Executive Creative Leader — Global Campaign Visionary in Manchester

THE DETAILS:

• Department/Hub: Creative
• Reports to: CEO
• Responsible for: Creative Directors / Group Creative Directors
• Hours: Full time
• Location: Manchester, Northern Quarter. We operate a Hybrid working policy of ideally minimum 3 days in Manchester HQ per week.

THE ROLE:

We are looking for a commercially and creatively outstanding individual to drive our agency’s creative vision and develop an exceptional creative department that delivers culturally-impactful, award-winning campaigns for our global clients. Your job purpose is to be the guardian and executor of our creative vision, responsible for driving creativity across the agency as well as building a high performing creative team, that pushes the boundaries of creativity in order to deliver effective and impactful campaigns for our clients.

Please note that we are not looking for a Creative Director looking for a step up in their career. We will only consider individuals who are currently at Executive Creative Director level or above. This is a major hire for us and we need someone who brings an ability to mentor a team of high performing Creative Directors.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Inspiring big conceptual, social-first, culture-leading campaigns by consulting and advising across the agency, as well as driving action and accountability.
• Overseeing the inspiration, motivation and performance of all the creative team.
• Exceptional leadership of the team to utilise the talents of contribution of all members and build on and increase the performance of individuals and the team, with a particular focus of supporting direct reports to lead their teams with excellence.
• Ensuring your direct reports (Creative Directors) and the teams that report into them are growing and developing their craft, and deliver on both Hub OKRs and their personal OKRs.
• Developing cultural intelligence, advertising skills and creative / technical skills in the Creative team to improve our creative outputs.
• Working with Hub Leaders to establish excellent creative feedback rhythms and rituals to enhance the quality of campaigns, and model these.
• Establish and deliver creative best practice processes across the agency that encourage the development of exceptional creative campaigns.
• Setting the standards and expectations for creative briefing.
• Leading client conversations to support the sale of more creatively challenging and diverse work, and coaching the Creative team in this.
• Growing client confidence in Ear to the Ground creative ideas resulting in the development of innovative and award winning cultural campaigns.
• Being an external presence on behalf of Ear to the Ground within the marketing and creative industries, with clients and beyond, to showcase us as an exceptional creative agency and support new business and growth.
• Actively lead new business conversations and pitches to win work with the most culturally connected brands in the world.
• Providing ideas and solutions to business challenges, having strategic conversations and representing the creative viewpoint in business level discussions at Board level.
• Overseeing the delivery of all of ETTG’s campaigns from ideation to delivery to ensure the work is strategically underpinned, rooted in Fan Intelligence, effective and profitable.
• Driving excellent commercial awareness and performance across the Creative team.
• Overseeing the delivery of all ETTG creative workshops with clients ensuring they improve creative ideation and concepts.
• Championing and leading the inclusion of diversity of thought in all campaigns.
• Overseeing the deployment of resources (internal and freelance) across campaigns, pitches and agency work to ensure it is delivered effectively, on time and in budget.

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

• Must have previous Chief Creative Officer or Executive Creative Director experience.
• Experience of running a multi-disciplinary creative department with focus on conceptual outputs and executional brilliance.
• A culturally connected individual that cares about sport, fashion and entertainment and can credibly talk to the most forward thinking global brands.
• Substantial creative agency experience (minimum 10 years) working in relevant industries that have given you experience to advise on and drive brilliant creative campaigns.
• A significant portfolio of world-class work with a focus on global consumer brands.
• Proven ability to win major, high pedigree advertising awards on work directly under your direction - Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Effies, Webbies etc. (ideally on social-first campaigns).
• Significant weight of multi-channel experience with both social-first outputs and high-quality creative production.
• Strong capability to ensure creative teams execute effective campaigns consistently, in the style and voice of the brand, on brief driving real ROI / impact for some of the world's biggest global brands.
• Ability to create big, bold, ideas as well as effective social-first digital and direct response campaigns.
• Commercially astute and be able to balance a practical skillset with an inspiring creative one.
• The ability to motivate, inspire, manage, create as well as be open to stewarding in new creative technology and AI.
• Experience regularly working with a Board team effectively; ability to develop, present and deliver creative strategy with and to the Board.
• High level of cultural awareness and intelligence, with experience applying this to a professional context.
• Excellent experience developing and selling culturally relevant brand creative.
• Passion for and savvy in youth-culture.
• A charismatic and intelligent communicator with the ability to command a room and drive interesting conversations.
• A highly experienced, excellent creative leader who has developed high performance in their team.
• Excellent ability to provide accountability and effective consequence management, and have challenging conversations that lead to greater performance and an inspired team.
• Given this individual has to inspire and guide so many different personalities and skillsets - intuition, empathy, patience and exceptional leadership are critical.
• Exceptional listening skills and ability to take on and respond to feedback.
• Entrepreneurial and business savvy.
• Sophisticated POV on DE&I, with personal/professional investment in promoting more diversity within creative departments.
• A passion for creativity and making a positive impact on the industry.
• High energy, passion and excitement about the agency, our clients and our work.
• Passion for and modern understanding of sports, gaming, music and culture.

THE AGENCY:

Ear to the Ground is a global sport, gaming, and entertainment creative agency with a unique model that sets us apart. We are driven by Fan Intelligence®, our global network of 12,000 influential tastemakers and fans. Our real time insight into what fans truly want, enables us to create compelling work that consistently pushes the boundaries of culture.

We pride ourselves on being the agency that listens better than anyone to solve our clients' challenges, maximise their sport, gaming and entertainment partnerships, and ultimately build brands that lead culture. We’ve helped clients including Nike, PlayStation, JD, NBA, Coca-Cola and 2K turn fans into consumers by delivering culturally relevant, fan-first campaigns that inspire emotional connection and measurable business impact.

You can learn more about the agency with our 2025 agency show reel here.

OUR CULTURE:

We are dedicated to making Ear to the Ground an amazing place to work where people grow, develop and thrive. We pride ourselves on our dynamic and exciting culture, excellent support of staff and fantastic benefits package. We have made it our mission to lead the way in being an inspiring, future-thinking, creative agency and are invested in our people because they are the ones that will make that happen.

Some of our benefits include:

• Flexible & hybrid working
• Birthday off
• Workplace nursery benefit
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave
• Private medical insurance and health cash plan
• Enhanced sick leave
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Dog friendly office
• EV salary sacrifice scheme
• Personal development coaching
• + more