Associate Creative Director

Codetech•Chicago, IL

1d•Remote

About The Position

The Associate Creative Director is a strategic creative leadership role responsible for guiding teams toward impactful, brand-defining work. The role provides senior leadership across creative execution, including integrated campaigns, brand expression, sales excellence, events, motion, and creative enablement. It balances creative vision with practical business needs and leads primarily through influence rather than hands-on execution, bringing clarity to complex, global creative ecosystems. The position is accountable for creative quality, consistency, and performance across regions and channels. Its focus is creative direction, governance, and orchestration—aligning distributed teams around shared standards. The role partners with Corporate Brand leaders and marketing and business stakeholders, shapes creative demand and briefs, guides campaign development, oversees creative work and the creative lifecycle, and manages agency and vendor relationships. It also champions scalable creative systems and innovation, including new tools and AI-enabled processes.

Requirements

At least 6 years of experience as a Creative Director or Associate Creative Director.
Experience working on a large corporate visual identity or design team, or at a major creative agency.
Experience supporting large financial services, pharmaceutical, healthcare, or other regulated companies.
Strong experience working across modern channels and campaigns, including social media, television, out-of-home, websites, and PPC/paid advertising.
Ability to work as a creative strategist, perform hands-on design and writing, and act as a stakeholder and project manager.
Expertise using Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft PowerPoint, and project management tools such as ClickUp or Asana for hands-on design.

Responsibilities

Set the creative vision, standards, and success criteria across major creative disciplines.
Make decisions on creative direction, quality, and prioritization within assigned initiatives, escalating when enterprise alignment is required.
Establish and maintain creative governance models defining decision rights, escalation paths, and quality standards across regions and teams.
Lead onshore and offshore creative teams, providing direction and fostering collaboration and consistent quality.
Coach and develop creative managers and leads and contribute to succession planning and long-term capability growth.
Partner with Corporate Brand leaders to align creative priorities, workflows, and expectations.
Advise marketing and business leaders on creative matters, advocating for creative excellence while balancing business priorities.
Partner with stakeholders to shape creative demand, prioritize initiatives, and ensure briefs are strategic, clear, and aligned with capacity and impact.
Translate brand and business strategy into creative frameworks, briefs, and guidance for teams and partners.
Align campaign, sales, event, motion, and enablement work into a unified creative experience.
Guide integrated campaign concept development, review work for effectiveness, and apply learnings to improve performance.
Review and approve creative work against brand, accessibility, and quality standards.
Oversee the creative lifecycle from intake through delivery, optimization, and reuse.
Oversee agency and vendor relationships to ensure work is on-strategy, on-brand, and delivered to a high standard.
Champion scalable creative systems, templates, and enablement models that support global consistency.
Drive innovation in creative workflows, including adoption of new tools, AI-enabled processes, and improved ways of working.
Lead teams through process, tool, and approach changes that improve creative quality and efficiency.
Balance creative ambition with operational realities, timelines, and available resources.