Senior Director, MX Creative Studio

Title: Sr. Director, Head of Creative, SEA Mobile Experience business

Location:

Based in Plano, TX

Headquartered in Ridgefield Park, N.J., Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (SEA) is a leader in mobile technologies, consumer electronics, home appliances and enterprise solutions. From our humble beginnings to our position today as a tech leader, our passion for innovation has been the common thread throughout our history. We’ve grown into one of THE most recognized global brands. We consider ourselves “relentless pioneers” that push boundaries and defy barriers. The company pushes beyond the limits of today’s technology to provide groundbreaking connected experiences across its large portfolio of products and services, including mobile devices, home appliances, home entertainment, 5G networks, and digital displays. As EPA’s ENERGY STAR® Corporate Commitment Partner, SEA is dedicated to making a positive impact on the environment through its eco-conscious products, practices, and operations.

People | Excellence| Change |Integrity | Co-prosperity

Job Description:

Reporting to the Vice President of Mobile Marketing, the Senior Creative Director, Head of Creative Studio will be a visionary creative leader for the Mobile business in the US, reinvigorating the Samsung brand as a desired choice across the entire portfolio of smartphones, tablets, PC and wearables. This pivotal role requires an individual with a strong passion for storytelling, a keen eye for design, a deep understanding of the US and global culture, a tireless drive for creative excellence and innovation to challenge the status quo.

This senior creative leader will lead the internal team and external agency partners to spearhead development of impactful creative strategies and concepts that will challenge the status quo of the US mobile market and effectively elevate and differentiate the Samsung mobile brand across ALL marketing channels, programs and creative formats.

The leader will be responsible for leading development and execution of the creative vision for the Samsung he Galaxy mobile brand in the US, creative strategy for key marketing channels and initiatives from Paid Media and Social and Influencer and Partnerships, development and production of creative assets for all channels, and ensuring brand and creative consistency and alignment with Retail, external partners (Carriers, National Retailers) and B2B.

You are a progressive influencer, equally comfortable “thinking big and bold” and prioritizing strategic initiatives as well as focusing on the day-to-day creative operations and execution. You are fluent in the fundamentals of creative production across advertising, owned creative and global asset localization, with a healthy experience set across agency and client side work.

Equal parts visionary leader, coach, business partner, negotiator, you have extensive experience leading through influence and managing multiple stakeholders, ideally within a complex, globally-matrixed organization. You have a track record of leading through various stages of growth: building, developing and managing a team and creative and production agency partners through marketing governance and project management.

We are on a mission to change the game in the US, boldly positioning Samsung as a desired, culturally relevant brand within the mobile category. You are a change agent who will help bring this ambition to life, navigating complexity, chaos, organizational nuances.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Creative vision and leadership

Translate global creative vision for the Samsung Galaxy brand into the culturally relevant creative vision for the US market, in partnership with SEA MX Product & Brand Marketing leadership.

Identify the right balance and role of “launches” (led by global marketing team in Suwon) and always-on creative for the US market. Drive consistency of the creative strategy and execution across both.

Partner with the global marketing team (Suwon, Korea) to influence creative strategy, concepts and development of global creative to be US-centric and US-first (US is >30% of the global mobile business).

Lead creative discussions with the global marketing team in Suwon and their agency partners to proactively communicate US needs and evaluate gaps in creative strategies, campaigns and specific assets. Propose based changes and requirements based on US consumer, cultural, competitive insights and data, and in order to drive better business results.

Creative development and execution

Develop and activate Brand Playbook spanning brand foundations, visual and messaging guidelines, specific campaign and channel creative guidance.

Develop and refine briefs for campaigns, programs, channels and initiatives.

Build actionable creative toolkits to scale the brand and creative across all formats, channels and tactics – within Samsung owned platforms, paid media and through external partners.

Lead development of creative to complement global creative for product launches with always-on US creative, organic Social creative for owned and operated channels, all paid media creative including custom opportunities with digital partners and publishers, guide influencer and partner creative, experiential marketing.

Provide creative oversight, direction, enablement and execution across advertising, content, brand activation, partnerships and sponsorships.

Lead successful creative delivery for all marketing campaigns, programs, activations with a holistic view across programs to drive ongoing optimizations.

Team leadership

Evaluate the state, gaps and opportunities for the current team comprised of designers, copywriters and creative project managers. Set a clear vision and plan for the team, roles and responsibilities, principles.

Build and maintain a healthy environment through coaching, mentorship, regular performance reviews and feedback.

Develop and grow current team and attract new diverse talent to transform current Creative Services team into a world-class Creative Studio.

Build and activate the vision for Creative Studio 2.0 to become a center of creative excellence and know-how for the entire Mobile organization and external partners (Carriers, National Retail, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft)

Cultivate an inclusive, collaborative and equitable team culture that promotes ideation and innovation, risk taking, ownership and accountability, connection of the dots across teams.

Creative operations

Manage the US creative ‘engine’ for all briefed work, directing creative team and partners’ work through an organized and collaborative process, including briefing, creation, review and stakeholder alignment.

Extend, manage, scale and evolve our creative resource ecosystem

Track all work and set metrics around every deliverable for all campaigns across all channels

Develop a robust process for operationalizing asset production

Manage the portfolio of creative agencies and production partners. Develop and apply a world-class agency partnership model with procurement, media partners and legal teams.

Cross-functional creative model

Set budgets and timeline for cross-functional teams

Work with cross–functional teams to scale creative production process and deliver on-time and on budget, across Mobile Marketing, Retail, and B2B

Creative center of excellence

Future proof the brand’s consumer and cultural connection through proactive identification and development of the latest innovative creative trends, concepts, technologies that are aligned to Samsung brand and business ambition.

Evangelize creative work and team priorities to diverse internal audiences (i.e. functional share-outs, townhalls, executive presentations, global share-outs) and external partners with a goal to align to Samsung’s creative strategy.

Work closely with HQ to influence, implement, and leverage global campaign strategy, guidance and creative assets.

Skills and Qualifications:

Bachelor’s Degree with 15+ years of experience in creative leadership for global brands (preferably entertainment, consumer technology, lifestyle, advertising), including 5+ years building and leading multidisciplinary creative teams at an agency or within an internal client-side creative group (preferably both).

Your teams have delivered brand-defining, culture-influential, business-driving creative work. Proven track record of integrated creative campaigns across multiple platforms.

Entrepreneurial spirit, excellent communication skills and ability to articulate creative strategies and concepts effectively to all levels of organization; evoke excitement and passion with your work.

Proven track record of successfully managing cross-functional teams and agencies and the ability to influence and drive impact in complex cross-functional organizations and with all levels of management.

Ability to operate in a very fast-paced environment, demonstrate an agile and adaptive mindset, capable of quickly responding to consumer, market and cultural opportunities – providing both organization leadership and creative guidance.

High emotional intelligence that enables close working relationships with key leaders across remote teams globally and solving complex problems at scale.