Creative Lead in Horsham

A bit about us

Do you want to inspire everyone to create a better world for animals? At the RSPCA, we believe all animals deserve kindness and respect. We work for the benefit of every animal – as well as pets, that includes farmed animals, wildlife, and animals used in science. Choose a career with us and make a difference for every kind.

We are recruiting for a Creative Lead, a unique opportunity to take the reins of our in-house creative engine. This isn’t just a management role; it’s a high autonomy leadership position designed for a creative visionary to deliver impactful and meaningful work to engage our audiences.

Contract: Permanent

Working hours: 35 hours - Monday to Friday.

Hybrid role: You will work from home and from either the London or Horsham office. For this role, there is an expectation to be on-site with some regularity to be able to lead the team and attend meetings.

What a day might look like for you

The RSPCA brand is award-winning, bold and engaging. We have huge aspirations and want to ensure that our brand remains competitively strong, is able to inspire, disrupt and drive action; as Creative Lead, you will play a key role in this. You will lead our in-house creative teams to deliver an exceptional service that elevates the RSPCA's purpose across the creative suite - from voice to visual - ensuring our brand shows up consistently across products and channels, optimising every touchpoint, from print-led fundraising appeals to digital campaigns.

As our Creative Lead, you are a key brand champion and will lead a multidisciplinary team to deliver innovative high-quality, efficient, and audience led engaging content, raising standards across the business.

Key Responsibilities:

• As a strategic leader, you will work alongside the Marketing Lead to translate complex briefs into impactful creative responses for multi-channel campaigns.
• You’ll manage the ‘Voice' and ‘Visual' managers to foster a culture of collaborative, innovative, agile, and digital first thinking.
• You will influence and improve the standard of all creative outputs, whether produced in-house, by freelancers, or by agencies.
• You will champion innovation and identify how new tools and technologies can enhance our output, while ensuring our brand authenticity remains intact.

What will help you succeed in this role:

For this role, we need a talented individual who can lead, inspire and empower teams and wider stakeholders to produce successful creative brand solutions aligned to our business objectives. Along with this, you must also have:

• Significant experience leading high performing, creative teams (ideally in a hybrid environment - in house or agency), along with the ability to identify and develop talent.
• Extensive experience of understanding brands and bringing brand creative to life.
• A deep understanding of what makes best in class creative: Design, Words, Photography and Video; you know what good looks like in every medium.
• Expert knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) and an understanding of digital-first principles, accessibility and print production.
• The diplomacy and drive to challenge briefs when necessary and the negotiation skills to resolve conflicts across a complex large-scale organisation.
• A positive and proactive approach with excellent problem solving skills.
• Creative hunger, a drive to excel built on a current understanding and knowledge of market trends, with the desire to implement "test and learn" approaches to creative work.

If you are an outstanding creative leader, a confident decision maker with a superb eye for detail and a passion for producing great work, we want to hear from you.

Successful candidates for certain RSPCA roles will need to undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Applicants must have the legal right to work in the UK - We are unable to sponsor visas at RSPCA.

Final note from us & good luck with your application! This is likely to be a two stage interview process, with the first stage interviews being held remotely on the 1st and the 2nd of April. We want to ensure we do all we can to give you a positive candidate experience through our recruitment. Whilst we do try to give feedback where we can, sometimes due to receiving high levels of applications, this may not always be possible.

We are building the future of a diverse Society, and our priority is to support animal welfare by finding people from all backgrounds who are committed to our mission. For this reason we actively encourage a wide diversity of applications - in particular from members of minority ethnic groups, and people with disabilities - as these candidates are currently under-represented at the RSPCA. Your transferable skills & lived experiences could make you a valuable addition to our RSPCA Family!

We’re here to support you and encourage you to let us know if you need any adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Please feel free to contact us at resourcingteam@rspca.org.uk or 0300 123 0685 so we can ensure the process works for you.