Director, Creative Strategy and Operations

Carolina Biological Supply Co Corp•Burlington, NC

About The Position

Transform Carolina's Creative Studio into a digital-first operation capable of winning in a modern, multi-channel marketplace. You lead strategic creative development that brings the brand profile to life to drive enhanced and differentiated customer experiences and sales growth. The role impacts owned web properties, business performance, customer loyalty, paid and organic digital media, search-optimized content, social platforms, email, and traditional print. Ensure team keeps current with digital best practices and consistently delivers high-quality work on-time and within budget. As a trusted creative thought partner to the CMO, Digital Experience Director, and cross-functional leaders, you bridge business strategy and creative execution. You align creative to enterprise priorities, partnering internally and with external agencies to ensure strategically grounded, operationally sound, and creatively exceptional deliverables. In coordination with the broader Customer Team, you translate objectives into brand experiences that drive measurable audience engagement, digital discoverability, and efficient / effective sales growth across audiences. You ensure on-time, in-scope, and on-budget delivery while meeting quality standards. Finally, you optimize creative workflows, governance, and processes to improve efficiency, scalability, and cross-functional alignment.

Requirements

5–7 years of progressive experience in creative leadership roles, preferably within an in-house creative department, digital agency, or integrated marketing environment with demonstrated ownership of both digital and traditional content production.
Digital Strategy & Leadership: Proven track record of leading creative teams through digital transformation - from analog/print-centric to digital-first and multi-channel production.
Project Management Expertise: Strong project mgmt. methodologies command (Agile, Waterfall) and project mgmt. platforms proficiency (Asana, Trello, Jira, or equivalent). Experience managing complex, concurrent creative workstreams across multiple stakeholders.
Ecommerce Creative Experience: Demonstrated experience developing creative content strategies for ecommerce environments, including product page optimization, conversion-focused copywriting, and digital merchandising best practices.
SEO & Content Performance Knowledge: Working knowledge of SEO principles, content strategy, and search intent - and how copy, design, and content structure creative decisions affect organic discoverability and audience engagement.
Paid Digital Advertising: Experience overseeing paid digital-channel creative development including SEM, programmatic display, and social advertising. Familiarity with platform-specific creative requirements and performance measurement.
Analytics & Data Fluency: Ability to interpret marketing and content performance data, translate insights into creative direction, and establish experimentation frameworks (A/B testing, multivariate testing) to continuously improve creative output.
Technical Proficiency: Adobe Creative Suite expert (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects). Prototyping and wireframing tools proficiency (Figma, Sketch). CMS platforms, DAM systems, and marketing automation familiarity. Comfort adopting AI-assisted creative and production tools. Microsoft Office Suite, HubSpot, and Salesforce proficiency. Web analytics platforms (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics) and digital advertising platforms (Google Ads, Meta Business Suite) familiarity strongly preferred
Creative Fluency: Deep digital and print media creative process understanding, including UX/UI principles, responsive design, web copywriting best practices, product photography standards, and video production.
Soft Skills: Exceptional communicator, leader, and problem-solver. Highly collaborative, adaptable, organized, and solutions-oriented. Builds trust with stakeholders while managing day-to-day studio operations in fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree or relevant professional certifications a plus.
A Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification is a plus.

Responsibilities

Digital-First Creative Leadership & Vision: Champion a digital-first creative culture, actively leading the team's evolution away from analog-only production toward integrated, channel-aware content, and audience-tailored creation.
Build the Brand: Bring brand profile (mission, creative vision, brand aesthetic, brand voice, content standards, etc.) to life consistently across all digital and traditional touchpoints (Carolina-owned websites, ecommerce, social media, email campaigns, digital advertising, paid media, and print communications including photography and videography). Own the creative process from intake through execution to presentation ensuring that creative is presented in the brand voice and adheres to brand standards. Serve as final creative authority on brand integrity across all channels and formats.
Strategic Advisory Partnership: Serve as trusted creative thought partner to Customer Team leadership, Marketing, Digital Experience, and business units – guiding Studio to bridge strategic objectives and marketing strategies into clear, actionable creative direction. Ensure deep campaign understanding, audience needs, and success criteria. Lead brand’s creative evolution consistently across all touchpoints (web, email, social, digital advertising, and print). Drive ongoing creative workflows, standards, and processes refinement to improve efficiency, clarity, and impact - ensuring creative execution is strategically grounded and operationally effective.
Ecommerce & Digital Content Strategy: Partner closely with the Digital Experience to support ecommerce content with high-quality creative inputs, including product detail page copy, category-level storytelling, and digital imagery standards. Establish, evolve, and uphold best practices for digital product representation ensuring content is clear, consistent, and aligned with the digital buying journey - includes defining standards for product detail page copy and product imagery. Ensure Studio applies standards consistently across all content, improving overall quality, usability, and customer understanding while aligning with UX/UI best practices.
SEO, Search Intent, & Content Performance: Lead studio's understanding of how creative decisions (copy, design, imagery, video, and content structure) directly impact search visibility, organic & LLM discoverability, and audience engagement. Partner with marketing and digital teams to ensure content aligns with SEO principles, keyword strategy, and search intent. Champion creative effectiveness culture where performance data informs content and creative direction.
Paid & Organic Digital Advertising: Oversee digital campaign creative development across SEM, programmatic, and social advertising. Channel-optimize assets for format, audience, and performance. Gather campaign analytics to continuously improve ad performance and ROI.
AI-Assisted Creative Operations & Emerging Tool Fluency: Lead Studio’s AI-assisted tools and emerging technologies adoption to increase production speed, content scalability, and creative experimentation. Serve as advocate for how emerging technologies are reshaping content creation. Balance corporate security and protecting intellectual property needs with managing emerging usage rights practices while keeping company technologically current, relevant, and competitive. Foster emerging technology curiosity and continuous learning.
Analytics, Data-Informed Creativity & Experimentation: Integrate analytics and data insights into the creative process to instill a performance-oriented culture. Champion multivariate experimentation, A/B testing, and performance feedback to optimize output. Use data to inform hypotheses, validate decisions, and demonstrate business impact of creative investment.
Channel-Specific Content Leadership: Lead organization's platform / channel understanding that each (web, email, social, digital adv., print, video, ecommerce) has distinct creative requirements, audience behaviors, and strategic purposes. Communicate channel-specific standards and creative guidelines to ensure brand-consistent and strategically optimized work by environment.
Executional Excellence: Conceptualize and oversee high-impact digital and traditional assets production, ensuring visuals and copy align with marketing strategies and business objectives. Define project scope, objectives, and deliverables ensuring all writing and design work adheres to best practices for web copywriting, UX/UI, and digital design as relevant. Develop detailed project plans with milestones using project management software to guide the team's efforts.
Workflow and Resource Management: Manage creative workflows and allocate resources (team members, time, and budget) efficiently for agility and speed across multiple concurrent projects.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Marketing, Digital Experience, and Product Management to ensure seamless execution and consistent brand messaging across channels. Manage approval process to ensure alignment, creative integrity, continuous improvement.
Team Leadership & Mentorship: Lead, inspire, and grow studio team to cultivate a collaborative, high-output culture. Invest in the team's professional development with emphasis on digital skills, emerging tools, and evolving content best practices.
Perform other duties as assigned.