Associate Creative Director

Dog and Pony Studios is an integrated creative and digital agency for B2B brands. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, we are a hybrid agency with remote teams located across Canada, South America and Europe. For 25+ years, our teams have worked at the cutting edge of technology and design, collaborating with some of the highest-impact organizations globally.

About the role:

As Associate Creative Director at Dog and Pony Studios, you bring together business-forward, strategic client leadership, hands-on creative direction and inspiring mentorship to elevate our creative output and drive the execution of high-quality, strategically sound creative across the agency. Working closely with the VP, Creative, you will help define the strategic direction and develop the creative brief for a wide range of project types, helping to bring clarity, alignment, and energy to complex B2B challenges.

Responsibilities:

• Drive the creative vision and execution for high-impact creative and brand storytelling
• Mentor a team of writers and designers to deliver best-in-class creative
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with a range of client stakeholders, including business partners, internal and external agency partners and executive leadership

What you’ll be doing:

Creative Direction and Vision

• Generate creative briefs that provide clear, actionable guidance to internal teams.
• Creatively direct a range of outputs across print, digital and video, from sales enablement materials to high-impact campaigns, videos to digital experiences, event activations to brand storytelling.
• Lead creative concept development, ensuring all work and proposed creative aligns with the client's brand and marketing objectives.
• Provide clear creative direction to designers and copywriters, promoting strong integration of strategy, content and design.
• Ensure the highest quality of creative output, maintaining consistency across all brand touchpoints, compliance with brand guidelines, and adherence to any legal requirements.
• Uphold the highest creative standards for design excellence, marketing best practices and communication principles.
• Advocate for bold, innovative ideas while maintaining strategic alignment with the clients’ business goals.
• Lead, inspire, and mentor creative teams, supporting a collaborative and high-performing culture.
• Set clear expectations and provide constructive feedback to promote professional growth within the team.
• Oversee multiple projects, ensuring deadlines are met while upholding creative excellence.
• Balance creative ambition with business realities, ensuring solutions are both inspiring and practical.
• Champion a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement within the creative team.
• Support an environment of ownership, accountability, and proactive problem-solving within the team.

Strategic Client Leadership

• Help direct and participate in discovery, including research efforts, distilling key insights to inform creative direction and campaign effectiveness.
• Work with clients to define brand positioning, messaging platforms, and strategic frameworks to differentiate clients in the marketplace.
• Lead client pitches and presentations to clients and agency partners, including in-house agency leadership, articulating the rationale behind strategic and design decisions.
• Create impactful presentations and reports that clearly articulate creative strategy.
• Guide clients through brand and marketing decisions, offering expert advice and recommendations.

Process & Resource Management

• Collaborate with accounts and internal project management teams to establish realistic timelines, ensure efficient workflow management and prioritize resources across short- and long-term projects.
• Develop strong relationships with cross-functional teams, including art directors, designers, writers, producers, animators, developers, and others, to leverage the agency's full capabilities.
• Support Account Directors, Producers, and Studio Director to oversee budgets, timelines, and resource allocation to maximize productivity and profitability.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher
• 8+ years of agency experience and 3+ years of senior-level, client-facing experience in a leadership role
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
• Knowledge of financial services or experience working with complex subject matter or regulated industries
• Portfolio that demonstrates your experience leading and delivering a range of marketing initiatives, projects and programs, preferably in the B2B space

Additional Information:

Salary Range: $105,000.00 - $115,000.00

Vacancy: This job posting is for a current open position at Dog and Pony Studios.

AI Disclosure: All applications are reviewed by a member of our hiring team, and final hiring decisions are made by humans. While we generally do not rely on AI based tools in our hiring process, we may occasionally use AI-enabled tools to support certain aspects of application screening.

What we offer:

• Global Team: We hire the best professionals from all over the world. Be part of a highly motivated, multidisciplinary team working on world-class creative.
• Global Clients: Lead complex, high-impact projects for some of the biggest companies in the world.
• No Diva Policy: This is a friendly, collegial, client-centric team focused on delivering world-class products.
• Hybrid Office: We’ve been a hybrid agency since 2008. If you’re in Toronto, you will frequently work from our headquarters. You’ll meet your global teammates face-to-face a few times a year when we bring people together.
• Structured Career Plan: Clear expectations, regular performance reviews, and defined growth paths.
• Paid Vacation: 3 weeks annual paid vacation + annual wellness time off through Christmas and New Year.
• Paid Benefits: 100% coverage, without co-pay, with our benefits package.
• Paid Sick Leave: Generous yearly allowance for paid sick days.

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