Creative Director

smartdept. inc. is searching for an experienced Creative Director for an Automotive client based in the Boston, MA area. The ideal candidate will have prior in-house creative direction experience working in a fast-paced environment ideally at a tech/startup company. This is a hybrid flexible (8-9x per month in-office), full-time, direct-hire opportunity.

Overview:

Seeking a Creative leader to bring our client's brand to life, and to elevate and improve the performance of their marketing assets across all channels. Reporting to the CMO, you will build and mentor a small in-house team, augmenting in-house talent with a network of freelancers and smaller agencies to deliver a portfolio of creative assets that support all our Marketing efforts. As a key member of the Marketing team, you will serve as an evangelist for our brand identity and voice, ensuring that creative across our company works to represent our brand in a unified and effective way.

What You'll Do:

• Serve as the creative leader for our client, helping to refine their brand and bring it to life through a broad range of touchpoints that drive action, awareness, engagement and preference
• Build and mentor a high-performing and engaged in-house creative team, and a curated network of freelancers and small agencies, to meet the needs of the organization
• Develop a team with a reputation for working collaboratively, delivering on commitments, and generally being a great team to work on and with
• Provide leadership for the ongoing interpretation and evolution of our brand standards in support of new applications across the business
• Concept and direct high-quality multimedia work for both consumers and dealers, including performance creatives, email templates, banner ads, digital videos, offline collateral, content marketing design assets, social media posts, landing pages, website design, and more
• Continually update best practices for our client to drive response and action from our creative efforts; incorporate up-to-date research and third-party expertise (eg Google, Facebook, Media agency guidelines) to inform all our efforts
• Partner with UX design to evolve overall site branding where visual design/messaging support is required to build/evolve specific elements of our site experience
• Own and evolve processes to ensure that creative deliverables are prioritized appropriately and delivered on time, on strategy, and on budget
• Partner with the Brand strategy team and our brand agency to provide input to their work, and ensure that their guidelines meet the creative team needs for future iterations and applications
• Partner with marketing to extend agency-led campaigns into a broader portfolio of media assets

What You'll Need:

• 10+ years in a creative role, with 5+ years of experience managing design professionals
• Visual design roots and solid UX design and video production experience (preferred)
• Highly collaborative and able to partner with and support the needs of a range of internal stakeholders
• Experience mentoring a high-performance team; a people leader who can identify, recruit, and develop great talent to create top-tier work
• Stay current and ahead of the latest design trends and digital advancements
• Experience with and appreciation for rigorously testing & optimizing creative to deliver performance
• Highly organized, with experience setting up internal processes to receive, prioritize, and deliver on creative requests
• Fast-paced, results-oriented, and able to prioritize competing demands for multiple internal partners
• Low-ego and willing to roll up sleeves on any effort, but skilled at delegating and coaching to manage team output.
• Easy collaborator and team player who loves pulling out feedback and responses from teammates to help make the work better, and who brings a curious and flexible mindset to challenges
• Excellent creative eye and instincts, and able to inspire and demand great work from your team– whether designing a marketing campaign or a PowerPoint template
• Previous in-house tech/start-up experience (preferred)