Director of Brand & Creative Marketing

Remote (United States)

Job Details

Location: United States

Workplace: Remote

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience: 8+ years of progressive marketing experience, including 4+ years of people management

Core Areas: Brand Strategy & Positioning, Integrated Brand Campaigns, Creative Direction & Production, Public Relations & Crisis Communications, Consumer Research & Audience Strategy, Social & Influencer Marketing, Brand Performance Measurement, Marketing Budget Management

Compensation: $150,000–$210,000 annually

About the Role

The Director of Brand & Creative Marketing is a hands-on leadership position responsible for brand marketing strategy, positioning, messaging, creative direction, and integrated consumer marketing campaigns. The role oversees an approximately 13-person organization covering public relations, creative production, copywriting, social media, influencer marketing, brand initiatives, and activations. Key responsibilities include translating business objectives into marketing strategies, leading campaign execution, managing organizational performance, and connecting brand initiatives to measurable business growth.

This position reports to the Co-CEOs and works alongside the Director of Growth & Lifecycle Marketing to align brand strategy with acquisition, conversion, and commercial performance. The role requires strong creative judgment, consumer insights, strategic planning, campaign production expertise, and direct involvement in complex marketing decisions. Success depends on developing a high-performing marketing organization while maintaining hands-on responsibility for major campaigns, brand communications, operational improvements, and budget allocation.

What You'll Do

Brand Marketing Strategy & Planning

• Own and develop the overall brand marketing strategy, including brand positioning, messaging, audience strategy, and creative direction.
• Translate company objectives into quarterly and annual marketing priorities, initiatives, OKRs, budgets, and measurable business outcomes.
• Partner directly with the Co-CEOs to develop marketing strategy and progressively assume greater strategic ownership as alignment is established.
• Develop differentiated marketing strategies for distinct consumer audiences across both sides of a two-sided marketplace.
• Identify untapped audiences, market opportunities, competitive advantages, positioning gaps, and opportunities for business growth.
• Lead consumer research, competitive intelligence, brand insights, and campaign performance analysis to inform marketing decisions.
• Evaluate existing marketing initiatives and determine which strategies should be expanded, refined, reduced, or discontinued based on performance and business priorities.

Integrated Brand Campaigns & Creative Leadership

• Lead integrated brand marketing campaigns from consumer insights and strategic development through creative concepting, production, launch, measurement, and post-campaign analysis.
• Develop culturally relevant campaign concepts designed to generate consumer engagement, earned media coverage, customer signups, and revenue.
• Define campaign objectives, target audiences, strategic insights, messaging, distribution channels, KPIs, budgets, ownership, and execution plans.
• Coordinate campaign development and delivery across Creative, Production, PR, Social, Influencer Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product, Legal, and external partners.
• Contribute original creative and strategic ideas directly rather than relying exclusively on delegated campaign development.
• Evaluate and improve campaign concepts, scripts, advertising copy, brand messaging, creative direction, activations, partnerships, and channel strategies.
• Lead campaign production involving talent, agencies, production partners, filming, post-production, media requirements, legal considerations, launch schedules, and distribution.
• Apply creative and commercial judgment to ensure campaigns support both brand objectives and measurable business performance.

Marketing Performance & Business Accountability

• Own the performance of the brand marketing organization and ensure brand initiatives contribute to business growth.
• Track and analyze marketing KPIs, including customer joins, revenue, customer acquisition cost (CAC), return on ad spend (ROAS), conversion, branded search, campaign performance, social media growth, influencer performance, and earned media.
• Establish measurement frameworks that connect brand marketing investments to commercial outcomes and brand health.
• Identify underperforming initiatives, diagnose performance gaps, and implement timely changes to campaign strategies and execution.
• Reallocate budgets, resources, priorities, and marketing investments when results do not support the existing approach.
• Improve production and activation ROI by identifying opportunities to generate additional revenue-driving content within existing budgets and recover production costs.
• Partner with the Director of Growth & Lifecycle Marketing to evaluate acquisition performance, conversion funnels, and opportunities to strengthen coordination between brand and performance marketing.
• Conduct campaign and quarterly performance retrospectives, translating findings into actionable marketing improvements.

Public Relations, Brand Reputation & Cultural Relevance

• Define the overarching public relations strategy, brand narrative, and desired cultural positioning.
• Provide strategic leadership for PR campaigns, media pitches, story development, reactive opportunities, partnerships, and spokesperson positioning.
• Develop differentiated, culturally relevant narratives that generate meaningful media interest while protecting brand reputation and business interests.
• Evaluate media opportunities based on journalistic relevance, audience interest, and brand positioning rather than promotional messaging alone.
• Review, rewrite, and strengthen PR pitches, headlines, talking points, media narratives, and communications when senior-level intervention is needed.
• Build and develop internal PR capabilities, ensuring the organization can independently generate strong strategic ideas rather than relying exclusively on agencies.
• Lead reputation management and crisis communications in partnership with the Co-CEOs and Legal.
• Navigate controversial subjects and challenging cultural conversations with sound judgment and appropriate consideration of business and reputational risks.

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, coach, develop, and manage an approximately 13-person brand marketing organization.
• Manage functional leaders, managers, and senior individual contributors across Creative, Production, PR, Social, Influencer Marketing, Copywriting, Brand Marketing, and related disciplines.
• Establish clear departmental ownership, performance expectations, goals, accountability structures, and decision-making responsibilities.
• Evaluate team performance and identify opportunities for coaching, additional resources, clearer responsibilities, organizational changes, and stronger accountability.
• Identify high-potential employees and create meaningful professional development opportunities.
• Address performance concerns and recommend appropriate personnel or organizational actions when required.
• Assess organizational capabilities and recommend changes to team structure, staffing plans, internal roles, agencies, contractors, and external resources.
• Participate directly in recruiting, interviewing, hiring, performance management, and termination decisions.
• Build a team environment that combines employee development and empathy with clear expectations and high performance standards.
• Balance strategic leadership and delegation with hands-on problem-solving when campaigns, messaging, negotiations, or operational challenges require direct involvement.

Marketing Operations & Cross-Functional Planning

• Own the integrated marketing calendar in partnership with the Director of Growth & Lifecycle Marketing.
• Establish departmental priorities and determine which initiatives should proceed, be delayed, be modified, or be discontinued.
• Translate complex marketing initiatives into structured workstreams with designated owners, milestones, dependencies, budgets, timelines, and success metrics.
• Design and continuously improve operating processes for campaign planning, creative production, public relations, and marketing execution.
• Establish consistent workflows for creative briefs, consumer research, concept development, moodboards, reviews, approvals, production, PR planning, launch readiness, asset delivery, performance reporting, and postmortems.
• Coordinate early involvement of relevant teams to reduce reactive workflows and execution delays.
• Identify and resolve operational bottlenecks, unclear responsibilities, and decision-making gaps before they require executive intervention.
• Ensure major marketing initiatives progress efficiently without requiring the Co-CEOs to manage everyday execution.
• Coordinate with Growth & Lifecycle Marketing leadership on audience strategy, campaign performance, customer acquisition, landing-page effectiveness, creative performance, marketing planning, and broader business growth.

Budget Management & External Partnerships

• Own and manage a significant seven-figure brand marketing budget.
• Develop annual and quarterly marketing budgets and allocate investments according to strategic priorities and expected business impact.
• Evaluate marketing expenditures against commercial objectives, strategic value, and anticipated return on investment.
• Maintain accurate oversight of budget commitments, actual expenditures, forecasts, and ROI.
• Manage relationships with creative agencies, production companies, talent, influencers, vendors, sponsors, and other external partners.
• Lead or oversee high-stakes commercial negotiations and strengthen negotiation practices across the marketing organization.
• Challenge unnecessary expenditures and identify opportunities to improve marketing results using existing resources.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• 8+ years of progressive professional marketing experience. Exceptional candidates may be considered based on demonstrated responsibility, career progression, and professional accomplishments rather than years of experience alone.
• 4+ years of meaningful people-management experience, including responsibility for managers or senior functional leaders.
• Demonstrated professional experience in both brand marketing and public relations or corporate communications.
• Strong experience developing, launching, and managing integrated consumer marketing campaigns.
• Experience working in a startup, high-growth organization, agency environment, or similarly fast-moving business with changing priorities and demanding execution timelines.
• Experience owning or substantially managing large marketing budgets.
• Experience managing relationships with agencies, production companies, creators, talent, vendors, and external partners.
• Practical knowledge of campaign production processes from initial concept development through execution, delivery, and distribution.
• Experience establishing organizational processes, operational structures, and performance accountability within growing or evolving marketing teams.

Required Skills

• Advanced ability to develop brand marketing strategies, positioning, messaging frameworks, and audience strategies aligned with measurable business objectives.
• Strong expertise in integrated campaign strategy, creative development, campaign execution, and performance measurement.
• Exceptional copy judgment and the ability to evaluate and improve advertising content, PR materials, social media messaging, influencer scripts, and brand communications.
• Ability to assess creative concepts and marketing investments using both strategic judgment and commercial performance considerations.
• Strong analytical judgment when reviewing campaign performance, customer insights, marketing KPIs, and business outcomes.
• Demonstrated commercial negotiation skills and the ability to manage high-value external relationships effectively.
• Ability to establish operational processes, clarify accountability, manage competing priorities, and improve organizational execution.
• Comfort making important business and marketing decisions when information is incomplete or priorities change rapidly.
• Ability to work effectively with founders and senior executives who are closely involved in brand strategy and marketing decisions.
• Confidence to challenge executive recommendations when supported by performance data, consumer insights, or strategic analysis.
• Ability to combine executive-level strategic leadership with direct involvement in creative development, messaging, campaign execution, and complex operational decisions.
• Strong judgment when developing unconventional marketing ideas and navigating culturally sensitive or controversial communications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with marketplaces or two-sided consumer platforms.
• Experience developing marketing strategies or campaigns for culturally provocative, unconventional, entertainment, lifestyle, dating, or other conversation-driving consumer brands.

Application Requirement

• A portfolio must be submitted to be considered for this position.