Creative Director

JOB SUMMARY:

The Creative Director leads creative strategy, brand identity, and creative operations for High Profile's marketing organization. This role directs creative across every channel, with depth in paid and organic social, and builds AI-enabled systems that let the team scale. The ideal candidate is comfortable operating at a strategic altitude while simultaneously able to get hands-on needed, doing the work and setting an example when needed. The Creative Director works with autonomy and brings fully formed recommendations to the VP of Marketing.

JOB DUTIES:

Core duties and responsibilities include the following.

Creative Strategy & Brand Stewardship

• Accountable for creative direction across every channel and format, including in-store, wholesale support, internal packaged brands, traditional media, paid digital, and organic social. Set the bar and give final creative approval before work goes to the VP of Marketing or other stakeholders.
• Lead creative ideation for tentpole campaigns. Facilitate brainstorms with marketing teams to generate the strongest ideas in the room. Set the creative throughline for each initiative: the core idea, tone, visual direction, and example executions, as inspiration for channel directors to build strategies against.
• Serve as the primary steward of brand identity across all channels once standards are established, holding the internal team and any outside partners or agencies accountable to them.
• Bring an external point of view on creative quality, benchmarking High Profile's output against strong work in retail, CPG, and adjacent categories, and raising the team's overall craft bar.

Channel Expertise & Growth Channels

• Define a high quality standard for High Profile's paid advertising creative across digital and traditional media, including display, paid social, video, direct mail, and out-of-home. Produce to that standard across all operating states and their compliance rules.
• Own creative direction and content quality for paid digital and organic social, partnering with the Digital team, which owns channel strategy, targeting, and media spend, to ensure content performs and reflects brand standards.
• Lead creative concepting for campaign and initiative-level work, including seasonal campaigns, brand initiatives, and new channel launches.
• Lead the Design Manager on creative direction for traditional media, maintaining quality and consistency in High Profile's highest-spend traditional channels.

Creative Operations & Systems

• Own and rethink High Profile's highest-volume recurring production processes, beginning with the weekly promotional workflow, identifying opportunities to reduce manual production time through AI-assisted tools and improved systems.
• Evaluate and implement AI and workflow tools across the creative team to increase throughput and creative capacity without adding headcount.

Team Leadership

• Provide strategic direction, workload prioritization, and professional development to the creative and design team.
• Build a scalable, well-documented creative operating model that teaches frameworks for creative thinking, brief writing, and critique.
• Report on creative team performance, capacity, and initiative progress to the VP of Marketing. Owns creative & design budget and manages to target.
• Builds productive working relationships within marketing and with cross-functional partners: buying & planning, retail, compliance, wholesale, and facilities.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Leads a team of four: Design Manager, Production Packaging Designer, Senior Graphic Designer, and Graphic Designer. This role directly manages the Design Manager, Packaging Designer, and Graphic Designer.  Creative Director will also direct external paid media agencies.

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

• 6+ years in creative roles, with at least 3 years as a Creative Director, Associate Creative Director, or equivalent.
• 3+ years at an integrated, full-service, or brand agency in a concept-leading role (copywriter, Design Manager, ACD, or CD), creating campaign ideas rather than only producing assets.
• Agency work for retail, consumer, or regulated-category clients, including campaigns that ran in-store as well as in paid, social, and CRM channels.
• Portfolio with integrated work from concept through execution across three or more channels.
• Portfolio evidence of distinctive paid media creative across digital and traditional channels.
• Strong, current point of view on social-native content, ideally with experience connecting content quality to measurable performance.
• Experience building or improving creative production systems and workflows, familiarity with AI-assisted workflows strongly preferred.
• Experience managing a creative or design team of 3+ people.
• Experience leading brainstorms or concept development with cross-functional partners who don't report to them, with examples of ideas others built out across channels.
• Comfortable operating with significant autonomy and bringing proactive recommendations to leadership.
• Cannabis or other regulated industry experience a plus, but not required.