About This Role
Leading with creative vision and energy, the Creative Director sets the creative bar across brand, marketing, and product work, ensuring that thinking and making are always aligned. This role involves hands-on concepting, writing, and presenting, especially for new business and early engagements, before directing the team through design, production, and delivery. You will manage and mentor the Design Director, who will continue to own day-to-day design delivery while you set the overall creative direction.
Responsibilities
- Partner with research and strategy leads to translate audience insights and positioning into clear creative briefs and platforms
- Bring a creative point of view to the strategy team's category and trend research, identifying opportunities for creative differentiation
- Hold every concept to the strategy and challenge work that prioritizes internal stakeholders over market needs
- Build brand identity and design systems, including motion principles, that are consistent across all touchpoints
- Champion AI-ready brand systems designed for discoverability, adaptability, and agentic experiences
- Guide naming and verbal identity to ensure strategic intent is carried into every word
- Shape brand architecture to ensure portfolio brands strengthen each other
- Own creative guidelines that provide clear direction and a high standard for client teams
- Build campaign systems that scale across channels and initiatives
- Direct creative specifically built for each channel
- Oversee content creation, from concept through final cut
- Lead creative for website design, from landing pages to full editorial platforms
- Work with research, CX, and engineering leads to align brand promise with product reality
- Ensure product design systems maintain brand integrity as products launch and evolve
- Partner with CX on prototyping and concept testing to ensure brand consistency before scaling investment
- Help define how AI is integrated into interfaces and experiences to advance the brand
- Partner with the CEO and EVP on new business, from initial conversation through final pitch
- Lead the creative aspects of pitches and proposals, including concept development, narrative, visual direction, and case study selection
- Develop a point of view and spec creative (when appropriate) to demonstrate how Fort West can address prospect needs
- Help scope creative work in proposals to ensure realistic and winnable timelines, team, and deliverables
- Present creative in pitch meetings alongside the CEO and EVP
- Keep Fort West's credentials, case studies, and capabilities materials current and compelling
- Manage and mentor the Design Director through regular one-on-ones, candid feedback, and a shared development plan
