Morningstar is a storied global brand with a 35-year history of independence and transparency in the financial services sector. Our mission is to empower investor success. We apply our research, editorial, technology and design excellence every day to illuminate investing for investors, advisors, asset managers and other audiences. Headquartered in Chicago, we operate globally with operations in 29 countries. We are looking for an exceptional leader to join our organization and lead our global design services team supporting brand, marketing, demand generation and sales.
The Morningstar marketing team is a dynamic group of modern marketing professionals working together in brand, design, product marketing, solutions marketing, digital/web, demand generation and regional/international marketing responsible for marketing strategy and execution to support our growth ambitions. As a part of this team, you will be responsible for scaling our marketing design production and execution.
The Role
The Head of Creative Services role is responsible for the developing the systems, processes, talent and agency relationships that scale and expand our global marketing design execution capabilities. The role partners with 1) marketing leadership and product marketing teams across the business units, 2) the central demand generation team and 3) web/digital team to ensure design excellence across the organization.
This role will be responsible for the successful and efficient operations to deliver marketing design and production work across a number of mediums, platforms and channels including web/digital, video, social media, print and event experiences. The Head of Creative Services will be expected to work closely with product design leadership to drive a rich, integrated and progressive customer experience that cohesively expresses the Morningstar brand at every interaction and opportunity.
This position is based in Chicago and reports to the Global Head of Marketing and includes a focus on the following areas:

• Morningstar Design Standards: Partner with the Brand team to ensure adherence to the Morningstar design standards, design assets and visual elements for use across all business units and centralized marketing teams. Establish appropriate governance and processes to oversee and guide adherence across a growing global firm.

• Design Planning: Continually engage all marketing teams to determine best methods and resources for the enablement, execution and measurement of strategic marketing plans.

• Design Production and Delivery: Develop a scalable design production function that brings together multiple delivery and execution models including central design capacity, dedicated business unit design capacity and 3rd-party agency capabilities. Build and manage a global network of 3rd-party agencies that provide a range of services from high value strategic design work to low-cost scaled production capabilities.

Technologies supporting the role include: Eloqua, Content Stack, Salesforce.com, Cvent, Big Marker, BrightTALK, Google Analytics, Google Optimize, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Tableau.
Responsibilities

• Partner with the Head of Brand Strategy and the Brand Systems Creative Director to deploy design assets, standards and governance that can be leveraged and scaled across Morningstar's global marketing functions.
• Provide a leading range of capabilities spanning project planning, reusable design assets and design production and delivery services to meet the needs of a dynamic, high growth global business.
• Implement a scalable and dynamic production planning and resourcing model that leverages shared/central-, distributed- and agency- resources and capabilities to enable a '24/5' service-level capacity that will enable our 500+ client-facing professionals to be brand ambassadors. This includes work across M&A, organic expansion, new product launches and market expansion.
• Develop and implement the appropriate management structure that empowers the team to elevate our brand and scale our design heritage to advance our position as a design leader and innovator in financial services.
• Lead, coach and manage a dynamic, world-class team of designers and creative professionals with an emphasis on professional development and career progression.
• Partner with key stakeholders to establish customer experience feedback loops that enrich our creative process and optimizes design resource management and allocation.
• Implement design excellence and quality assurance processes to ensure the highest design standards and consistency across a growing global marketing footprint.
• Develop a transparent, metric-driven approach to bring visibility to creative design measurement, experimentation, and progress. This may include metrics such as click-through rates, survey scores, engagement scores, competitive benchmarking, project completion rates, and overall budget and expense management.

Qualifications

• 12+ years experience in design or creative agency with leadership and/or operational management responsibilities.
• Proven success in bringing an operational discipline and execution mindset to the marketing design function to drive a highly effective center of excellence.
• Highly effective collaborating in a matrix environment across centralized, decentralized, and outsourced marketing and design teams.
• Ability to build strong relationships and work effectively on a highly cross-functional team.
• Adaptable and flexible within a fast-moving, dynamic, and often-shifting business environment.
• Obsessive advocacy for user-centered research and a 'design thinking' approach to creative problem solving along with a strong 'test-and-learn' mindset.
• Superior leadership qualities with a proven ability to lead, coach, and develop talent with egoless collaboration and respectful influence.
• Excellent written, presentation, and verbal communication skills, including the ability to convey complex concepts clearly and simply.
• Bachelor's degree.

Morningstar employees are required to be fully vaccinated or submit to regular testing to work in any office. Morningstar's vaccine policy may be modified to comply with evolving legal requirements and other changing circumstances.
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