Brand Experience Creative Director

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Shoreditch, London

Reporting into: Managing Director

Hybrid/ Remote: WFH Monday & Friday. In the office Tuesday-Thursday

Salary: DOA

Seen Presents is an experiential events agency driven by understanding human emotion and culture. We create online and offline authentic connected live experiences to drive brand resonance and understanding for consumer focused lifestyle and entertainment brands.

We want you to feel:

• Inspired – a creative environment and cultural stimulus
• Empowered – you have the opportunity to shape the way the agency grows
• Challenged – we’ll push you to deliver against your potential
• Encouraged – we’ll support your development and growth

We are driven by our values of:

• Determined – we are committed
• Dependable – we are accountable
• Genuine – we are human first
• Conscious – we are considered

We are looking for a London based Creative Director who can bring experience and qualities to enhance our already talented team working efficiently across multiple projects. This is a senior role within the management team of the business reporting directly to the Managing Director.

Overview

• A strong, decisive leader; born creative, with an inquisitive mind and passion for creating unique, groundbreaking and newsworthy events for the world’s most innovative brands.
• Experience working with, and a passion for, brands in entertainment, social and technology sectors, and proven history of delivering exceptional experiential events for them.
• Expansive knowledge of creator culture, social trends and design trends.
• Finger on the pulse of production and technology solutions and innovations which help shape creative ideas.
• Proven ability to direct all creative disciplines bringing together motion graphics, strategy, brand design and spatial design, to create bold and memorable experiences that span disciplines.
• Track record of senior leadership within a business driving growth and evolution through ideas and storytelling.
• High attention to detail.
• Experience across key experiential markets both local and global – with creative nuances in B2B, B2E and B2C.
• Varied knowledge of online and offline creative solutions covering live events, live streams, festivals, brand campaigns and brand summits.
• Experience in leading and driving creative responses whilst managing and mentoring a wider team.

This is a creative role in the first instance, ensuring we are award winning but this is also a leadership role to manage and drive the creative department to ensure excellence across all projects.

Wider Business Strategy

• Work closely with the Managing Director to understand the vision and direction of the business and support through client relationship and delivery goals.
• Attend business strategy meetings.
• Manage recruitment for new roles across the business – perm and freelance ensuring we have the best talent in the business.
• Input into wider business goals and planning including marketing, training, social presence, insights, and research.
• Actively participate in outward marketing and the business and strengthen your personal profile to help agency fame including but not limited to thought leadership pieces, reports, presentations, and articles.
• Build and grow the creative team function, actively ideating on how to develop and improve the creative offering.
• Offer proactive creative initiatives to clients to help attract and grow accounts.

Core Job Function

• Bringing strategy to life – approach the creative process with a strategic brain focusing on brand values, consumer trends, cultural movements, wider industry, and environment context – able to articulate and write up a strategic brand concept with ease, and how to turn it into tangible, cultural first ideas, that has a cohesive narrative from start to finish.
• Leadership – mentor, line manage and develop the wider design team through clear objectives and training either in person or remotely.
• Presentation skills – confident and clear in presenting ideas with ability to guide clients through creative solutions and ideas.
• Ideation – unrivalled creative ideation skillset with ability to lead on creative concepts and ideas putting pen to paper including compelling concept storytelling and inspiring mood boards that make sense.
• Creative variety – lead on creative concepting from brand identity and positioning, through to event execution ideas, motion graphics, social content, spatial planning, activations and guest journeys.
• Wide and varied industry knowledge – capable of suggesting ideas pushing production, technology and industry advancements using wider knowledge.
• Communication – compelling and clear communicator, able to turn anything into a story to sell creative. Able to communicate effectively across the board from the team to suppliers and clients to senior management.
• Relationships – it is second nature to cultivate positive relationships always, across the team, suppliers, and clients, no matter what the situation, to ensure productive ways of working and positive working environments, even when things get tough.
• Pro-active – able to come armed with solutions and suggestions and lead the way when it comes to pro-actively solving problems, outlining tasks, and delegating.
• Efficient – able to ideate, brainstorm and collate creative responses at speed dealing with multiple briefs at any one time, whilst also managing a team.
• Accountability – able to navigate difficult conversations with ease and strategically brainstorm solutions alongside the MD.
• Resource – able to effectively manage a wider creative team managing resource and diaries including identifying and facilitating extra resource where needed.
• Financial acumen – understand event pricing models to ensure creative stays within the realms of possibility including cost, timings, and feasibility.
• New business – keen eye for new business opportunities and works with the Head of Creative / Managing Director to grow and develop those opportunities through strategic thinking and compelling ideas.
• Personal and business growth – active and highly skilled at public speaking, written reports and articles to help promote agency fame and personal fame.
• Marketing – assist the MD and any Marketing staff with ideation of outward marketing topics, award entries and supporting insights documents.

Key Skills

• Demonstrates excellent communication skills when liaising with clients, suppliers and internally; has the ability to communicate clearly and concisely in person, over the phone and via email, demonstrating diplomacy and good negotiation skills.
• The ability to never lose their cool under pressure.
• Extensive experience in line managing and mentoring a team and department.
• Passionate, self-motivated with the ability to show initiative, willing to immerse themselves in any brands that are thrown their way and a deep knowledge of competitors, the market and key client values.
• Energetic, self-motivated, consistently proactive and showing initiative; able to manage their own time well, as well as others in the team, and manage expectations of everyone touching a project.
• Storytelling – Clear and compelling, able to shift from energetic to focused, able to command a room, to get everyone to lean in, to get clients to understand concepts easily, and the ability to always deliver it with positive energy. A consistently calm and patient approach, able to remain organised and positive when dealing with multiple requests and a changing workload.
• Exceptionally organized and able to manage multiple work streams simultaneously.

Technical Knowledge

• Apple literate.
• Keynote and ppt proficient.
• Able to read and interpret CAD and Vectorworks files.
• Adobe Creative Suite proficient.
• Bonus – ability to use, mentor and advise on key creative programmes – Photoshop, C4D, 2D & 3D animation software.
• Microsoft Office inc Teams.

Experience required

• 15 years+ experience as a creative within events delivering projects up to value of 2 million.
• Beyond 5 years+ experience as senior leader within a business or similar role.
• Proven client and team management, concept creation, thought leadership and outstanding creative direction.
• Proven experience working within branding or alongside brand strategists to deliver business messaging in a tangible way. Please provide examples of working with clients on top level conceptual strategy.
• Experience delivering shows / stages / theatrical executions for brands, that tackle both stage direction, motion graphics, experiential moments, lighting and atmosphere, bonus but highly preferable.
• Must have a deep knowledge of culture and entertainment, be hot on trends on TikTok / Instagram, have a broad knowledge of creator culture, and a deep knowledge of artists and designers to reference at all times. This should hopefully be proven at interview stage through anecdotal examples.
• A creative task will be required, upon second interview, should you be successful in the first, to prove your level of creative storytelling and cultural knowledge.

Hours and Location

• We operate a hybrid working arrangement, our office is based in Shoreditch but we deliver events globally, it is expected that you will spend no more than 20 days a year overseas.
• Working hours will be standard office times; however, deadlines and installations may require occasional unusual hours.
• We are in the office 3 days a week Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

D&I statement

At Seen Presents we are committed to providing an inclusive environment where everyone feels seen, heard and celebrated. We welcome applications from everyone. If you are invited to an interview, please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments we can make to best accommodate your needs.