Creative Director

About the role

MSI Communications is hiring a Creative Director to lead the creative team at our Anchorage, Alaska headquarters. This is a senior leadership seat. You set the creative bar for a full-service agency, present the work to clients, run the department as a business, and build the people around you into stronger art directors than they were when you arrived. The role reports to the President of MSI and is built to grow into a VP of Creative Services.

We are looking for someone who was once a maker and is now a big thinker. You came up through design, art direction, or copy, you have the portfolio to prove it, and you have outgrown the need to touch every piece yourself. Your job is to make the ideas bigger, the team stronger, and our clients' growth faster.

For more information or to apply directly, please visit us at https://www.msialaska.com/jobs/creative-director/

What you will do

• Lead the work
• Own the creative product across every MSI client and channel: brand campaigns, broadcast and video, digital, social, print, out-of-home, and web design.
• Set the bar and hold it. Run critique, push concepts past the first safe idea, and know when the work is ready.
• Lead creative for new business: pitches, RFP responses, and the spec work that wins accounts.
• Partner with strategy, account service, PR, media, and video so every idea is grounded in what the client needs and built to perform where it runs.
• Present to clients as the creative voice of the agency. Present the idea with conviction, take the feedback, and come back with work the client and the team both believe in.
• Represent MSI creative in the Anchorage business community, in the industry, and in award competitions.
• Scope creative work, estimate hours, and deliver on budget. Know what the work costs, what it bills, and the difference between the two.
• Build the team
• Mentor designers and art directors every day, in critique and in the work, and help each of them grow.
• Build a recurring program for sharpening craft, concepting, and presentation skills across the department.
• Lead by example. When a deadline demands it, work alongside the team, then get back out of the way.

Requirements

• Ten or more years in agency creative, including at least three years leading a creative team as a Creative Director, Associate Creative Director, or Group Creative Director.
• A portfolio of integrated campaign work across video or broadcast, digital, social, print, and out-of-home, with results you can speak to and a clear sense of which parts were yours.
• Craft credibility on at least one side of the work: design and art direction, or copywriting and concepting.
• A track record of presenting creative to senior clients and leading creative in competitive pitches.
• Experience running the business side of a creative department: scoping and estimating, managing budgets and timelines, and directing vendors and freelancers.
• Working fluency with generative AI tools in a creative workflow, and a point of view on where they help and where they do not.