VP, Group Creative Director

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About the Role

As a Group Creative Director, you’ll be responsible for managing, guiding and creating the communication layer of a brand’s vision. This is a leadership role within the agency, with accountability for the health of both the brands you manage and the agency at large. In this role, you must inspire the creativity and strategic thinking of both your team and those around you. You should strive to bring experimentation where it’s fitting and act as a teacher of curiosity.

This role also requires you to be highly involved with clients, pitching work and presenting the capabilities of the department. You should be proficient in understanding how to align client needs with the agency’s model. Under your purview is the entire creative team, but you will have a smaller subset of direct reports. While you might partner with another GCD, Head of Design, or Head of Strategy at the agency, you’re mainly responsible for the creative direction.

Responsibilities:

• Creative Steward – First and foremost, be the creative steward for the brands in your portfolio.
  • This includes working with the internal brand and strategy team to help set the tone and vision for the brand.
  • Also includes monitoring and spot-checking all the creative work that will ultimately make its way to the client. 
• Storytell - one third of your core duties is to help storytell ideas for clients, internal teams and your own creative teams. Clarity is key. In this role, it’s really about putting the final touches on a presentation to make sure the story makes sense to the layman. You are the last line of defense before the client/brand teams.
• Presenting to clients - as the brand steward, the best way to develop relationships with clients is to present, and if not delivering 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 GCD, you’re expected to foster that relationship on terms that make sense for you. Ideally you should be on a text based comfort within a year of interacting.
• 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. 
• 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. 
• Lead concept development in relation to design and creative work. Be a maker where it makes sense.
• Partner with the Head of Production, Head of Design and Craft 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 Monks the best place to work for everyone.
• Ensure that creative projects are delivered on their agreed upon timeline and on budget ensuring commercial success. 
• Provide quality control over your team’s output.
  

About You

The essentials:

• Minimum of 4 years in a Creative Director or equivalent role, including hands-on concept development and direct client interaction.
• Proven experience leading creative teams of 6 or more with empathy and leadership.
• A strong track record of building high-performing teams and pushing ideas to their fullest potential. 
• A well-developed creative point of view and the ability to identify strong ideas and executions.