VP, Group Creative Director

Job Description:

Vice President, Group Creative Director

Job Location: New York – 2 days per week onsite in Dentsu office required for MKTG team

Overview

MKTG Sports + Entertainment is seeking a visionary VP, Group Creative Director to lead big idea creative thinking, visual design, and strategic storytelling across some of the world’s most influential brands. This leader will bridge creative, design, and strategy—elevating the work, the team, and the culture during an exciting phase of growth and evolution. Experience in the sports industry ideal.

About You

We are looking for candidates with 12-15 years of experience with the following attributes:

• Natural Leader - You are an experienced leader that thrives on collaboration and developing a team of future leaders.
• Culturally Aware - Always living at the intersection of brands, culture, and creativity. Sports passion / experience is a plus.  
• Strategic Communicator – Exceptional presenter with the ability to translate complex ideas into compelling narratives.
• Deeply Curious – You have a passion for evaluating human behavior and the ability to develop innovative campaigns to meet reach consumers desires.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end creative development across sports and entertainment marketing, from concept through design execution
• Drive the creative development and activation of culturally relevant sponsorship platforms, turning strategy into innovative, high-impact fan experiences
• Develop client strategy, translating insights into fan-first sponsorship and activation approaches that meet brand objectives
• Guide the generation of insights and methodologies that keep campaigns forward-looking, innovative, and aligned with evolving cultural trends
• Lead the communication strategy, ensuring client presentations and internal materials clearly the rationale of creative concepts
• Provide thought leadership internally and externally — representing the agency at conferences, events, or in client strategy discussions
• Bring a knowledge of the competitive landscape as it pertains to data, human centered research, and scalable qualitative insights, delivering meaningful results for our clients
• Drive the development of new insights, cultural expertise, and methodologies for cultural analysis to ensure our brands and clients are culturally relevant
• Ability to review qualitative + quantitative research, and behavioral data and independently be able to dive into research tools to draw and interpret insights
• Drive the creative vision across accounts and campaigns, guiding multidisciplinary teams in strategy and multi-channel execution, with a strong focus on experiential and digital
• Explore and integrate innovative tools and technologies, including AI, to enhance creative processes and outputs
• Set quality standards and processes for all creative outputs, ensuring work is innovative, scalable, and fan-centric
• Ensure creative work meets technical, experiential, and platform-specific requirements (spatial / set design, UX/UI design principles, etc.)
• Oversee campaign and creative execution, coordination of creative teams and be responsible for collaborating/aligning with clients, account stakeholders, always ensuring coordination across teams
• Highly conceptual thinker with proven leadership experience directing multiple creative teams and managing clients

The Perks  

Not only will you be joining a multi-award-winning Agency with great culture, but you will also have the unique opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from our other offices across the globe. There is a whole heap of benefits that come with the role- a flexible holiday package starting at 20 days, corporate discounts, commuter benefits, cell phone reimbursement and much more. Our benefit plans have your total well-being in mind, and we offer an extensive list you can choose from to suit your needs.

About MKTG Sports + Entertainment

MKTG S+E is a global agency that harnesses the power of sports and entertainment for brands. For over 20 years, we've ignited fandom and innovated activation in the world of sports and entertainment to make something worth noticing, engaging, liking, sharing and remembering. We leverage deep INSIGHTS and our network of seasoned & creative team members to create IMPACT between properties, fans & brands.

Today, we help brands move at THE SPEED OF FANS which means we aim to know fans better than they know themselves. MKTG S+E is a part of the broader dentsu Sports International network.

Working with us

We’re an agency born of fanatics…fans of sports (yes, even pickleball).

Fans of music (we sing in the shower).

Fans of data (we’re proud nerds).

Fans of art (from exhibitions to film).

Fans of culture (this is huge). And that means we put it all in for what we love, truly understanding what fans need, want, feel, hate and love about the brands and properties we lead.

We’re led by our core values which focus on collaboration, community, inspiring change, pursuing excellence, and celebrating bravery – all of which are foundational to our culture and how we treat each other and our clients.

We’re a community where you are free to be you, where good work gets rewarded, and you are truly energized by the team around you. It’s more than just ‘warm & fuzzies’ – happy humans are vital to our commercial success. And together, we make magic.

Inclusion and Diversity

We’re proud to be different and that starts with our people. To us, representation means more than just diversity, it means true equity. We won’t define people by their race, gender, sexual-orientation, age or disability. Individuality is what makes us great, we want everyone to bring their full self to work and create something amazing. We are constantly evaluating our practices and policies, creating and sustaining pathways to promotion, and intentional in how we create and distribute resources, giving people what they need to grow. That’s what we care about. So, whether you’re joining us, or looking to move to a different part of the business, we work hard to make sure we create opportunities for everyone. We offer team member support through flexible working arrangements and schedules that promote work/life balance along with progressive parental and caregiver programs as well as opportunities to give back to the community as part of our global social responsibility efforts.

If you have any reasonable adjustment needs arising from a disability or medical condition to fully participate in the recruitment process, please discuss this with our recruitment teams.

Additional Information

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $136,850 - $228,275. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law. 

Benefits available with this position include: 

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance, 

• Life insurance, 

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance, 

• 401k, 

• Flexible paid time off, 

• At least 15 paid holidays per year, 

• Paid sick and safe leave, and 

• Paid parental leave. 

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com. 

To begin the application process, please click on the “Apply” button at the top of this job posting. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis, and qualified candidates will be contacted for next steps.  #LI-RB1 #LI-Hybrid

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work location, we expect our employees to be flexible to meet the needs of our Company and clients, which may include attendance in an office.

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