Creative Director

ABOUT THINK TRUE

Think True is a statement. An action. A commitment

to ourselves, our clients, and our work.

Our mission is to build the best brand experiences by placing the who at the heart of our why.

We create community impact through sports, entertainment, and culture.

We are a minority-owned agency.

We are empowered by our people.

We are Think True.

SUMMARY OF POSITION

As Creative Director, you bring big, transformative ideas to the table and motivate cross-functional teams to realize grand visions. You examine all aspects of client problems and briefs to create thoughtful, viable, and unexpected creative solutions.

As an experienced creative that blends visionary strategic thinking and design direction, you work to inspire game-changing ideas in collaboration with our team of experts and articulate them into clear and powerful concepts.

You’re a true team player with expertise in experiential marketing strategy. Your leadership elevates the agency’s creative output, resulting in award-winning work. You have the passion and creative chops to crank up brand impact for some of the world’s leading companies.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS

CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

• Thoughtfully develop and present winning new business pitches that expand business relationships and agency opportunities.
• Understand and work within project parameters, including client goals and requirements, internal goals, audience experience, technical constraints, budget, and timeline to create industry-leading creative work.
• Elevate the work. Lead Creative project teams by consistently clarifying team dynamics and next steps, monitoring progress, providing helpful critique, and infusing big ideas into the work, and thus consistently delivering inspired creative work that meets or exceeds client expectations.
• Guide and contribute to the strategic development of integrated experiential and virtual marketing campaigns throughout all phases of a project, overseeing planning, concept development, design, and implementation. “Get your hands dirty” by producing and guiding fantastic work that solves our client’s business challenges in unique and innovative ways.
• Be the conduit between upfront strategy development and design exploration and execution:
• STRATEGY: Clarify and anchor the client brief, objectives, and KPIs; conduct primary and secondary research on the brand, audience, and other key project elements, distill and curate ideas based on strategic insights, contribute best-in-class storytelling and copywriting, validate recommendations with clear strategic rationale, pivot and adjust with strategic excellence, etc.
• ART DIRECTION: Coordinate with diverse design talent to bring together the best possible aesthetics that are simultaneously on-brand and forward-looking.
• Interface with internal teams, vendors, and clients for creative sell-in and review.
• Remain current with industry trends and techniques, striving for best-in-class output across all facets of ideation, strategy, art direction, and beyond.
• CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE: Stay up to date on current events, culturally relevant movements and happenings, DE&I best practices and terminology, and a vast range of subject matter that enhances the work, heightens your ability to collaborate with diverse talent, and creates an inclusive environment for expressing authentic and diverse perspectives.
• AUDIENCE-CENTRICITY: Foster deep understanding and empathy for the given brand’s intended audience that enhances the work.

CREATIVE PROCESS

• Act as the catalyst that mixes and translates ideas, pushes concepts and finds the best way to push our overall creative and design output.
• Conduct and participate in both internal and client brainstorming sessions, workshops, and idea rakes designed toward specific outputs and solutions that address client’s strategic and tactical business needs.
• Develop robust KPI plans per program that prove ROI for clients and further business relationships.
• Coordinate with talent and resources, including vendors, photographers, printers, fabricators, freelancers, and web and interactive contractors, to complete creative materials for each project that add value.
• Recap and reflect on all creative pitches and projects to share key learnings and elevate the work.

AGENCY PROCESS + IMPACT

• Collaborate with Account, and Production team leads to ensure all client deliverables are being met on a timely basis with consistency and high quality. Stay aligned with your team to foster camaraderie and industry-leading work that is also profitable.
• Contribute to guiding and streamlining best practices and standard processes to drive the agency’s capabilities and collaboration practices forward.
• Be a sponge for industry trends, sharing insights and inspiration with the agency at large.

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT + GROWTH

• Encourage curiosity, and strive to continually increase the creative skill level of the department.
• Provide mentorship and direction to strategists, writers, designers, artists, and creative technologists, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and providing regular feedback to help them move forward along their growth path.
• Manage creative team members or freelancers as necessary to ensure high-quality work output, career satisfaction, growth, and retention.
• Work with the VP of Creative and Think True Leadership team to help evolve the design team and agency offering. Consistently make informed recommendations on what is best for the team.
• Contribute to hiring processes to help recruit, evaluate, and secure boundary-pushing new talent who complement and elevate the full creative team.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Design, or a related field.

EXPERIENCE

• A solid portfolio of 8+ years that includes unique, successful and relevant experiential marketing projects (at least 3 years at an experiential agency).
• Work samples that include strategy, copywriting and/or design personally owned and delivered as part of your role in the project/program.
• Demonstrated work, personal experience in sports and entertainment, multi-cultural, technology, and lifestyle industries.

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

• Effective communicator and storyteller with the ability to find the best approach to verbally and visually communicate an idea AND articulately present it to other team members, clients and agency partners.
• Excellent listener, able to get to the heart of what the client and/or team is telling you. Seeks to understand and integrate the most poignant ideas and insights into project work and agency processes.
• Experience collaborating with teams of strategists, designers, artists, technologists, producers, account managers, and content developers.
• Strategic and visually compelling point-of-view demonstrated in all creative output.
• Adept at multi-tasking, with an ability to coordinate multiple projects and resources while maintaining excellence.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
• Inspirational and motivating leadership, intuitive enough to know when to push yourself and your team to make ideas better
• Ambitious self-starter.
• Adaptability to changes and pivots.
• Ability to seamlessly integrate feedback from clients, internal team members, and partners while staying aligned with project objectives. Providing justification of decisions to internal and external stakeholders that brings the team with you and keeps those around you inspired.

OTHER QUALIFICATIONS

• Work Location: Los Angeles area preferred
• Willingness to work a hybrid schedule (1-2 days in the office per week) and travel up to 25% of the time.

Compensation Range: $140,000 - $220,000 annually. This is the pay range Think True believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on level of experience, relevant skills, professional certifications, market pay, and demand for the role. Think True reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. For the permanent full-time role, Benefits include medical/dental/vision insurance, employer-paid basic life and personal accident insurance. Also included: Annual Profit Sharing/Bonus Plan based on the company’s performance and your individual performance, 401(k), Healthcare Flexible Spending Account, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, PTO, STD/LTD insurance benefits.

Think True is An Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age or any other federally protected class.