Creative Director

Welcome to Apothékary™, where Nature is Medicine™. We harness the intelligence of nature by creating clean, effective herbal remedies that target the root cause of health imbalances like helping to ease stress, support the gut, strengthen immunity, boost energy, and sharpen mental focus. Our herbal formulas feature traditional herbs from several medicinal modalities including Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Japanese Kampo, and Western herbalism. We believe in getting to the root cause of health issues and herbs can be a great place to start your journey and promote wellness for the long-term. 

We were founded in early 2019 by Shizu Okusa, a serial entrepreneur in the wellness industry and named E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2021. After leaving an intense finance career, she became inspired to live a more balanced lifestyle and revisit her Japanese roots and passion for herbal medicine. Shizu set out to help others regain their holistic health using traditions she grew up with and ones she learned along the way.

Why work with us?

1. You will get the chance to be an early team member at a fast-growth health & wellness startup disrupting the intersection of food and medicine – preventative healthcare rooted in herbal medicine
2. We are growing fast (100x growth in two years, over $16M in capital raised, and quadrupled the size of the team in the last 9 months)
3. We’re a tight-knit, passionate team, where you'll learn a ton and have ownership over your responsibilities.
4. Work with a seasoned second-time founder and executive team

The role:

Apothékary is looking for a Creative Director with a strong background in production, video, design, and advertising to lead our creative team. In this leadership position you will own the creative look and direction across all brand touch points including driving compelling narratives, innovative marketing campaigns, and creating high-performance advertising campaigns across all digital and retail channels. The role demands brilliance in ideas, craft, strategy, story-telling, inspiring and influencing the broader creative team to think differently and boldly in this trailblazing category. You thrive in a fast-paced and highly collaborative environment. You’re a strong executive communicator and an excellent people manager. This role reports directly to the Head of Brand Marketing.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the long term direction and evolution of Apothékary brand by articulating and expanding on the founder’s vision and positioning in the wellness space
• Drive brilliance in ideas, craft and strategy across all channel touch points while ensuring creative work delivers against the brief and brand strategy
• Be a guardian and champion of our brand and style guide helping on-board and coach new creative team members to ensure we consistently build brand equity and elevate our creative mastery in-house
• Guide the execution for brand identity across all aspects of the brand experience including all channels and media vehicles (advertising, digital/social, packaging, Ecommerce, retail, experiential), ensuring a cohesive brand experience across every touch point for the consumer
• Present concepts and creative strategies to leadership, stakeholders, and clients, articulating the rationale behind decisions.
• With your expertise, you will lead conceptualization and execution of digital advertising and email campaigns that span various platforms (such as Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Email, SMS) and are fueled with optimizing ad performance through meticulous data analysis and A/B testing
• Oversee and provide daily management of the creative team of designers, copywriters, and creative agencies including setting priorities, assigning resources and ensuring projects goals are achieved
• Oversee and execute end-to-end photoshoot & videography production, including concept ideation, mood boards, shot lists, talent sourcing, and location scouting to ensure alignment with the brand's visual identity.
• Lead creative direction on-set, ensuring all photography and videography captures align with campaign objectives and storytelling goals.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners across marketing, product, and digital to shape the strategy, ideation, and execution of world-class creative
• Leverage consumer and cultural insights to ensure all creative work is strategy-led and positions Apothékary as a thought leader
• Collaborate with designers, marketers, digital, and product teams to integrate copy seamlessly into visual and interactive experiences
• Define brand architecture, messaging pillars, and key brand attributes for each launch
• Continuously monitor market dynamics and competitive landscape to refine brand strategies accordingly
• Develop a roadmap for product and customer touchpoints that can be used in the brand’s 360 marketing efforts, from swag to holiday collections to co-branded partner products
• Lead brainstorming sessions to foster creativity and collaboration with the team
• Create processes that maximize speed, testing, and design iteration for the entire creative team across paid, owned, and earned efforts
• Monitor the performance of creative campaigns and content initiatives, tracking key metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and brand sentiment
• Conduct A/B testing and gather user feedback to iterate and optimize creative assets for maximum impact; providing regular reports and insights to the team, highlighting successes, challenges, opportunities and plans for improvement
• You will oversee the creative budget, meticulously managing resources to ensure that we achieve maximum impact while maintaining cost-effectiveness
• Mentor, develop and lead junior talent, providing clear direction and constructive feedback to build a high performance team

Ideal candidate: 

• Bachelor’s and/or Masters degree in Design, Marketing, Advertising, Communications or related field
• 8+ years of hands-on and proven experience in copywriting, brand strategy, and creative development, preferably within the CPG and wellness space
• An outstanding portfolio demonstrating the ability to lead creative initiatives across a wide range of platforms on web, print, packaging, retail etc.
• Proven success of having demonstrated creativity and innovation with working knowledge of retail, DTC, and social media, emerging platforms and the evolving media landscape
• The ability to present and influence to strategic, brand-focused ideas to cross functional team members and leadership
• Experience supporting a high-growth branded consumer goods business with the ability to work under tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment 
• A leader who is hands-on by nature and has an exceptional level of timeliness and accuracy in his/her/their work. 
• Experience in Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, Figma
• Proficient in Google Suite
• Unquestionable ethics that drive leadership and behavior. 
• Passion for wellness community and herbal medicine and a vision on how to connect with consumers in ways that have never been done before

Bonus points:

• Combination of in-house and agency experience
• Experience in beauty and/or wellness industry
• Speaks Japanese 

Time and Location: 

This is a full-time and fully remote role. NYC or LA based candidates are preferred to be able to travel to shoots, but not mandatory.

Our team primarily works off of Eastern Time between 9:00am-5:00pm. Flexibility will be allowed between those hours, but this role will work closely in collaboration with the full time team and therefore would be expected to work between those regular daytime hours.  

This position is available to start immediately. Note that job responsibilities may change based on the company’s evolving needs.

• Salary range $100,000 - $120,000 annually

• Comprehensive health, dental and vision plans 

• Monthly paid Mental Health Days in addition to PTO

• Ability to earn equity options

• Monthly Apothékary product stipend