Associate Creative Director

Our Opportunity

GPJ is hiring an Associate Creative Director to join our growing team.

This role is hybrid, requiring you to report on-site to our Boston office location a minimum of 2 days per week.

Your Role

The role of the Associate Creative Director is to help lead the agency in creative ideation and innovative thinking, mentor the creative team to deliver great work through inclusivity and collaboration.

As the Associate Creative Director, you need a diverse background that strikes a balance between graphic, environmental, experience and digital design. In this role, you will work on conceptualizing captivating multi-touch experiences that are not only creative but also align perfectly with our client's unique brands. Your close collaboration with the Creative Lead on a given account ensures that their vision is consistently brought to life across all projects. It's a hands-on position where you not only manage the work and the project team but also actively engage in the creative process, bringing ideas to fruition.

Additionally, you’re expected to travel to shows, both domestically and internationally, which accounts for approximately 15% of my responsibilities.

In this role, you will be responsible for the day-to-day supervision of one to two team members. You'll be an impactful participant in new business development efforts, including the pitch process, and will contribute to the creative and agency culture by inspiring teams to do their best work. As an agency leader, you'll translate clients' brands into thoughtful, compelling, and interactive experiences, and set the highest standards for all creatives to follow by leading the agency in new thinking and techniques.

You will clearly understand all creative disciplines and collaborate with creative leadership to create high-quality, strategic presentations that exceed client expectations through copywriting, sketches, renders, mock-ups, and presentations. You'll produce and inspire inventive, thoughtful, and on-brand work while taking a hands-on approach to team mentorship. You'll excel at managing your team's workload and meeting tight deadlines. You will participate in planning and strategy sessions and be comfortable leading the project creative design team on assigned projects, overseeing designers’ work, and ensuring execution is consistent and of the highest quality.

You will work closely with Creative Directors to execute strategic design solutions. You'll approach design with thoughtfulness and an understanding of how it impacts the larger business, bringing to life multiple concepts and solutions to meet client objectives. You'll develop personal client relationships that inspire them and manage expectations. You will also identify new projects and opportunities with existing clients, and be an integral participant in new business development and client presentations. Lastly, you will collaborate with IP, graphics production, fabrication, and creative tech to solve design and budgetary challenges while maintaining design and brand integrity.

Your Skills

• Always lead with a solutions-oriented mindset and focus on strategically solving challenges
• Proven track record of leading successful creative teams and delivering high-impact design solutions for experiential marketing campaigns.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to articulate creative concepts, provide constructive feedback, and inspire teams to achieve excellence.
• Strong strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities, with a deep understanding of brand strategy, consumer behavior, and market trends.
• Mastery of Adobe Creative Suite and Google Suite
• Always learning new softwares and tracking emerging trends such as AI-based softwares (Firefly, Gemini, etc.)
• Work closely with the Creative Director to develop a project roadmap
• Manage the design, development and implementation of all event related creative in support of overall defined look and feel and brand objectives
• Understand the creative team’s bandwidth and recommends when we need additional resources
• Provide clear creative direction at initiation, and follows through by coaching creative team members (as well as account teams), while monitoring and guiding their efforts, and investing in successful results
• Create a thoughtful and engaging guest journey for all projects
• Maintain project budgets and tracks allocated hours to ensure profitability of the creative team – in partnership with Creative Project Managers and Account Teams
• Demonstrate astute design skills and an incredible eye for detail
• Assist in the education and development of designers
• Inspire clients and creative partners with mind-blowing concepts, approaches, and presentations
• Lead the development of new ideas and creative design solutions based on sound strategic rationale across multiple brands and initiatives
• Conceptualize unique experiences that exceed client expectations
• Contribute compelling and innovative design solutions for our clients
• Contributing to account-based creative teams, while partnering closely with strategy, production, and accounts
• Create sketches, mood boards, layouts, 2D and 3D renders, deck design/ templates, presentation/content structure and POS materials
• Partner with clients and senior team members across departments to heighten a brand’s significance and performance
• Advocate for brand and identity standards, and extracts their equity to maximum effect – understands when to adhere closely to them and when to advise more creative approached
• Passionately offer versatile communication and problem-solving skills, and is equally comfortable with words and visuals
• Excel in presenting work in a clear and inspiring manner to both internal and external partners.
• Inspire creativity, innovative thinking, and focused effort in the development of strong concepts and solutions
• Mentor creative team members so well that they can one day take your job; identify areas of growth and help them establish their career paths.
• Convey by example the mechanics and attributes of team strategy and accountability
• Work directly with the Production team to vet ideas and understand what’s feasible within budgets
• Adjust work when necessary to maintain the strategic integrity within any client restrictions

Your Competencies

Urgency - Decisive, responsive, and fast acting you achieve goals quickly both when working on your own and in collaboration with others. You demonstrate adaptability and agility when making on-the-spot decisions never sacrificing quality or work interactions. Cool under pressure. For the sake of time, you are able to eliminate unnecessary steps and use network resources to aid in project completion.

Communication   - At all levels, you easily convey and sell your ideas, and can articulate an idea with brevity during a brainstorm or client presentation. You express yourself clearly when collaborating and presenting, maintaining a positive image for GPJ both internally and externally. You understand the value of a well-turned phrase and a well-told story.

Creative Innovation - You are an idea-driven creative: someone who thinks about the big picture. Drive, develop, or support new and improved creative methods, products, procedures or technologies. Propels innovation by implementing the latest interactive technology in your storytelling. Devise new approaches to make improvements or solve problems. You are an innovative storyteller who is constantly challenging themselves to come up with ideas that are on strategy, transformative, and authentic to the client’s brand.

Flexible - Easily move on to new tasks with little to no notice. Put personal preferences aside and switch to a different strategy, form of communication or other objective without panicking. Maintain composure when deadlines move up and priorities shift. Keeps an open mind.

Prioritization/Organization - Properly allocate time and resources so that jobs are completed within a defined timeframe; within budget and managing all resources (Full-time and freelance) as effectively as possible. Establishing a reasonable timeline for completion when no concrete date is given.

Your Experience

Experience & Education

• Minimum of four-year degree in Design, Advertising, Theater or related creative discipline
• Minimum 7 years industry experience or related creative process experience combining strategy, content, message with creative deliverables.
• Event and Experience Design expertise desirable.
• Strong written, verbal and presentation skills required.
• Ability to lead, motivate and inspire the creative team, while keeping the creative process in alignment with GPJ business goals and objectives.

Travel & Mobility

• Ability to travel 25%
• Ability to work irregular hours in addition to normal business hours, to include nights, weekends and holidays as needed

Salary Range

Salary is dependent on a variety of factors including (but not limited to) experience, skills, and location.

Who We Are

GPJ is the world leader in experiential marketing. Our 29 global offices are filled with fearless people dreaming up ideas that are transforming industries and bringing the most respected brands to life in powerfully, exciting ways. We are a part of the Project Worldwide family. An independent, employee-owned global network of complementary, wholly owned agencies. 

You read that “employee-owned” part, right? You heard us correctly. You work hard, she works hard, we all work hard… we all succeed and reap the rewards. We have an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) – providing our employees with an ownership interest. We thought you would want to know that. In fact, there is a lot more you would want to know about us, like our FTO policy (no more “accruing” time off), our employer matching 401(k) plan (no vesting period), and our low employee contribution healthcare option. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here, let’s talk about this exciting opportunity first and we can fill you in on our perks & benefits later.

GPJ is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, citizenship, disability, protected veteran status, or any other protected class. In addition to federal law requirements, GPJ complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.  GPJ expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on any protected class.