Senior Art Director

Position Summary:

The Senior Art Director is responsible for leading the creative vision, approach, organisation and process to ensure the delivery of superior marketing and brand communications solutions. These are to exceed our clients' expectations, meet their budget requirements, and fulfil our client’s business goals.

The Art Director has overall responsibility for the output, on billable project delivery as well as business development and internal projects.

The Senior Art Director is responsible for presenting coherently and in a compelling manner the direction and business value of our capabilities to any client at any level up to the Board.

The Senior Art Director must motivate and manage creative staff in order to facilitate the delivery of internal and external project work.

The Senior Art Director is responsible for the profitable utilisation of the team, from the perspective of revenue earned as well as in terms of business and capability development.

Actively seek feedback from clients to quickly identify any training needs and concerns, acting promptly to rectify.

The Senior Art Director is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the client’s brand. This means reviewing any and all materials worked on through the Design Studio, as well as guaranteeing projects follow the best strategic direction for our clients.

Provide excellent design management of multiple projects and reprioritise as needed, as well as ensuring accurate schedules and timelines, whilst providing continual monitoring of the project especially around budget, deadline and adherence to the brand guidelines.

Assist the Studio Manager on the day-to-day studio operations and budget, including short and long-term operational planning with shifting priorities. Act as a support to the manager in the studio; ensure standard operating procedures are followed by designers, identify inefficiencies in workflow and drive a culture of continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the recruitment of skilled staff for the design team
• Actively seek feedback from team heads and key clients to quickly identify any training needs within the team, so that there are no weak areas
• Motivate the team
• Coach and mentor all members of the creative team
• Communicate widely, so that all team members feel part of any decisions and changes that may be required and to ensure a consistent service-wide goal is being achieved
• Establish and constantly review processes and procedures for the team to ensure work is always produced to impeccable standards and work comes in on budget
• Experience of handling budgets and managing people in a pressured, time-bound and delivery-centric environment is essential
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills will be required to discuss and agree Design Studio goals with senior management and to resolve any situations with clients that may arise
• Experience in managing and resolving personnel issues of all kinds, ensuring you act in accordance with our company HR policies
• Excellent team and personal time management skills
• A team player, willing to ask for, and provide, help to any member of the team where necessary

• Promote the studio across the global business, identifying business opportunities and areas where the Design Studio could add value to our clients
• Ensure high levels of client service and the efficient running of the studio through adherence to all best practice processes and recommending improvements
• Meet with clients on a regular basis to provide a progress health-check throughout the life of high-level projects. Identify and pro-actively plan for future projects that are known to the client
• Ability to build relationships with clients at all levels

• Take complex high-level design briefs, and communicate this information clearly to relevant members of the team/client in both written and verbal form
• Handle the project management of the larger high-level tasks, to ensure the creative and professional solutions are in line with the campaign’s strategic goals, the clients’ preferred style and brand guidelines
• Experience of managing a team of highly creative designers, helping them to deliver compelling and professional solutions within strict corporate guidelines to tight deadlines and on budget
• Exemplary project and people management skills are essential to ensure the smooth running of the diverse and creative team

• Foster a culture and environment that is conducive to creative inspiration, thinking and expertise
• Manage team environment that motivates creative development where all participants are heard and respected, leading teams to inspiring work, and making the process fun
• Understand, utilise, teach and champion processes and tools that facilitate productive creative sessions
• Work in collaboration with the Global Creative Director to develop realistic client proposals given the constraints of time and budget, to focus on the high impact areas of opportunity, and to create and deliver outstanding presentations
• Oversee production after the sale to insure creative integrity, be a creative resource to the team as client needs or budget changes, and further develop the relationship with the client

• Participate in key capabilities presentations
• Clearly articulate our brand promise and provide anecdotal examples of how that promise can provide value to our clients. Preparing and presenting new business proposals and pitches to clients
• Identifying and planning campaigns targeting new and existing clients with a view to selling our creative capabilities
• Promoting creative capabilities within our company and to clients
• Design and facilitation of Creative Propositions and work processes within the company

• Understand the clients' business objectives and how those objectives relate to the target audience
• Know your target audience, their culture, language, likes and dislikes developing creative solutions that speak to them and follow their client principles.

• Continually seek out new creative talent, and actively manage existing talent base

• Stay tuned in to business issues, particularly in key account industries
• Keep abreast of cultural events and trends that affect your audiences. Read magazines and newspapers, surf the web etc

Personal Competencies:

• Excellent client-facing and communication skills, with a confident personality
• Excellent verbal, written and listening communication skills, team-building skills, as well as creative and artistic presentation skills
• In-depth knowledge of brand positioning, industry trends
• Creative and artistic presentation skills
• Ability to convey ideas in an oral presentation in an exciting and engaging manner
• In-depth knowledge of brand positioning, industry trends
• Substantial experience within the design industry of which a considerable period of this experience would be as a senior creative developing impactful marketing campaigns
• Superb written communication skills, can convey complex concepts clearly
• Prior experience in digital design, with digital media experience and information design
• Exceptional Adobe software skills
• High degree of competency in HTML coding, a 'digital native’ with good experience as a web and digital designer
• Must be energetic with a proven strong track record. They will be responsible for helping the creative team grow through acquisition of new business and by carving out creative work on a range of existing and future technical led projects across the organisation
• A major focus of this position is to win new business with existing clients
• This focus will also require the candidate to develop strong relationships with Creative Account Directors and to promote the Hub creative team’s capabilities as well as the onsite teams and to sell creative resource
• The Senior Art Director will have the charisma and networking skills to successfully undertake this major element of the role
• The Senior Art Director will also be able to advocate creative design and the team’s capabilities in a clear and inspirational manner. This will require them to have very strong communication skills and the ability to enthuse and motivate clients and colleagues alike
• The Senior Art Director will work with a Senior Account Manager to ensure team utilisation and resourcing targets are met
• The Senior Art Director will also work with Senior Creative team members to ensure delivery of creative work on projects. The Senior Art Director will have day-to-day responsibility for project delivery and will be expected to run projects with a fair degree of autonomy.
• As part of this relationship the Art Director will support and mentor an established group of senior creative talent