Lead Creative Strategist, Brand

Target • Minneapolis, MN

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Lead Creative Strategist, Brand serves as a central point of contact for upholding, stewarding, and protecting the Target brand across the enterprise, including leading a portfolio of strategic brand initiatives. The role extends brand stewardship beyond Creative and Marketing, helping teams across Target make choices that create a clear and consistent brand experience. It translates brand strategy into practical guidance, educates partners, connects teams, evaluates brand fit, and upholds brand standards.

Using guest, cultural, business, and performance inputs, the role identifies insights and opportunities and facilitates decisions that strengthen how the Target brand appears across priority experiences and channels. It partners with Creative, Marketing, insights, and enterprise teams to clarify objectives, ownership, and intended outcomes, and guides work through ambiguity. The role uses judgment, facilitation, and influence to build agreement and brings significant brand decisions and tradeoffs to the Chief Brand Officer and Marketing/Guest Experience leadership. It does not own creative execution or the strategy for Target-owned brands.

The position leads a focused portfolio of priority Target brand initiatives, including the brand strategy and roadmap for the Stores of Influence program. It partners with activation teams on execution, oversees the program budget, maintains planning and learning routines, and recommends opportunities for storytelling, expansion, and future investment.

Requirements

• 7+ years of relevant experience in brand management, creative strategy, brand strategy, or agency account or engagement management.
• Demonstrated experience stewarding a large consumer brand across functions, channels, or experiences and translating brand strategy into practical guidance.
• Experience leading cross-functional strategic initiatives from direction-setting through alignment and learning.
• Experience managing a program or initiative budget, including tracking spend, forecasting, and making investment recommendations.
• Strong understanding of how enterprise strategy, brand positioning, creative strategy, marketing, and guest experience work together.
• Excellent judgment, influence, and facilitation skills, including evaluating brand fit, clarifying tradeoffs, and aligning senior stakeholders without formal authority.
• Ability to synthesize guest, cultural, competitive, business, and performance inputs into a clear strategic point of view.
• Strong written, verbal, presentation, and storytelling skills, with the ability to make complex ideas clear and actionable.
• Strong taste level and creative point of view, with confidence to challenge off-brand work while respecting creative ownership.
• Comfort creating structure through ambiguity and balancing long-term brand stewardship with immediate business needs.
• Four-year degree or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Represent the Target brand with partners and leaders, serving as a connection point for significant brand questions, opportunities, and requests.
• Translate Target brand strategy, principles, and guardrails into practical guidance for consistent choices across experiences and touchpoints.
• Assess brand relevance, strategic fit, and readiness; connect work to appropriate teams and clarify ownership and decision rights.
• Identify work that does not reflect the Target brand, redirect it with partners before it advances, and escalate issues to Brand leadership when needed.
• Educate partners about the Target brand through tools, routines, and learning that help them apply it independently.
• Lead a focused set of priority Target brand initiatives by defining scope, success measures, and stakeholder alignment with the Chief Brand Officer.
• Manage the brand ecosystem, including facilitating and developing key initiatives.
• Coordinate cross-functional partners to manage dependencies, solve brand challenges, and translate strategy into aligned action.
• Lead the brand strategy and roadmap for the Stores of Influence program, partner with activation teams on execution, and recommend storytelling and expansion opportunities.
• Oversee the Stores of Influence budget by tracking spend against plan, partnering with Finance and activation teams on forecasting, and recommending investment tradeoffs to Creative leadership.
• Maintain planning routines, decision points, and a learning agenda for the Stores of Influence program as a Target brand and guest-experience platform.
• Capture learning from initiatives and recommend what should scale, remain market-specific, and inform future Target brand decisions.

Benefits

• Eligible team members and dependents may receive comprehensive health benefits and programs, which may include medical, vision, dental, and life insurance.
• 401(k).
• Employee discount.
• Short-term disability.
• Long-term disability.
• Paid sick leave.
• Paid national holidays.
• Paid vacation.
• Financial, education, and well-being benefits are referenced; details depend on eligibility.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior