Kentico Cloud is looking for an inspiring and collaborative Associate Creative Director to develop and drive our brand identity, creative voice and experience design across every step of our customer journey. The right candidate has serious creative chops and deep experience building memorable brands, but still considers themselves a maker who loves to roll up their sleeves to get things done alongside their team. They have a balanced perspective when it comes to art and copy, even though they came from one side or the other. This position sits in our Marketing team and reports to the Vice President of Marketing for Kentico Cloud.

Characteristics:

You are an adept storyteller and a passionate brand champion, who knows how to inspire by taking the lead without needing to always take the spotlight. You humbly create breathtaking work that can often be described as a conceptual “zip file;” creative which is packed with deeper strategic context that sits with the audience, “unpacks” itself and creates memorable staying power. You’ve been there and done that, having evolved brands both agency and client-side, and are ready to take on the opportunity of a lifetime to create a new brand for a freemium SaaS product that is approaching hyper growth. You’ve create high-performing “mini-agencies” inside of software companies, striking a tricky balance between creativity and operational excellence, knowing when to go external and when to build in-house, focusing on the brilliance of the work rather than the lure of the land-grab.

Key Areas of Impact:

• Develop a creative center of gravity for our brand and position us dominate our category
• Devise imaginative and effective campaign concepts that create a multiplier on demand-gen investments
• Build and lead our creative team, being both the creative muse and an effective mentor for the team
• Be the voice of the broader strategic context within the company – use business strategy as a creative constraint for yourself and the team
• Serve as our company’s subject matter expert on brand purpose, integrated campaign best practices, trends and opportunities
• Know what is right for the brand – fight for it; know when to partner and when to challenge
• Obsess over the details, love typography without being pedantic, respect the grid while being unafraid to break it, etc.
• Invest in the craft – constantly up-level yourself and the team
• Design our model for creative operational excellence, managing the process for design, development and production of all online and offline assets
• Partner with internal teams (Marketing, Merch, etc.) to develop strategically sound and holistic brand and marketing creative (emails, social, promotions) executed with excellence and used consistently across all touch-points
• Manage creative agency partnerships, ensuring clear, “wiggle-free” scopes of work, healthy and productive relationships, and “next-level” work
• Create and manage the Brand marketing budget: ensure that best value is always achieved and that spend stays within targets
• Work effectively with external vendors and internal colleagues to complete projects within budget and timing goals

Skills/Requirements:

• 8+ years of brand development and creative design
• 4+ years of building and managing creative teams, preferably inside of software/SaaS companies
• Killer portfolio
• Past agency experience at the Art/Creative director level
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills
• Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite
• Experience in utilizing the principles of design, color theory, typography, and graphics for online responsive experiences, print and video
• Experience in video production and editing
• Bachelors degree in graphic design or related discipline