Senior Director, Brand Voice Identity

Senior Director, Brand Voice Identity The Senior Director, Brand Voice/Identity is the owner and guardian of David Yurman’s verbal brand identity. This role defines how the brand speaks, how it tells stories, how tone flexes across audiences and channels, and how language ladders into every expression of the business. This person will build, evolve, and enforce the brand’s voice architecture across all major verticals, including e-commerce, social, retail stores, events, CRM, PR, clienteling, special projects, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, icons, gifting, heritage, and seasonal campaigns. The Senior Director, Brand Voice/Identity must be both a sophisticated luxury storyteller and a rigorous brand voice leader. They must know how to create desire through language, how to protect consistency at scale, and how to hold a team accountable to elevated standards of writing, editing, execution, and brand judgment. This is not only a copy leadership role. It is a verbal identity role. The mandate is to ensure that every written expression of David Yurman feels distinct, elevated, precise, commercially clear, and unmistakably connected to the brand. Verbal Brand Identity Ownership Own and evolve the David Yurman verbal brand identity across all 360 touchpoints. Define the brand’s voice architecture, including voice principles, tone ranges, voice standards, messaging hierarchy, product storytelling frameworks, channel rules, and approved language systems. Establish how the David Yurman voice flexes by vertical while remaining consistent at the brand level. Build clear language systems for e-commerce, social, stores, events, CRM, clienteling, PR, special projects, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, icons, gifting, heritage, and craftsmanship. Ensure the brand voice is distinctive, ownable, and specific to David Yurman, not generic to the luxury category. Translate brand strategy, campaign concepts, customer insights, and product priorities into clear verbal direction for the team and cross-functional partners. Partner with Creative leadership to define the narrative expression of major campaigns, launches, and brand moments. Identify where the voice is becoming inconsistent, overly promotional, too generic, too editorial, or commercially unclear, and correct it with clear guidance. Maintain a centralized verbal identity system, including guidelines, examples, banned phrases, approved terminology, product language, naming principles, and channel-specific tone guidance. Storytelling and Voice Architecture Build storytelling frameworks for hero products, icons, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, gifting, seasonal launches, craftsmanship, materials, design inspiration, and brand heritage. Define the role of language within each brand vertical, from emotional world-building to product education to conversion. Create messaging hierarchies that clarify what each story must communicate at the brand, collection, product, and channel level. Develop tone systems that guide how the brand should speak across different customer mindsets, platforms, and business objectives. Partner with Merchandising, Design, Product Development, and Marketing to ensure product storytelling is accurate, elevated, and commercially relevant. Translate product attributes into language that creates desire without over-explaining. Ensure high jewelry language feels rare, precise, and exceptional. Ensure men’s jewelry language feels confident, modern, direct, and elevated. Ensure store and clienteling language supports selling conversations while maintaining brand integrity. Ensure event and special project language builds atmosphere, exclusivity, and emotional connection. Voice Leadership and Standards Serve as the final voice authority for major brand, campaign, product, retail, digital, social, CRM, PR, event, and special project copy. Set and enforce the brand voice standards for the team. Hold the team accountable for writing quality, editing rigor, brand consistency, timing, accuracy, and executional excellence. Review, edit, and approve high visibility copy to ensure it is elevated, precise, grammatically correct, legally sound, and aligned to the David Yurman voice. Create a disciplined editing process that raises quality while reducing subjective feedback and unnecessary rounds. Ensure every piece of copy has a clear role: to build the brand, clarify the product, support the customer journey, or drive action. Protect the brand from generic luxury language, excessive adjectives, over-explanation, promotional noise, and inconsistent tone. Educate writers to sharpen ideas, improve structure, write with restraint, and understand how language performs across channels. Create accountability across the team through clear expectations, direct feedback, documented standards, and consistent review. Team Leadership and Accountability Lead, manage, and mentor the Brand Voice team. Set clear standards for writing quality, editing discipline, creative judgment, speed, ownership, and execution. Oversee day-to-day workload, prioritization, routing, approvals, and delivery across all copy workstreams. Ensure the team understands not just what to write, but why the language matters to the brand and the business. Build repeatable processes for briefs, copy development, editing, feedback, approvals, version control, and final delivery. Hold team and cross-functional teams accountable to the brand voice architecture and channel-specific standards. Provide direct, actionable feedback that improves both the work and the writer. Identify capability gaps across the team and recommend training, tools, process changes, or freelance support where needed. Partner with Project Management to ensure the team delivers on time without lowering the creative or brand voice requirements. Foster a culture of high standards, precision, accountability, curiosity, and creative discipline. Cross-Functional Partnership Partner with the Senior Creative Director and Creative leadership to shape the verbal direction of campaigns, launches, presentations, scripts, and 360 brand systems. Partner with Marketing to ensure messaging supports business objectives, customer strategy, and seasonal priorities. Partner with E-commerce and CRM to balance brand elevation with click-through, engagement, clarity, and conversion. Partner with Social to ensure copy supports platform behavior while maintaining luxury restraint. Partner with Retail and Clienteling to translate brand storytelling into selling tools and client-facing language. Partner with Events and Special Projects to build verbal worlds for high-touch brand experiences. Partner with Merchandising, Product Development, and Design to ensure product language is accurate, specific, and elevated. Partner with PR and Communications to ensure external messaging is consistent with the brand voice. Partner with Legal on naming, product claims, trademark review, and sensitive copy approvals. Qualifications 10+ years of experience in copywriting, brand voice, creative strategy, or verbal identity, ideally within luxury, jewelry, fashion, or a premium brand environment. Proven experience owning or building a brand voice system across multiple channels and business verticals. Exceptional writing, editing, grammar, proofreading, and verbal communication skills. Strong copy judgment and the ability to raise the quality of language quickly and decisively. Experience leading copy teams and holding writers accountable to standards, deadlines, and execution. Deep understanding of luxury positioning, product storytelling, and how language creates desire. Ability to balance brand elevation with commercial clarity. Strong understanding of e-commerce, CRM, social, retail, events, and clienteling communication needs. Ability to define tone by channel, audience, product category, and business objective. Strong presentation skills with the ability to articulate and defend voice strategy and execution to senior stakeholders. Highly organized, detail-oriented, collaborative, and comfortable managing multiple workstreams at once. Experience partnering with Creative, Marketing, Merchandising, E-commerce, Social, PR, Retail, Events, Legal, and Product teams. Bachelor’s degree in English, Journalism, Communications, Marketing, Creative Writing, or related field required. Success Measures David Yurman has a clear and ownable verbal brand identity. The brand voice architecture is understood and applied across teams. Copy across e-commerce, social, stores, events, special projects, men’s jewelry, high jewelry, icons, gifting, heritage, and campaigns feels connected, elevated, and consistent. The Brand Voice team produces stronger work with fewer subjective revisions. Product storytelling becomes more precise, emotional, and commercially effective. The team is held to a higher standard of writing, editing, timing, and execution. Cross-functional partners understand how to apply the voice and when to elevate for brand voice guidance. Language becomes a stronger driver of both brand equity and business performance. Location New York, NY (TriBeCa) Working Mode Hybrid Travel N/A Estimate Salary Range $178–$220k Base pay is one component of David Yurman’s total compensation package, which may also include the following for eligible employees: access to healthcare benefits, 401(k) plan, bonus, employee discounts, Summer Fridays (corporate roles), generous paid time off, sick time, and more. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at David Yurman As a company founded by artists, David Yurman champions self-expression in everything we do. We are committed to fostering a culture of openness and creative collaboration within our entire community, and we cherish the diversity of our employees’ backgrounds and perspectives. We will always advocate for equity and inclusion for all. David Yurman is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and provides equal opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to an individual’s age, race, creed, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender). #J-18808-Ljbffr Dormont Manufacturing Co