Lead Creative Strategist, Brand

Target • Minneapolis, MN

4d • $95,000 - $171,000 • 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 to help teams across Target make choices that create a clear, consistent brand experience.

As a hub of Target brand expertise, the role translates brand strategy into practical guidance, educates partners, connects teams, evaluates brand fit, and upholds brand standards. It draws on guest, cultural, business, and performance inputs to identify insights and opportunities and facilitate decisions that strengthen how the Target brand appears across priority experiences and channels.

The role partners with Creative, Marketing, insights, and enterprise teams to clarify objectives, ownership, and intended outcomes, and guides work through ambiguity. It 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. The role does not own creative execution or strategy for Target-owned brands.

Requirements

• At least 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 the 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 on the Target brand using tools, routines, and learning that help them understand and apply it independently.
• Lead a focused set of priority Target brand initiatives, defining scope, success measures, and stakeholder alignment in coordination with the Chief Brand Officer.
• Manage the brand ecosystem, including facilitation and development of 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 spending against plan, forecasting with Finance and activation teams, 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.
• Partner with Creative, Marketing, insights, and enterprise teams to clarify objectives, ownership, and intended outcomes, guide work through ambiguity, and elevate significant decisions and tradeoffs to senior leadership.

Benefits

• Eligible team members and dependents may have access to 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

What This Job Offers

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