Associate Creative Director

Key Responsibilities

• Own creative direction and final sign-off for an assigned portfolio of clients
• Serve as the primary creative partner to clients (alignment, expectations, presentations as needed)
• Partner with PM/Client Services to manage prioritization, timelines, and scope
• Attend client meetings as needed (kickoffs, planning, reviews)
• Convert meetings and client inputs into clear briefs that include: objective, audience, offer, deliverables, channel specs, references, constraints, success metrics
• Identify ambiguity early and propose options/solutions to unblock execution
• Provide clear, prioritized, actionable feedback to designers and Art Directors
• Maintain quality across high-volume marketing output (web, email, ads, organic)
• QA ownership & risk management
• Implement and maintain a tiered QA system: Designer self-QA → AD review → ACD final review
• Reduce revision cycles by improving upstream direction and clarity
• Escalate only high-risk work per agreed rubric (VIP accounts, new campaigns, strategic landing pages)
• Team leadership & development
• Mentor Art Directors to strengthen direction, critique, and decision-making
• Coach designers on craft and execution standards
• Run weekly creative calibration sessions to ensure consistent output and alignment
• Creative operations & standardization
• Build and maintain templates and standards for: briefs, feedback, file naming/versioning, handoffs, QA checklists
• Identify process improvements that reduce rework and increase throughput as the company scales

Qualifications

• 7+ years professional design experience (agency or high-velocity marketing environment preferred)
• 2+ years in a lead role directing designers and/or Art Directors
• Strong portfolio across digital marketing: paid social/performance ads, email campaigns, web/landing pages, organic social
• Excellent briefing and critique skills (can articulate “why” and give actionable guidance)
• Strong client communication skills, including the ability to push back constructively
• Ability to lead remotely with dependable ET overlap

(Preferred - nice-to-have)

• CRO/landing page optimization familiarity
• Experience with performance testing/iteration cycles
• Experience leading distributed teams
• Experience partnering closely with Paid Media teams

Tools

• Figma (required)
• Adobe Creative Suite (helpful)
• Slack + Google Workspace
• Project management tool (Asana/ClickUp/Monday/etc.)
• Loom or async review tools