Brand & Creative Manager

Overland Park Garden Center•Overland Park, KS

3h•Onsite

About The Position

The Brand & Creative Manager owns how Family Tree Nursery looks, sounds, and feels across our marketing. You lead the creative direction of the brand and manage the team that brings it to life. For 60 years, Family Tree Nursery has been more than a garden center. We're a place people come for beauty, for expertise, and for a feeling they don't get anywhere else. That feeling is our brand, and this role is responsible for protecting it and carrying it forward as we grow. This is a role for someone who leads with both strategy and craft. Most of your time is spent thinking, directing, and managing: shaping campaign strategy, setting creative direction, and getting the best work out of the team you lead. You'll take the first real swing at campaign strategy and bring it to the Marketing Department Lead to build the final approach together. From there, you lead the creative direction of what that strategy becomes: the look, the feel, the voice, made coherent across all of our channels. The rest of your time, which ebbs and flows with the season, is spent doing the work yourself, whether that's art directing, designing, writing, or jumping in wherever the team needs you. Good creative here is never just pretty. It's strategic. You understand who our guests are, what they want, what they respond to, and what brings them through our doors, and you understand the business objectives behind every campaign. Great work lives where those two meet: creative that speaks to our guests and delivers real results. You hold your team to that standard, and you build a culture that does the same. You'll also work closely with people you don't manage. Some branded work, like email, ecommerce, and other digital assets, will be produced by others on the marketing team, and your job is to set the standard and collaborate, not to stand over their shoulder. You'll have a hand in the in-store and merchandising experience too, but as a partner, not an owner. Your focus stays on marketing.

Requirements

5+ years leading brand and creative work, with real wins and losses behind you. We're not looking for someone learning on the job. We want someone who's been through the cycle, made the mistakes, and knows what good looks like
Experience managing and developing a creative team. You've directed designers, writers, or other creatives, and you've grown people, not just assigned them work
Experience managing a social or content function. You know how to guide that kind of role creatively, hold the quality bar, and manage the day-to-day, even when the broader strategy is set with someone else
Strong design and art-direction ability. This is a hands-on role, and you can set direction and execute it
Proficiency with Adobe Creative Suite, specifically Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom. You can open a file and do the work yourself, and just as importantly, guide and direct the people who do
Strong writing and storytelling. You can find the brand's voice, write in it, and teach it to others, from captions to campaigns and everything in between
Experience building or owning brand identity. You've shaped how a brand looks and sounds, and ideally you've built the systems, like guidelines or brand books, that keep it consistent
A strategic head for creative. You connect the work to the audience and the business, and you can explain why a creative choice is right, not just that it looks good
A grounded creative temperament. You bring genuine joy and pride to the work, and you're the capable, productive creative people actually want to be around, not the precious artist they tiptoe around. You welcome good ideas wherever they come from and know how to bring them to life

Responsibilities

Own how Family Tree Nursery looks, sounds, and feels across our marketing — the visual identity, the voice, and the standard everything is held to
Build Family Tree Nursery's first brand book — the palette, typography, logo system, voice, and guidelines that give the brand one consistent foundation to build on
Keep the brand coherent across every channel, so a social post, an email, a sign, and a campaign all feel like they came from the same place
Set clear creative direction the team can execute against, and review their work
Protect and evolve the brand as Family Tree Nursery grows, so it stays recognizable without going stale
Own Family Tree Nursery's seasonal creative themes — take a direction like "Golden Hour" for fall and build it into a complete look, feel, and voice that carries across social, email, web, and in-store touchpoints
Keep every channel telling one story, so the theme feels coherent whether a guest sees it in their inbox, on the website, or walking through the door
Partner with merchandising so the creative themes and the product collections line up, and the story the brand tells matches the story on the floor
Sit at the table with the Marketing Department Lead and the digital marketing function when an initiative comes together — you owning the look, feel, and theme; digital owning the mechanics across web, email, SMS, and SEO
Ground every theme in who our guests are and what the business needs it to do
Build, manage, and develop the in-house creative team — hire for the range the work demands, set direction, hold the standard, and get the best work out of the people you lead
Direct the social and community content, owning the day-to-day management and the creative quality of what goes out, with the broader social strategy set alongside the Marketing Department Lead
Direct graphic design across the brand, including signage, campaign assets, email and digital graphics, merchandise, and print, holding the visual standard and the deadlines
Direct photography and video, whether produced in-house or by an outside resource, guiding what gets made and how it looks so the imagery is on-brand and serves the channels it lives on
Give clear, direct feedback and create the kind of environment where people grow
Manage the flow of creative requests coming into the team — signage, digital and email assets, campaign work, prioritizing against capacity and the bigger picture so the most important work gets done first
Balance the workload across the team through the busy season and the slow one, keeping the work flowing and nothing critical falling through the cracks
Select, scope, and manage outsourced creative — photographers, freelance designers, and others, deciding who fits and holding them accountable to the work
Write clear scopes of work and creative briefs, so vendors know exactly what's expected and by when
Manage merchandise and print production from concept through delivery, so quality, timing, and brand consistency all hold up
Flag budget needs to the Marketing Department Lead, who owns the spend, and escalate anything contractual or legal
Roll up your sleeves and make the work yourself when the season calls for it — art direction, photography, design, and copywriting
Write and shape brand copy and storytelling across campaigns, channels, and the occasional sign by the front door
Jump in wherever the team is stretched, especially through the spring and holiday pushes, without treating it as beneath the role