Creative Director

Champion Petfoods is expanding! We are excited to announce we are looking for a Creative Director to join our rapidly growing company.

Champion Petfoods is an award-winning pet food maker with a reputation of trust spanning 35+ years. Founded in a small town in Alberta, Canada, Champion – with its ORIJEN® and ACANA® brands – is a key player in the global premium pet food industry across three major geographic regions. Our purpose, To Earn Pet Lover Trust Every Day so Pets Thrive for a Lifetime, provides the foundation for our highest aspirations as a company.

We would love to hear from you if you are passionate about personal and professional growth and see yourself as a key player contributing to our continued success as an award-winning company.

Summary

The Creative Director drives the overall brand voice and creative content for Champion Petfoods’ two premium brands ORIJEN and ACANA and is responsible for managing and providing leadership to the internal Creative Team. This role partners primarily with Brand Marketing leaders, but also with cross-functional colleagues to meet creative, marketing, brand, and business objectives. Core areas of responsibility include managing the look, feel, tone, messaging, and product storytelling for both of our brands, which is applied to everything from conceiving of fully integrated campaigns and executing packaging to eCommerce, digital and retail communications. The Creative Director must be ready to develop big ideas, provide strategic perspective to the creative process, and act as an ambassador for innovative, modern, premium, and on-brand creative working hard to maintain the brand vision and image for both ORIJEN and ACANA in the U.S., Canada as well as provide support to our Marketing partners in EMEA and APAC.

This role will lead a team of 9 (7 designers, 1 copy writer and 1 traffic coordinator) and report to the Vice President of Marketing Services & Communications.

The Creative Director will work out of our corporate office in Edmonton, AB (relocation assistance can be provided) and will work on a hybrid work schedule to provide flexibility between working in office and from a home-based office.

A successful candidate will bring in-depth experience across all mediums including packaging, print and digital design, a proven ability to lead and mentor a creative services team, strong business and project management skills. They will also possess strong relationship management in a highly driven, fast moving, cross functional environment.

Responsibilities

Steward of Brand Voice & Narrative:
• Serve as the key steward of the ORIJEN and ACANA brand voices in partnership with Brand leaders and in support of the overall creative vision and business priorities.
• Ensure outstanding practices, innovation and creative concepts and execution to meet and exceed internal stakeholder expectations and those of Champion’s key retail customers.
• Understand our consumers and retail customers. Bring informed storytelling and an approachable tone to every touchpoint, in collaboration with the greater team.
• Drive and direct branded deliverables across all creative efforts to deliver compelling stories and executions that simply and strongly explain the “why” and reasons to believe in a product.
• Continuously promote and evolve Brand Style Guides to drive brand consistency across channels.
• Represent the Creative team in presentations and strategy discussions.

Strong Partner & Creative Expert:
• Partner with Brand team members, the Chief Marketing Officer, and other stakeholders across the company to receive creative requests, briefings and strategy guidance. Lead creative concepting and conceptualization that delivers on the briefs and strategy requested by these stakeholders.
• Stay abreast of trends in eCommerce, social media, web site platforms and in-store creative executions. Ensure designers can meet the needs and requirements for developing creative materials for a variety of channels and in a variety of mediums including marketing collateral, digital and social media assets, in-store displays, and other promotional materials ensuring a consistent and cohesive brand identity.
• “Bring the outside in” by sharing best practices and innovative creative solutions from the competitive landscape with a continuous pulse on current trends and noteworthy activities.

Manage & Mentor a Team of Creatives:
• Work with traffic coordinator to direct the daily creative workflow to support the creative goals and strategic goals of key stakeholders. Focus team efforts to ensure efficiency, prioritize projects and align resources.
• Inspire the design team with energy, passion, and thought leadership.
• Motivate the creative team by promoting a high-performance fun environment, a strong sense of urgency, quality standards, creative exploration, innovation, and continuous learning. Reinforce collaboration and partnership throughout the department.
• Collaborate on, and guide, the day-to-day work of all direct reports, providing feedback and owning the generation of ideas.
• Manage the creative services budget and adjust resources as necessary.

Requirements

• 7+ years working in a design leadership role
• Post-secondary degree in Marketing or similar field with proven experience in graphic design.
• The ideal candidate will be directly responsible for developing strategic marketing campaigns and leading a creative team to execute a broad range of content and tactics for a variety of digital and traditional channels.
• The ideal candidate will be responsible for shaping and owning the creative vision of various projects including concepting against briefs and has experience taking business goals and translating them into creative projects.
• Truly understands the creative process in marketing, including strategy, branding, video, photography, UX, copywriting, and digital art direction. Proven ability developing and directing the creation of eCom, web and social creative, as well as print and in-store tactics.
• Can go beyond the executional or tactical tasks and come up with innovative “campaignable” ideas that work across all platforms.
• Successful track record leading a team by demonstrating strong leadership skills and an ability to organize, motivate and improve the creative output of the team. Clearly able to articulate creative expectations.
• Strong collaboration and influence skills; able to build effective relationships with stakeholders across organizational levels.
• Self-driven leader able to work in a fast moving, ever-changing cross-functional team environment. Driven to act with a sense of urgency, work well under pressure and with demanding deadlines. Strong ability to budgetary resources.
• Highly organized, good project management and time management skills to ensure all deadlines are met. Able to juggle multiple, and sometimes, conflicting priorities and needs.
• Expertise in managing external partners, agencies, and freelancers.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Skilled in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, XD, Dimensions). Experience in photography is an asset.
• A global mind-set with a keen interest in helping our regional teams in EMEA and APAC grow the ORIJEN and ACANA brands in those markets.
• Genuine passion for and curiosity about the pet food industry.
• Travel expectation – 10%

Champion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.