Creative Director

ON BOARD EXPERIENTIAL

On Board Experiential is an award-winning, full-service experiential marketing agency that creates meaningful brand experiences throughout the world from our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Our clients include: Nike, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Instagram,  Activision, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, and Salesforce (to name a few). Cool, cool, but what’s it like to work here? Event Marketer has repeatedly recognized OBE as one of the Best Places to Work in Events, and we couldn’t agree more. The most important part of our business is our people, or “unicorn employees” as we call them. They are hardworking, brave and make magic happen on the regular. But under each majestic exterior, is a human deserving of a healthy work life balance. That’s why we believe in company retreats and corporate yearbooks, wellness challenges and grown-up field trips. We are one big supportive family, and that is ultimately what keeps our superstars coming back every day.  

SUMMARY OF POSITION

As Creative Director, you bring big, transformative ideas to the table and lead cross-functional teams to realize grand visions. As an experienced creative that blends visionary strategic thinking and art direction, you work to inspire game-changing ideas in collaboration with our team of experts and articulate them into clear and powerful concepts.

You examine all aspects of client problems and briefs to create thoughtful, viable and unexpected creative solutions. 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, and 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

• Develop and present winning new business pitches and project work that expands business relationships.
• 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.
• Lead Creative project teams by consistently clarifying team dynamics and next steps, monitoring progress, providing helpful critique, and infusing big ideas into the work, thus consistently delivering inspired creative ideas and approaches to top clients.
• Guide and contribute to 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 clients’ 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.
• 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 expertise that enhances the work, heightens your ability to collaborate with diverse talent, and creates an inclusive environment for expressing authentic and diverse perspectives. Foster deep understanding and empathy for the given brand’s intended audience on each project 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.
• Lead 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, web and interactive contractors, to complete creative materials for each project that add value.
• Recap and reflect on all creative pitches and projects in order to share key learnings and elevate the work.

OBE PROCESS IMPACT:

• Collaborate with Account, Production and Technology 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 agency leadership in terms of 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, 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, 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.
• Contribute to hiring processes to help recruit, evaluate and secure boundary-pushing new talent who complement and elevate the full creative team.

DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION/ EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Design or related field.
• Fluid work experience and technical capabilities with Mac OS and standard creative suite of programs including Adobe CC, and collaborative Keynote, Microsoft Office, and Google products.
• 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 or interest in technology, lifestyle, sports and/or entertainment industries is a plus.

OTHER QUALITIES AND SKILLS

• 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. Actively 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. Justification of decisions to internal and external stakeholders that brings the team with you and keeps those around you inspired.
• Willingness to work non-traditional hours and travel as needed.