Creative Strategist

Acrisure Mortgage, a leading national mortgage lender, is seeking a forward-thinking Creative Strategist to develop bold marketing concepts, shape marketing strategy, lead marketing initiatives, and strengthen how our brand engages our audiences and supports business growth.

Position Overview

The Creative Strategist is a strategic marketing leader responsible for developing creative and marketing strategies that support Acrisure Mortgage's broader business objectives, strengthen the brand, and drive engagement across key audiences.

This role goes beyond individual campaign development. The Creative Strategist helps shape the organization's broader marketing direction, identifies opportunities for growth, and works closely with marketing leadership and business stakeholders to translate organizational priorities into cohesive marketing strategies and campaigns.

The ideal candidate has experience leading marketing strategy and managing or overseeing a marketing team or function. They understand how to balance high-level strategic planning with creative execution and can effectively lead people, prioritize initiatives, and bring together creative, digital, content, social, and other marketing disciplines.

The Creative Strategist will partner closely with the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and other business leaders to establish marketing priorities, develop integrated campaigns, strengthen brand positioning, and ensure marketing efforts are aligned with the organization's overall goals.

This individual should be comfortable moving between strategy, leadership, creative direction, and execution - setting the vision while also providing the guidance, accountability, and leadership necessary to bring that vision to life.

The Creative Strategist reports directly to the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer.

Key Responsibilities

Creative Strategy & Campaign Development

• Translate business objectives, mortgage products, market opportunities, recruiting initiatives, and strategic priorities into compelling creative campaign concepts.
• Own the development of campaign strategy from initial brief through creative execution and optimization.
• Identify the target audience, key consumer or business insight, campaign positioning, primary message, creative angle, and overall campaign concept.
• Develop original concepts for advertising campaigns, commercials, social content, digital advertising, email campaigns, landing pages, print materials, direct mail, recruiting campaigns, sales initiatives, and other external-facing marketing.
• Look beyond individual marketing assets to develop larger ideas that can be expressed consistently across multiple channels and formats.
• Present multiple creative approaches when appropriate and articulate the strategic rationale behind each concept.
• Identify opportunities to make traditionally complex mortgage products and concepts approachable, relevant, memorable, and differentiated.

Creative Direction & Execution

• Develop comprehensive creative briefs that clearly communicate campaign objectives, audience, positioning, messaging, concept, required deliverables, and creative direction.
• Lead marketing and creative initiatives from strategy and concept through execution and optimization, working collaboratively with designers, video resources, social media, digital marketing, vendors, agencies, and other marketing partners.
• Lead, manage, and develop marketing team members while providing clear strategic and creative direction across marketing initiatives.
• Establish priorities, expectations, and accountability for marketing team members and initiatives.
• Ensure the original campaign idea and strategic intent remain consistent throughout the production process.
• Review creative executions and provide clear, constructive direction to strengthen the work and maintain alignment with the campaign concept.
• Determine the mix of creative assets and marketing channels needed to successfully bring a campaign to market.
• Help develop concepts for commercials and video content, including the central idea, storyline, audience, tone, key message, and desired consumer response, while partnering with appropriate team members for scripting and production.
• Work collaboratively with specialized creative and marketing disciplines, leveraging the expertise of designers, writers, videographers, digital marketers, and other team members to execute the broader marketing strategy.

Integrated Marketing Strategy & Leadership

• Develop and oversee integrated marketing strategies across paid social, organic social, digital advertising, video, commercials, email, web and landing pages, print, direct mail, sales materials, and other consumer-facing channels.
• Create integrated approaches for consumer mortgage products, loan officer marketing, recruiting, builder and joint venture initiatives, corporate campaigns, and other strategic marketing priorities.
• Establish clear marketing priorities and ensure initiatives are aligned with broader organizational objectives.
• Partner with digital marketing and channel owners to determine where and how marketing strategies and creative will be deployed.
• Ensure marketing initiatives feel connected across channels rather than functioning as a collection of independent assets.
• Identify opportunities to repurpose and extend successful marketing strategies and creative concepts into additional formats, audiences, or channels.
• Continuously evaluate opportunities to improve the organization's overall marketing approach, capabilities, and effectiveness.

Marketing Performance & Optimization

• Partner with marketing leadership, digital marketing, and other stakeholders to establish and monitor marketing performance metrics.
• Evaluate campaign and marketing performance to identify opportunities for improvement, optimization, and growth.
• Use data, audience feedback, market insights, and campaign results to inform future marketing strategy.
• Proactively identify marketing and creative initiatives that should be refreshed, replaced, expanded, or tested based on performance and audience response.
• Develop new concepts, variations, hooks, formats, and approaches for ongoing creative and marketing optimization.
• Avoid allowing campaigns to become static; continually look for opportunities to improve marketing effectiveness based on what the market is responding to.
• Use learnings from previous campaigns to improve future marketing strategies and concepts.

Audience & Market Insight

• Develop a strong understanding of Acrisure Mortgage's consumer audiences, loan officers, recruits, builder partners, joint venture partners, and other key audiences.
• Stay aware of consumer behavior, advertising trends, cultural trends, competitor activity, and emerging marketing opportunities.
• Translate market and audience insights into actionable marketing strategies and creative opportunities.
• Look for unexpected or differentiated ways to communicate mortgage products and financial concepts.
• Bring outside inspiration, new ideas, and marketing best practices into the organization while ensuring ideas remain appropriate for the mortgage industry.

Brand & Compliance Alignment

• Ensure marketing strategies, campaign concepts, and creative executions remain consistent with Acrisure Mortgage brand standards and overall brand positioning.
• Partner with the Brand Manager and other marketing leaders to maintain brand consistency while developing and executing broader marketing strategies.
• Help evolve the organization's brand positioning and identify opportunities to strengthen how Acrisure Mortgage is presented across key audiences and channels.
• Work closely with Compliance and other stakeholders to ensure marketing strategies, concepts, and executions meet applicable mortgage advertising and regulatory requirements.
• Develop effective marketing solutions within regulatory and brand constraints rather than allowing those constraints to limit strategic or creative thinking.

Collaboration & Communication

• Serve as a strategic marketing and creative partner to the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and other business leaders.
• Collaborate with marketing, sales, recruiting, technology, joint ventures, builder teams, operations, and other departments to understand business needs and translate them into marketing strategies and campaigns.
• Facilitate marketing planning sessions, campaign kickoffs, creative reviews, brainstorming sessions, strategic reviews, and concept presentations.
• Clearly communicate marketing strategies and creative ideas to both executive leadership and creative and non-creative stakeholders.
• Build consensus around marketing priorities and creative direction while maintaining a strong point of view and willingness to advocate for compelling ideas.
• Create a collaborative, accountable environment where marketing specialists can contribute their expertise to a shared strategic vision.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of progressive experience in creative strategy, marketing strategy, integrated marketing, advertising, brand marketing, campaign development, or a related field.
• Experience managing a marketing team, creative team, or broader marketing function strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience developing and executing broader marketing strategies, not solely individual campaigns or creative projects.
• Proven ability to translate organizational and business objectives into comprehensive marketing strategies and initiatives.
• Experience establishing marketing priorities, managing multiple initiatives, and coordinating resources across marketing disciplines.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and develop marketing or creative professionals.
• Experience partnering with executive leadership to shape marketing priorities, brand strategy, and business initiatives.
• Mortgage, financial services, real estate, or another regulated-industry experience strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of integrated marketing across digital, social, email, web, content, video, paid media, and traditional channels.
• Strong understanding of brand strategy, positioning, messaging, and creative development.
• Experience evaluating marketing and campaign performance and using insights to inform future strategy.
• Ability to provide strategic direction while remaining hands-on enough to guide creative development and execution.
• Excellent leadership, communication, presentation, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strategic, creative, analytical, collaborative, and comfortable challenging conventional approaches.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this position is measured by the Creative Strategist's ability to establish and execute effective marketing strategy, lead and develop the marketing team, strengthen the brand, and translate business objectives into measurable marketing initiatives and campaigns.

A successful Creative Strategist will:

• Consistently bring strong, original campaign concepts and marketing strategies to the table.
• Turn products and business initiatives into ideas and strategies that audiences can understand and care about.
• Establish clear marketing priorities, goals, and accountability across the team.
• Lead, develop, and effectively manage marketing team members.
• Provide the marketing team with clear strategic direction, creative direction, and well-developed campaign briefs.
• Connect individual channels and assets into cohesive marketing strategies and campaigns.
• Effectively leverage designers, content creators, digital marketers, video resources, agencies, and other specialists to execute marketing initiatives.
• Use marketing performance insights to identify opportunities for optimization and growth.
• Recognize when marketing or creative initiatives are not resonating and quickly develop new strategies, concepts, or testing approaches.
• Maintain brand consistency while continuing to push the organization creatively and strategically.
• Become a trusted strategic marketing partner to executive leadership and the broader business.
• Continuously strengthen the organization's marketing capabilities, processes, and effectiveness.

Career Growth

This position is designed to provide meaningful growth for an individual who demonstrates strong creative judgment, marketing leadership, strategic thinking, and campaign development capabilities.

As the role evolves, the Creative Strategist may take on responsibility for increasingly complex marketing initiatives, expanded team leadership, broader strategic priorities, additional marketing functions, and greater ownership of the organization's overall marketing direction, with potential advancement into senior marketing or creative leadership roles.

Acrisure Mortgage is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and maintains a Drug-Free Workplace. Applicants must complete all interviews without the use of AI or automated tools.