements and allocate resources effectively.
• Ensure external creative and production support is commissioned strategically and represents value for money.
• Balance creative ambition with the financial and operational realities of a development organisation.

Required Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Proven track record of 8–10 years or more in creative leadership, preferably across digital, advertising, communications, media or social impact.
• A strong and demonstrable creative portfolio showing high-quality digital and social-first work.
• Proven ability to develop creative concepts and translate strategic objectives into compelling creative ideas.
• Strong understanding of digital and social media content, formats and audience behaviours.
• Experience leading creative teams and managing multidisciplinary creative and production functions.
• Experience across multiple digital content formats, including social video, graphics, campaigns, visual storytelling and digital-first content.
• Strong understanding of audience insight and ability to translate insight into creative ideas.
• Strong understanding of the Nigerian creative, digital, and popular culture landscape