Creative Operations Manager

Cinemark•Plano, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Manager, Creative Operations is responsible for managing the end-to-end workflow of creative campaigns and assets, trafficking them through our full-service in-house creative team. This role requires a high degree of independence, strategic thinking, and problem-solving ability. The ideal candidate is a self-directed professional who takes ownership of creative projects from creative assignments to final delivery of assets, anticipating challenges before they arise, and making sound decisions with minimal oversight. This role does not produce creative work directly. Instead, it serves as the operational backbone of the creative team, enabling them to do their best work while seamlessly connecting with marketing partners, internal stakeholders, and business clients. Success is measured by the team's ability to align creative deliverables with project objectives, deliver work on time, contribute to campaign performance, and maintain brand consistency. Reporting to the Director of Marketing & Creative Operations, this role partners closely with creative leadership at all levels and with the rest of the marketing operations project manager team to ensure all projects proceed smoothly.

Requirements

6 years of experience working in a traffic or project management function within a creative agency, in-house agency, marketing department, or creative services organization.
Experience with workflow and project management platforms such as Workfront, Basecamp, Asana, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Jira, Wrike, or similar tools.
Demonstrated success managing complex project pipelines and creative workflows.
Experience balancing priorities across multiple stakeholders and business partners.
Strong understanding of creative production processes including digital, video, content, campaign, and brand asset development.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing resource capacity for teams of 15+ creative professionals.
Experience supporting integrated marketing campaigns and cross-functional teams.
Familiarity with RACI frameworks, stage-gate processes, and marketing operations methodologies.

Responsibilities

Serve as the central point of coordination for all work entering and moving through the Creative team.
Manage the day-to-day trafficking of projects from creative assignment through final delivery, partnering closely with both creative leadership and marketing operations project managers.
Maintain complete visibility into all active creative projects and proactively identify risks, bottlenecks, and resource constraints.
Monitor project progress daily and intervene when deadlines, priorities, or dependencies are at risk.
Coordinate movement of projects through reviews, approvals, revisions, production, and final delivery.
Facilitate effective handoffs between teams, stakeholders, and project phases.
Own creative resource allocation across all designers, copywriters, video editors, motion designers, and other creative team members.
Develop and maintain a comprehensive view of team capacity, utilization, workloads, and availability.
Assign work based on skill sets, workload balance, project complexity, and business priorities, partnering closely with creative leadership.
Ensure equitable distribution of work while maximizing efficiency and quality.
Continuously analyze current and future capacity needs and make recommendations regarding staffing, freelancers, vendors, or resource adjustments.
Partner with creative leadership to resolve workload conflicts and prioritize competing business demands.
Manage the master creative schedule and calendar.
Act as an operational steward of project workflow through the creative team.
Ensure projects adhere to established processes, governance standards, and approval requirements.
Track milestones, review cycles, approvals, and delivery dates across all projects.
Escalate project risks, delays, and resource challenges to creative leadership and project managers before they impact business timelines.
Support continuous improvement initiatives that streamline creative operations and increase organizational efficiency.
Coordinate seamlessly with project managers, ensuring they have all the latest information on project status and timelines.
Participate in project kickoff meetings to understand scope, priorities, timelines, dependencies, and resource requirements.
Conduct weekly project reviews with project managers to ensure alignment on schedule, status, risks, and upcoming resource needs across initiatives.
Collaborate on project prioritization decisions when competing business initiatives arise.
Help project managers assess feasibility of timelines based on current creative capacity.
Produce and distribute daily creative workload reports ("Hot Sheets") outlining individual assignments, upcoming deadlines, priority changes, review requirements, production schedules, and resource conflicts.
Provide ongoing status updates to creative leadership on creative progress and resource availability.
Lead ongoing traffic meetings to review workload, priorities, deadlines, and capacity.
Serve as the primary communication hub between the creative team, marketing operations, and internal stakeholders.
Ensure creative team members have clarity regarding assignments, timelines, expectations, and priorities.
Manage routing of projects through all required review and approval stages.
Coordinate stakeholder reviews, creative feedback sessions, and approval timelines.
Ensure comments and revisions are properly documented, consolidated, and communicated.
Monitor review cycles to prevent delays and maintain project momentum.
Validate that all required approvals have been secured prior to production or launch.
Provide leadership with regular reporting on creative capacity, resource utilization, project health, throughput metrics, on-time delivery performance, workflow bottlenecks, and process adherence.
Develop dashboards and reporting that enhance organizational visibility and decision making.
Use data and performance insights to identify operational improvement opportunities.
Serve as a power user and administrator for creative workflow and project management platforms.
Ensure project information, schedules, milestones, and status updates remain accurate and current.
Drive adoption and compliance with workflow tools and processes.
Recommend and implement process improvements that improve efficiency, visibility, and team effectiveness.