ROLE

Executive Creative Director

At closerlook, the Executive Creative Director is charged with directing and producing great work for current clients, leading Creative efforts to grow existing business, and helping to secure new clients.

The Executive Creative Director is a capital-C Creative who enables the creation of work that is greater than the sum of its parts. Though an Executive Creative Director can be a specialist in either design, closerlook is searching for a candidate with a strong visual-design portfolio, experience overseeing content development and deployment, a strong book of conceptual thinking and digital execution, and a proven history of launching products successfully.

The Executive Creative Director (ECD) is the face of closerlook’s creative work for the client. They are also the internal-team leader of primary creative efforts on their accounts. The ECD ensures creative quality, consistency and conceptual coherence across the piece of business they lead creatively. 

More specifically, the ECD leads and participates in concepting for creative campaigns and/or omnichannel programs. Crucially, the ECD can articulate—and lead teams in articulating—creative concepts in terms of their tactical, digital expressions, constantly looking to push the work forward and challenging the team to push for breakthrough work. The ECD ensures that multiple, viable, strategically aligned and conceptually-rooted creative options are presented and sees that the project team executes these options flawlessly.

The ECD shapes work in advance of creative kickoff by gathering and sharing inspiring work, reviewing creative briefs, and assisting in estimating work.

In addition to the work on assigned accounts, the Executive Creative Director plays an important role in closerlook’s new-business activities, both organic growth (new work with existing client companies) and new business (new work with new client companies). Specifically, the ECD will be counted on to quickly and effectively ideate winning campaign ideas and to identify and direct the digital, tactical expressions of those campaigns. The ECD will present in finalist presentations.

The right candidate has a demonstrable history of using data-driven insight to ideate and execute creative that achieves business results for clients.

The ECD derives enormous creative satisfaction from pressing through ambiguity to solve complex problems in an entrepreneurial environment.

Experience as Executive Creative Director for an agency of record is a plus. Experience with pharmaceutical marketing is strongly preferred but not required. A combination of experience in non-pharma consumer marketing and pharmaceutical marketing is particularly preferred.

The Executive Creative Director is responsible for building the creative craft capabilities of closerlook’s Chicago-based Creative team. Candidates should be able to demonstrate experience managing, reviewing and developing creative talent.  

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Demonstrates the ability to make creative decisions that are sound both creatively and strategically and can explain those decisions thoughtfully to clients and partners across functions.
• Understands what kinds of projects demand innovation and which may not.
• Leads internal and client-facing creative meetings, facilitating both clients and agency personnel through the feedback process.
• Develops staff and delegates responsibilities to free themselves to assist with multiple engagements.
• Leads the effort to establish, enforce and evolve creative best practices at closerlook.
• Contributes to creative-concept and treatment development for marketing campaigns, even those outside of her assigned accounts.
• Communicates actively with project teams to keep deliverables on track and on schedule.
• Supports new-business pursuits with creative leadership and execution.
• Helps to build strong client relationships based on flawless, on-time and on-budget delivery of great creative work that drives results.
• Advises clients on business and marketing matters that extend beyond the creative artifact itself.
• Stays abreast of trends in both design and technology.
• Pending budget availability, attends conferences, lectures and workshops and reports back to teams with relevant learnings and insights.
• Participates in development and evolution of the closerlook creative process and closerlook workflow practices.
• Works with UX team to establish and develop guidelines and best practices for our digital design and production.

REQUIREMENTS

• At least 12+ years of experience as an advertising- or marketing-agency creative.
• 6+ years of experience as a manager.
• Experience leading teams to build strategically aligned, multi-channel creative for current and prospective clients.
• Demonstrates careful attention to detail in every aspect of his or her work.
• Demonstrates expertise in directing writing and design of interactive, motion-media and print projects.
• Demonstrates expertise in analyzing problems, anticipating consequences and eliminating obstacles to successfully complete projects.
• Exhibits a high level of creative and problem-solving skills with every project they work on.
• Has proven ability to present work to internal and external clients and incorporate feedback.
• Has experience making interaction-design/information-architecture/user-experience recommendations.
• Has a digital portfolio that includes a wide range of interactive work, business-to-business work, and multiple creative concepts brought to life across campaigns.
• Has a portfolio of agency work that includes strong, campaignable creative concepts
• Experience art directing photography and video shoots, and an understanding of the appropriate role of photography and motion-media in any given marketing tactic and campaign.
• Is a team-player with a positive attitude.
• Can motivate a team and calm a team, depending on what the team needs in the moment.
• Has empathy for the client’s point of view and fosters that empathy across the project team.
• Possesses the willingness and ability to adapt the work to accommodate new customer insight and client preferences.
• Experience in pharmaceutical marketing is strongly preferred.

ABOUT CLOSERLOOK, INC.

closerlook is a new type of marketing agency that helps biopharma brands make a difference in the lives of patients and those who care for them.

We focus on what matters most—the combination of better patient outcomes and bigger business impact.

Learn more at closerlook.com

EQUALITY FOR ALL: AT THE HEART OF WHAT MATTERS

At closerlook, equality for all is a core value that’s at the heart of what matters. We believe in building a diverse and inclusive culture across race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, mental health, and physical ability. We celebrate our differences and champion diverse thinking to drive innovation — in a safe environment so everyone can be their authentic selves. By valuing and promoting our different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences as strengths, we are positioned to best serve patients, healthcare professionals, and the communities around us.