Creative Director, Marketing

Creative Director, Marketing

The Creative Director, Marketing will set and lead the marketing creative vision for Vera Bradley delivering culturally relevant, performance-driven work across Brand, Outlet, Wholesale, as well as the end-to-end customer journey. This role requires strong campaign concepting and storytelling skills, translating culturally resonant trends into creative that drives engagement, customer acquisition, and measurable business impact. This leader will be passionate about evolving a multigenerational heritage brand forward—ensuring a new generation discovers, connects with, and develops a love for Vera Bradley—while maintaining relevance for our loyal core customer. As a strategic leader, the Creative Director connects creative vision to commercial strategy, helping drive progress against key brand and business KPIs and ROI. This role reports to the Head of Marketing and leads the creative team within the Marketing organization.

Ideal candidate would be based in New York, New York or Chicago, Illinois

Requires monthly travel to our Fort Wayne, Indiana headquarters

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Creative Leadership & Brand Evolution

• Lead all creative work across Brand, Outlet, and Wholesale, ensuring cohesive yet differentiated execution aligned to company strategy.
• Evolve a heritage brand by balancing continuity for the core customer with culturally relevant creative that resonates with a younger audience.
• Develop and lead a social-first creative team.
• Narrate, articulate visually and evolve the brand expression, especially through the turnaround, through tone of voice, graphics, models & styling and overall impact that addresses diversity but hits customer and brand bullseye.
• Stay ahead of industry, competitive brand markers and cultural trends and emerging technologies, applying them to continuously advance creative output, process, and ways of working.
• Partner with outside agencies to accelerate evolution and fill gaps, having foresight in budget and planning cycles

Campaign Development & Execution

• Own the creative process and lead the team, ensuring high-quality, on-time delivery of campaigns.
• Translate creative strategy into end-to-end campaign concepts, influencing and playing into the media plan, setting and guiding creative direction across digital and offline channels from insight through launch.
• Develop creative campaigns anchored in brand storytelling that drive engagement and conversion beyond paid media alone.
• Articulate concepts to translate across digital, stores, pop-ups, wholesale pop-ins, wholesale and marketplaces, with relevance both domestically and internationally
• Design collaboration opportunities to secure business when necessary and execute across different customer groups and platforms

Commercial Impact & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Connect creative strategy to commercial outcomes, driving progress against key business KPIs and ROI.
• Balance brand storytelling and promotional priorities to deliver both brand equity and performance outcomes.
• Partner with Brand Marketing to influence campaign briefs that tap into cultural relevancy and industry trends.
• Build a performance-focused creative capability in partnership with Growth Marketing, enabling customer acquisition through high-impact creative.
• Partner cross-functionally with Brand Marketing, Lifecycle Marketing, Merchandising, Product Design, and Visual Merchandising and Digital Head to support seasonal priorities.

Education and/or Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Art, Marketing or related field
• 10+ years of experience leading creative work within in-house teams and/or agency environments, ideally supporting an omnichannel brand.
• 5+ years of experience leading a creative team with hands-on involvement in team development.
• Experience working in a fast-paced retail environment, including peak seasons that require high-volume creative output and rapid execution.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skills, and/or abilities required to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Strong knowledge of creative, marketing, and eCommerce best practices, and how marketing channels drive engagement and conversion.
• Exceptional concepting and storytelling skills, with the ability to translate ideas into compelling creative.
• Ability to interpret customer insights and leverage them to evolve creative strategy and execution.
• Collaborative while able to influence, lead and build productive teams and cross-functional relationships
• Ability to develop rapport and credibility with senior management and others across the organization
• Proven leadership and managerial skills with the ability to provide performance related feedback

Environment & Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those an individual must meet to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Office environment. Utilizing an office desk – sitting, reading, listening, or speaking with the ability to move intermittently throughout the day
• Strong sensory skills, such as good eyesight, good hearing, and dexterity
• Ability to operate office equipment, including computers, copiers, fax machines, and phones
• Occasional travel (25%)

We are proud of the competitive and comprehensive compensation and benefit package provided to our associates and their families. Our compensation package is designed to meet our associates today and help them plan for the future.

Health Benefits

Vera Bradley offers a variety of medical, dental and vision programs to meet your family's health care needs.

• Medical plan options including both a HDHP/HSA plan and a PPO plan
• Dental
• Vision
• Flexible spending accounts

Survivor Benefits

Life insurance provides peace of mind for your family should the unexpected happen.

• Employer provided 2X your salary in life insurance
• Accidental Death and Disability insurance
• Voluntary life insurance for you, your spouse and your children

Income Protection

If you are unable to work due to illness or injury Vera Bradley provides several programs to protect your income at no cost to you.

• Short-term disability
• Long-term disability

Retirement Plan

The Vera Bradley 401k plan helps you accumulate savings for retirement

• 401k with generous company match, immediate vesting (age and service requirement)
• Strong line up of professionally managed funds
• Safe-harbor plan design

Paid Time Off

Enjoy generous time off programs.

• Earn up to 3 weeks of paid time off in your first year of employment with opportunity to earn more
• 9 paid holidays a year
• Paid bereavement leave

Give Back Opportunities

Vera Bradley offers the opportunity to serve your community.

• Voluntary Time Off

Holistic Wellness

• Access to a variety of financial, physical, and mental wellness experts

• Employee Assistance Program with access to work/life wellness support including no cost unlimited telephonic counseling services
• Opportunities for leadership development, skill development and career advancement 

Product Discount

• Generous employee discount on Vera Bradley products

Ancillary Benefits and Programs

• Bonus opportunity, identity protection, legal services, pet insurance, cell phone discount, employee referral bonus, annual birthday gift, DailyPay, corporate fitness facility and individual policies through Aflac

Equal Opportunity Employer/Vets/Disabled

Vera Bradley is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Affirmative Action Employer.

Vera Bradley provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement