VP of Marketing, Brand & Creative

Position: Vice President of Marketing, Brand & Creative Reports To: Chief Marketing Officer Location: Remote within the United States Travel: Up to 10% Compensation: Competitive base salary, annual performance bonus, comprehensive benefits, and total rewards package. Chamberlain Advisors is conducting an executive search for TopDog Law, a personal injury firm in a category where nearly every competitor runs the same ad. TopDog does not. It built a brand people remember rather than tune out, with characters, a distinct tone, a sense of humor, and its founder, James Helm, who is the face of the firm's advertising. That difference is why it is now the fastest-growing injury law firm in the country and the second-largest media spender in its category, a national firm serving more than ninety percent of the United States population. The firm is scaling its in-house creative output to match that investment, and social is where that scale is needed most. Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, the Vice President of Marketing, Brand & Creative owns the brand platform, the design system and the in-house creative studio behind the work. From here the brand has to work for audiences and practice areas it was never built for, and earn the standing of the national firm TopDog has become, without sanding down the edge that got it here. Core Profile: alignment with the following is required to get you in the conversation Brand Stewardship and World Building: You will take ownership of a brand that already works and build outward from it rather than over it. TopDog Law has assembled a genuine set of recognizable, hard-won brand assets, including the founder as the attorney face of the firm, a mascot, a signature vehicle, a distinctive audio voice and cultural register, recurring characters, a design system that governs how the brand shows up visually from out-of-home to television to the website, and a call to action audiences repeat back unprompted. That foundation is the advantage of this seat, not a constraint on it, and you will treat those assets as owned equity to be protected, deepened, and extended into new mediums and new audiences. Two things are committed rather than open: the brand assets themselves, which you are asked to build further rather than replace, and the television creative and production agency relationship, which stays. The central creative tension is real and you should want it: keep the boldness that made the firm impossible to ignore while earning the credibility of the national institution it has become. This is expressly not a clean-slate rebranding seat. Social-First Creative Studio Leadership: You will personally lead a high-output, in-house creative organization, and social is the center of it. Paid and organic social across Meta, TikTok and YouTube is where the firm needs creative volume most, because those platforms reward the number of creatives tested, and the work there ships on an hours clock rather than a campaign clock. You will build the social team and the content engine behind it, the briefing, production and review system that sustains that volume, and the reactive capability that lets work built to travel still read as unmistakably TopDog. You will inherit a team that was built for where the firm has been, alongside a marketing organization with real strength in performance marketing, analytics, media and search, and your job is to make sure that team is capable of going where the firm is going. You will have the authority to invest in growing and developing the people already here, and to add the leaders and specialists the next stage needs. You will recruit them yourself without escalation, and you will approve production spend, vendor selection, casting and tooling inside an agreed budget. You will set the creative bar, run briefing and review, and stay close enough to the work to catch problems before they reach market. Brand Asset Architecture and Governance: You will own the brand system itself, including the design system, the voice, messaging architecture and value propositions, and you will enforce consistency across every medium the firm buys. You will bring a realistic and disciplined view of how many distinct assets, characters, and messages the organization can actually carry and sustain, and you will resist roster sprawl that dilutes recognition. Out-of-home is the sharpest test of that governance: five to seven markets today with the boards designed in house and every campaign approved centrally before it runs. A request from an individual office for something different is answered through brand strategy rather than through one-off creative. You will build the governance, the asset library, and the working standards that let a fast-moving creative organization stay consistent without slowing down. Multi-Audience Brand and Message Strategy: The leadership team decides which audiences the firm goes after. You will own how the firm wins them: the message, the creative, and the insight into what that audience actually cares about. TopDog Law earned its position with a specific and loyal following, and its next chapter is becoming universally relatable across regions, states, cultures, and income levels without diluting what made it work in the first place. That means reaching middle America, Spanish-speaking households, and every audience in between, each with the creative, casting, and language decisions required to land credibly rather than generically. You will bring a demonstrated track record of building the brand and message strategy for a newer audience yourself rather than inheriting one already built, and you will know how to widen a brand's reach without fracturing it. Culture Fit and Operating Disposition: You will operate comfortably inside a regulated advertising environment, treating attorney advertising rules and state-by-state variation as a day-one condition of the work rather than a source of friction. You will bring a real network of leaders and specialists who will follow you, meaning people who have made that move with you before or will commit to it now, not simply people you know. Authority here is explicit and you should want it stated plainly: executing inside an agreed budget and an agreed brand platform is yours, while changing either, a new standing agency, a new mascot direction, a new campaign concept or a major talent partnership, goes to the Chief Marketing Officer. You will measure yourself on what the business did rather than on what the industry applauded, and you should expect that to be the standard here. A candidate who needs a large inherited infrastructure, who defers execution entirely to agencies, who treats shared brand authority as a demotion, or who arrives expecting the work to be a small number of television productions a year, will not succeed in this seat. Core Responsibilities & Scope of Work Brand Platform and World Building Brand Platform Ownership: Own the TopDog Law brand platform, including positioning, voice, visual identity, the design system, messaging architecture, and the value propositions that carry across every audience and medium the firm buys. Asset Extension Over Reinvention: Build outward from the firm's established brand assets, extending the founder persona, the dog, the vehicle, the audio voice and attitude, the recurring adversary character, and the call to action into new formats, new audiences, and new markets while preserving what audiences already recognize. Character and Story System Development: Develop the narrative system that connects the firm's brand assets to one another, so that individual campaigns compound into a recognizable brand world rather than accumulating as unrelated executions. New Asset Evaluation: Establish the standard by which a proposed new brand asset, character, or message earns investment, and bring a disciplined and realistic view of how many the organization can support and sustain over time. Social Content and Creator Ecosystem Social Creative Teams at Volume: Build and run the in-house social creative team across paid and organic on Meta, TikTok and YouTube, producing test creative at the volume those platforms reward across both video and static, with each platform developed on its own terms rather than from one asset repurposed across all three, and with the variation discipline that makes that volume achievable without the work getting thinner. Content Generation Strategy: Own the content engine behind that volume: where concepts come from, how they are briefed, produced, reviewed and refreshed, and how the pipeline is staffed and sequenced so that high output is systematic and repeatable rather than heroic. Reactive Content Built to Travel: Concept, produce and ship same-day creative against cultural moments and firm news, built to travel and earn reach rather than to fill a calendar, and hold it to the brand at that speed, through a creative and compliance path agreed before the moment arrives, so that the work that goes viral is still unmistakably TopDog. Creator and Influencer Programs: Run the creator and influencer program day to day, including talent identification, the brief and brand guardrails creators work inside, and the recurring on-camera relationships that extend the brand's cast, partnering with the Chief Marketing Officer on major talent partnerships. Creative Production at Scale In-House Studio Leadership: Lead the firm's in-house creative organization across concepting, art direction, copy, video and motion, and production, holding it to a weekly output cadence that supports a rapidly scaling media investment, and approve production spend, vendor selection, casting and tooling within an agreed budget. Format Range and Craft: Hold the creative standard across the full format range the firm runs, including skit, testimonial, direct-to-camera, listicle, statistic, and trend-led executions, so that volume never becomes the reason the work gets worse. Creative Testing and Performance: Establish the testing framework that ties concept, hook, format, and talent to downstream lead quality, retained cases, and cost per signed case, in partnership with performance marketing and decision science. Production Infrastructure: Own the creative operations backbone, including digital asset management, the brand portal, briefing and workflow systems, and production tooling, so that creative output scales faster than headcount. Broadcast, National Cable, Audio and Out-of-Home Television and Connected Television Creative: Guide creative strategy for linear television, national cable and connected television with the firm's television creative and production agency, a committed relationship that continues. You shape concepts, casting direction and message variation across markets and audience segments; the agency carries production. Audio and Radio Creative: Own radio and podcast creative, including the distinctive voice and attitude that define the firm's audio advertising, and extend that register across formats and station types without diluting what makes it recognizable. Out-of-Home and Local Presence: Direct out-of-home creative across transit, billboard and local placements so the brand lands with the same force in physical markets as it does on screen, across five to seven markets today with real room to expand as creative quality improves. Audience-Specific Message Strategy: Develop and launch brand and message strategy for audiences the firm is newly addressing, including the creative, casting and language decisions required to reach them credibly. Brand Governance and Design System Design System Ownership: Own and extend the firm's design system, the components, templates and visual standards that determine how the brand shows up from out-of-home to television to the website, and keep it current as new formats, channels and audiences are added. One National Brand, Every Market: Hold one national brand consistent across every medium the firm buys and every market it operates in, including broadcast, audio, out-of-home, paid and organic social, the firm's websites and client-facing digital properties, so that TopDog reads the same and wins the same everywhere it appears. Regulated Advertising Compliance: Partner with legal and compliance to ensure all creative meets attorney advertising requirements across every jurisdiction in which the firm advertises, and build review into the production workflow rather than bolting it on at the end. Standards, Library and Training: Maintain the brand standards, asset library, and working guidance that let internal teams, partner firms, and external production partners produce on-brand work without routing every decision through the central team. Organization, Talent and Partner Ecosystem Team Building and Specialist Recruiting: Grow and develop the internal creative organization toward where the firm is going, investing in the people already in seat and recruiting the director-level leaders and specialists the next stage needs directly and without escalation, and bringing proven talent into the firm rather than relying on open-market search alone. Creative Capacity and Flexible Bench: Build the mix of permanent, contract and partner capacity that lets output scale without a new hire for every increment, including the briefing standards, quality control and review rhythm that keep work produced outside the core team on brand. Production Partner Management: Oversee relationships with production companies, creative agencies, editors, on-camera and voice talent, music licensing, and post partners, and make the in-house versus outsourced decision on each based on speed, cost per asset, and quality. The firm's television creative and production agency relationship is committed and continues, and signing any new standing vendor is a decision made with the Chief Marketing Officer. Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with performance marketing, decision science, brand partnerships and offline media, web development, client marketing, and intake so that creative strategy is informed by what is actually converting and by what clients experience after the click. Qualifications Bachelor's degree required. No specific field of study is required, and no advanced degree is required or preferred. Fifteen or more years of brand and creative leadership experience, with a demonstrated track record of building a brand platform rather than executing against briefs handed down. Experience building and personally running fast, high-output social creative teams across paid and organic on Meta, TikTok and YouTube, producing test creative well into the hundreds a month, and scaling, including a robust content generation strategy behind that output and same-day reactive work that traveled, including work that went viral while still reading as unmistakably on brand. Experience building and personally running an in-house creative studio across social, out-of-home and audio, including the specialist organization design that sustained output requires, and a track record of scaling a creative function materially with director-level leaders beneath you. Deep business-to-consumer go-to-market and creative background, ideally from a trust-sensitive, high-consideration category such as insurance, legal services, financial technology, automotive, or healthcare. Demonstrated experience stewarding an established brand and its existing equity, extending and protecting recognized brand assets rather than replacing them. Experience owning a design system and the visual standards that carry a brand consistently across out-of-home, television, digital advertising and a consumer website. Television and connected television creative experience is a plus rather than a requirement, since television creative and production are held by the firm's agency partner and that relationship continues. Track record leading a brand that has successfully advertised to two or more distinct audiences, having personally launched the brand and message strategy for the newer of those audiences rather than inheriting it already built. Demonstrated judgment regarding brand asset and character portfolio discipline, including a realistic view of how many distinct assets and messages an organization can sustain. Experience partnering with performance marketing and analytics functions, with fluency in creative testing and in evaluating creative against downstream acquisition economics. Working command of creative operations infrastructure, including digital asset management, brand portals, briefing and workflow systems, and production tooling. Experience operating inside a regulated advertising environment, with the ability to treat compliance requirements as a day-one operating condition rather than as friction. A genuine network of leaders and specialists who will follow the candidate to a new organization, including people who have made that move with them previously or will commit to doing so now. Demonstrated ability to lead and influence across functions in a fast-moving, high-accountability environment, including partnership with founders and senior operating leaders. High-growth orientation with the resourcefulness to build capability ahead of infrastructure rather than waiting for it. Remote within the United States, with willingness to travel up to 10 percent. About Our Client TopDog Law represents people after an accident and fights to secure the money and care they deserve, taking on insurance carriers on behalf of clients who would otherwise face them alone. The firm has recovered more than one billion dollars for over 145,000 clients, operates on a contingency model under which clients pay nothing unless they win, and carries more than 8,000 five-star reviews at an average rating of 4.8. Its brand is deliberately built for the people it serves, direct, plain-spoken, and unmistakable, and it has become one of the most recognized consumer brands in American legal advertising. Now serving more than ninety percent of the United States population, with a marketing investment scaling quickly behind a brand people already recognize, the firm is entering a period in which brand and creative capability become the engine of its next chapter. The Vice President of Marketing, Brand & Creative is a newly created seat reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, and it exists because the firm intends to build a durable brand world rather than a sequence of campaigns. For the right leader, the opportunity is to take a brand that has already earned real recognition and build it into an asset that compounds for years. #J-18808-Ljbffr Chamberlain Advisors