Senior Director, Brand Voice Identity

About Us

David Yurman is a celebrated American jewelry company founded in New York by David Yurman, a sculptor, and his wife, Sybil, a painter and ceramicist. Led today by their son Evan, David Yurman creates timeless, yet contemporary collections for women and men defined by inspiration, innovation, consummate craftsmanship and cable – the brand’s artistic signature. David Yurman collections are available at retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and France and at locations worldwide, through their exclusive authorized fine jewelry and timepiece network of retailers.

Job Description

The Senior Director, Brand Voice/Identity is the owner and guardian of David Yurman’s verbal brand identity. This role defines how the brand speaks, how it tells stories, how tone flexes across audiences and channels, and how language ladders into every expression of the business.

• Own and evolve the David Yurman verbal brand identity across all 360 touchpoints.
• Define the brand’s voice architecture, including voice principles, tone ranges, voice standards, messaging hierarchy, product storytelling frameworks, channel rules, and approved language systems.
• Establish how the David Yurman voice flexes by vertical while remaining consistent at the brand level.
• Build clear language systems for e-commerce, social, retail stores, events, CRM, clienteling, special projects, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, icons, gifting, heritage, craftsmanship, and seasonal campaigns.
• Translate brand strategy, campaign concepts, customer insights, and product priorities into clear verbal direction for the team and cross-functional partners.
• Partner with Creative leadership to define the narrative expression of major campaigns, launches, and brand moments.
• Identify where the voice is becoming inconsistent, overly promotional, too generic, too editorial, or commercially unclear, and correct it with clear guidance.
• Maintain a centralized verbal identity system, including guidelines, examples, banned phrases, approved terminology, product language, naming principles, and channel-specific tone guidance.
• Create storytelling frameworks for hero products, icons, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, gifting, seasonal launches, craftsmanship, materials, design inspiration, and brand heritage.
• Develop tone systems that guide how the brand should speak across different customer mindsets, platforms, and business objectives.
• Ensure product storytelling is accurate, elevated, and commercially relevant.
• Translate product attributes into language that creates desire without over-explaining.
• Ensure high jewelry language feels rare, precise, and exceptional.
• Ensure men’s jewelry language feels confident, modern, direct, and elevated.
• Ensure store and clienteling language supports selling conversations while maintaining brand integrity.
• Ensure event and special project language builds atmosphere, exclusivity, and emotional connection.
• Serve as the final voice authority for major brand, campaign, product, retail, digital, social, CRM, PR, event, and special project copy.
• Set and enforce the brand voice standards for the team.
• Hold the team accountable for writing quality, editing rigor, brand consistency, timing, accuracy, and executional excellence.
• Create a disciplined editing process that raises quality while reducing subjective feedback and unnecessary rounds.
• Ensure every piece of copy has a clear role: to build the brand, clarify the product, support the customer journey, or drive action.
• Protect the brand from generic luxury language, excessive adjectives, over-explanation, promotional noise, and inconsistent tone.
• Educate writers to sharpen ideas, improve structure, write with restraint, and understand how language performs across channels.
• Create accountability across the team through clear expectations, direct feedback, documented standards, and consistent review.
• Lead, manage, and mentor the Brand Voice team.
• Set clear standards for writing quality, editing discipline, creative judgment, speed, ownership, and execution.
• Oversee day-to-day workload, prioritization, routing, approvals, and delivery across all copy workstreams.
• Ensure the team understands not just what to write, but why the language matters to the brand and the business.
• Build repeatable processes for briefs, copy development, editing, feedback, approvals, version control, and final delivery.
• Hold team and cross-functional teams accountable to the brand voice architecture and channel-specific standards.
• Provide direct, actionable feedback that improves both the work and the writer.
• Identify capability gaps across the team and recommend training, tools, process changes, or freelance support where needed.
• Partner with Project Management to ensure the team delivers on time without lowering the creative or brand voice requirements.
• Foster a culture of high standards, precision, accountability, curiosity, and creative discipline.
• Partner with Creative, Marketing, Merchandising, E-commerce, Social, PR, Retail, Events, Legal, and Product teams.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in copywriting, brand voice, creative strategy, or verbal identity, ideally within luxury, jewelry, fashion, or a premium brand environment.
• Proven experience owning or building a brand voice system across multiple channels and business verticals.
• Exceptional writing, editing, grammar, proofreading, and verbal communication skills.
• Strong copy judgment and the ability to raise the quality of language quickly and decisively.
• Experience leading copy teams and holding writers accountable to standards, deadlines, and execution.
• Deep understanding of luxury positioning, product storytelling, and how language creates desire.
• Ability to balance brand elevation with commercial clarity.
• Strong understanding of e-commerce, CRM, social, retail, events, and clienteling communication needs.
• Ability to define tone by channel, audience, product category, and business objective.
• Strong presentation skills with the ability to articulate and defend voice strategy and execution to senior stakeholders.
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, collaborative, and comfortable managing multiple workstreams at once.
• Experience partnering with Creative, Marketing, Merchandising, E-commerce, Social, PR, Retail, Events, Legal, and Product teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in English, Journalism, Communications, Marketing, Creative Writing, or related field required.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We are committed to fostering a culture of openness and creative collaboration within our entire community, and we cherish the diversity of our employees’ backgrounds and perspectives. We will always advocate for equity and inclusion for all.