Creative Director

About the Role

The Creative Director is responsible for managing, guiding and creating the communication layer of a brand’s vision. It’s a leadership role within the agency with accountability to the health of both the brands you manage, as well as the health of the agency at large. In this role, you must inspire the creativity and strategic thinking of your people and of the people around you. You should work to bring experimentation where it’s fitting and act as a teacher-of-curiosity. 

This role also expects you to be highly involved with clients, pitching work and communicating the agency's benefits and capabilities.  You should be proficient at understanding how to tie client needs to the agency’s model. Under your purview are your specific creative teams - and you will have the opportunity to manage those teams across the accounts you touch.   While you might partner with another CD, Design Lead or Strategy Director at the agency, you’re mainly responsible for the creative direction. 

You report directly to your GCD,  who will partner with you to manage your teams and help guide your work where a more hands on approach is necessary. They are your first line of support in creativity, management and storytelling.

• Responsibilities:

• Be the creative steward for the brands you work on. This includes working with the internal brand and strategy team to help set/maintain the tone and vision for the brand. This also includes reviewing all the creative work that will ultimately make its way to the client.
• Help story-tell ideas for clients, internal teams and your own creative teams. Clarity is key. Your ability to “clean up the idea” is essential for it to make the impact we know it can make on clients.
• As the brand steward, the best way to develop relationships with clients is to present – and if not presenting the core of an idea, providing support – the work going in front of them. 
• Develop client relationships – while not everyone’s cup of tea, marketing is still a relationship business. The data can only take us so far, it’s the relationship that builds the trust. As a CD, you’re expected to open that relationship on terms that make sense for you. Ideally you should be comfortable interacting with clients. Specifically your POV is critical to making the work better, protecting the integrity of ideas/the method and fielding feedback. 
• When we receive feedback, it’s up to you, the strategist and the brand team to field that feedback and distill it down to what is actionable, what should be discussed, and what should be rejected. It’s then your job to communicate that feedback to your teams. Motivation is the name of the game as we need to balance the clients needs with the creative ambition. We should push the latter so that the client sees it as the former. 
• Participate/Lead hiring decisions on Art or Copy candidates in the department, taking into consideration the department/agency’s needs and growth potential. Beyond this, overseeing mentoring and growing the agency’s talent, such that their skills, knowledge, potential contributions and job satisfaction grow over their time with us.
• Foster an environment of creativity and inspire team members to participate in internal creative endeavors. Get people psyched to make stuff!
• Offer a point of view on the team’s composition and structure, including promotions, job openings and overall growth opportunities.
• Influence creative led thinking across the business and groups - The high tide raises all boats.
• Lead concept development in relation to design and creative work. Be a maker too.
• Partner with your GCD, Strategy Directors,, Design Leads and the CCO, to develop programs to continuously improve the team’s capabilities and hard skill sets. 
• Offer a perspective around the agency as a whole and what internal improvements we should invest in to make Decoded the best place to work for everyone.
• Ensure that creative projects are delivered on their agreed upon timeline and on budget ensuring commercial success, duh. 
• Provide quality control over your team’s output.

About You

The essentials:

• At least 2 years experience in an Associate Creative Director or equivalent role including concept development and client contact.
• A well-developed creative point of view, and the ability to identify strong ideas and executions.
• Patience and attention to detail.
• Collaborative with strategic, brand, creative and production partners.
• Finger on the pulse of creative culture and platforms. And have a deep bench of reference from all different sources that could help inspire creative avenues.
• Knowledge of layouts, graphic fundamentals, typography.
• Ability to steer campaign writing.
• Be a storyteller. One who compels people to want to hear more.
• Need to be able to take work delivered by teams and turn it into a sellable idea.
• Must have run teams of 4 or more. With grace.
• Proven track record in building teams and ideas to their fullest potential.

At Monks, we believe in fostering an environment where a diversity of perspectives can thrive. We proactively work to design hiring processes that promote equity and inclusion while mitigating bias. We celebrate diversity and are committed to building a team that reflects the communities we serve. We welcome and encourage qualified applicants, from all backgrounds, who are excited to contribute to our mission.