Global Creative Director - Shoptalk

About the role

Shoptalk, producer of the world's most important retail and commerce events and a global pioneer in event design, is looking for a Global Creative Director to bring fresh thinking and new perspectives to our global brand. We produce four events a year in Las Vegas, Nashville and Barcelona that bring together tens of thousands of retailers, brands and the people shaping the future of commerce. Our brand has to feel unmistakable everywhere it appears, from the registration email a guest opens to the entrance they walk through on arrival and the stages they watch content on. This role oversees our creative vision end to end, including leading the team responsible for defining and shaping how Shoptalk looks and feels. It spans the full creative arc and impacts our event lifecycle, online and offline.

Responsibilities

• Direct the creative look, feel and themes for our events.
• Work hand in hand with operations, marketing, content and leadership so ideas are shared rather than imposed.
• Create a design system that makes marketing, web, social, email, app, signage, stage and activations read as one event, online and offline.
• Manage our in-house design team and work closely with operations and marketing.
• Oversee the anchor creative output of the team that our operations team manages: site signage and wayfinding assets, entrance and registration moments, hanging and aerial signage, stages, lounges, directional systems and sponsor recognition builds.
• Collaborate on art direction for session stages, partnering with operations teams and design agencies on scenic, lighting and structure.
• Partner on on-site experience elements that make the event feel like Shoptalk: the immersive and sensorial moments that make guests stop and post.
• Bring the same creative bar to the commercial side of the business: sponsor recognition, branded sponsor activations and co-branded partner moments.
• Provide creative support for the sponsorship sales team.
• Measure the job as much by the growth of our people as by the polish of the work.

Qualifications

• Fresh event thinking and an outside perspective that steers clear of the default trade show look and brings in new references from retail, fashion, culture and experiential marketing.
• Prior management of a creative team and freelancers, and experience collaborating with general contractors, agencies and partners.
• Branding and design systems for event companies or live events.
• A collaborative creative vision for an events brand and theme that lives online and offline, across the full event lifecycle, from pre-event build-up through the show itself to the post-event recap.
• Experience with marketing thematics and visuals, the always-on creative that keeps an audience engaged between events.
• Hands-on, on-site work designing and directing the physical experience elements of live events, from signage and wayfinding to stages and activations.
• Background developing environmental graphics and signage: substrates, file prep, color at scale, wayfinding and a working knowledge of fabrication and install.
• A design-led portfolio, not an event production reel, that shows a concept carried across channels and built at environmental scale as one connected system.
• Experience directing freelancers and partners to a higher bar than they would reach alone.
• Availability to be on-site at all four Shoptalk events, in the building during build and throughout show days, with travel and the longer hours that show week brings, plus pre-event travel to venues to plan out visuals.

Benefits

• The salary band for this position ranges from $125,000 to $135,000 USD based on experience
• This position will be eligible for a competitive bonus structure
• Full medical, dental, and vision package to fit your needs
• Retail retirement plan with company match (401K)
• Competitive vacation policy
• Hybrid work