eCommerce Creative Lead (Hybrid)
Address: USA-IL-Chicago-300 South Riverside Plaza
Store Code: Marketing Services (27144)
What’s Our Dish
Announced in May 2018, Peapod Digital Labs (PDL) is an Ahold Delhaize USA company that powers the eCommerce and digital strategies for the Great Local Brands of Ahold Delhaize USA. Accelerating growth in digital and personalization capabilities, PDL is an innovation lab focused on meeting the changing needs of customers, regardless of when, where, and how consumers choose to shop.
Browse The Aisles
This role is primarily responsible for leading the creative direction and execution of the Brands’ strategy across all consumer touch-points. This is a highly collaborative role that will deliver the vision, quality and consistency of our Brand experience and ensure that experience is optimized for digital user experience across multiple devices as well as offline channels. They will focus on defining and curating the essence of our brand, its value proposition and how it comes to life in our go-to-market strategy. The role also has responsibility for providing strategic creative direction for our in-house Creative Services team, driving the Retail Publishing calendar and delivering best in class promotion and merchandising capabilities through outstanding digital visual design.
Recipe for Success - What's “in store” for the role
- Develops best in class Brand digital design & communication strategies based on in-depth understanding of customer needs and insights. Ensures continuous alignment with ADUSA Brand design lead communication strategies.
- Coach and guide Creative Services team to evolve talent enhancing current skill sets through approach of continuous striving for next-level excellence.
- Strategically connected to industry to evolve personal skills to guide team as digital design evolves and grows to maximize advanced visual capabilities.
- Partners with Consumer Insights & Analytics and other internal/external resources to develop, maintain and evolve a strong customer value proposition for PDL.
- Partners with Director of UX/UI and other business teams to ensure that their respective design & messaging efforts complement and align with PDL and Great Local Brand strategies.
- Leads collaboration with Great Local Brands Creative Leads to create necessary brand alignment for PRISM creative.
- Needs to be seen as expert strategic resource for Great Local Brands in recommending innovations in digital design.
- Translates marketing goals, consumer insights and industry best practices into strategic on-brand content and creative concepts.
- Highly skilled at promoting Brand, voice, image, and identity across all relevant channels supported through the best-in-class visual communication standards. Expert at modelling design standards provided by brand to create consistency in messaging while serving as a leading voice in evolving great local brands design from a print focused skill set to outstanding digital communication.
- Aligns continuously with Sales and Merchandising and Operations to coordinate all brand efforts.
- Oversees the management, application, and evolution of site standards, templates, and style guides, and ensures Brand standards are consistently met.
- Act as an in-house leader of best practices in grammar, messaging, writing and visual style.
- Partners with PDL Product and User Experience teams to drive the Brand strategy across the entire customer journey; ensure shopper needs are met during the customer journey through strategic use of content.
- Lead efforts to create, manage and distribute compelling, persuasive content based on a thorough understanding of business objectives, user needs and best practices.
- Conduct ongoing usability tests to gauge content effectiveness and proactively make recommendations based on results.
- Foster a culture of innovation, testing, and learning across functional partners and different content channels to establish a continuous improvement cycle.
- Delivery of clear dashboard that reflects appropriate KPI’s for content modules.
- Leverage external market data, web analytics (e.g. search data) and shopper insights to develop content themes/topics and execute a plan to develop the assets that support a point of view and educate customers that leads to critical behavioral metrics.
- Establish improved work flow for requesting, creating, editing, publishing, and retiring content.
- Conducting periodic competitive audits, extract insights and lead dissemination of insights and action planning across relevant teams to maintain design excellence vs. competition.
- Work with other internal stakeholders (e.g. PR, HR and Operations) to craft compelling communications materials and pitch decks for both internal and external use as needed.
- Manages creative resources, budgets, workloads, and schedules to meet deadlines, and optimizes processes to improve efficiency and quality.
- Responsible for team development by clearly articulating strategy and goals, establishing clear job expectations, managing to those expectations and providing ongoing coaching.
- Responsible for managing clear career development plans and supportive training programs to continue to build skills and experiences.
- Review and enhance, where necessary, all processes, measurements, information systems and analytics capabilities that are needed to enable the Brand and Creative team to operate efficiently and effectively.
The Essentials in Your Cart - The required ingredients
- 10+ years experience
- Prior experience in Creative Director role required. Experience leading junior and mid-level teams and grow capabilities and skillsets in a positive and supportive environment
- Significant management experience is required – proven track record of managing teams, allocating resources and providing day to day coaching
- Experience with a variety of software, including Photoshop, Illustrator InDesign, Flash, etc.
- Knowledge of best practices in design, copy, user interface and interactive design, including image optimization
- Knowledge of HTML, DHMTL CSS preferred
- Familiarity of JIRA or other Publishing tools preferred
- Knowledge of Customer Journey Mapping process and tools
Extra Spices - What you should bring to the table
- Strong Creative and Brand-building capabilities
- Strong relationship management and interpersonal skills; proven influencing skills and a proven ability to persuade others towards an idea or goal
- Works with a sense of urgency and responds well to deadlines
- Personal accountability and self-directed
- Passion and energy for delivering results through others and inspires others to achieve; knows how to bring others along
- Bias towards a service mindset for colleagues, business partners and intermediaries
- Innovative and creative thinking – a demonstrated ability to bring fresh thinking to an organization
- Highly resourceful – stretches people and money; compresses time
Join Us at Our Table
Peapod Digital Labs is a forward-thinking company with a strong legacy of innovation. We recognize who powers our progress – our people! We offer a great variety of benefits and perks to our employees, including: great health care options, including PPO and HSA plans (with company contributions), dental, vision, flexible spending accounts, a 401k with strong company match and immediate vesting, and generous and flexible paid time off.
We are an equal opportunity employer. We comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to sex, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, marital status (including civil unions), military service, veteran status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions), genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, legally recognized disability, domestic violence victim status or any other characteristic protected by law.
Job Requisition: 246046_external_USA-IL-Chicago_4272022