Creative Director (ECD), Midwest Region

Executive Creative Director, Midwest Region

Inspire and bring ideas to life

What is Avanade Experiences?

Over Avanade's 20+ years, we've delivered the most intelligent, engaging, award-winning experiences on the Microsoft ecosystem. As technology and human expectations evolve, we see incredible opportunities for customers, products, and workplaces--where imagination is the only limit.

Avanade Experiences is our way to bring unconventional thinking, exceptional creativity, and our unparalleled engineering heritage to think big and make it real. Our vision of the future goes far beyond concepts to enable and deliver the impact our clients, their people, customers, and communities need.

We support each other with great work to push boundaries, connect technology with what matters to people first, and grow with our clients. If you feel this is a great fit for your path, we'd love to talk.

About the role

As an Executive Creative Director (ECD),you set the tone and raise the creative bar in your region. Your vision plays a critical part in real impact through innovative projects for some of the world's top brands. Paired with the Area Executive Creative Director, you lead a talented multi-disciplinary team of creatives--other creative directors, designers, copy writers, content strategists, and UX designers--while closely collaborating across the Avanade Experiences team with technologists, analytics experts, product managers, client services and delivery team members. You provide guidance and mentorship to team members while providing creative work that sets new standards.You have extensive creative experience and work with different technologies and platforms. You're a master at developing creative strategy and providing direction on multiple simultaneous projects, and willing to roll up your sleeves to help to push a project over the line. You're an excellent communicator able to sell hairy, complex ideas to different audiences and are just as comfortable with business design thinking as you are with art direction. As creative director, you work with senior partners across the business, helping to pitch, sell, manage, and deliver amazing creative work. You have a deep understanding of how creativity supports profitable business growth and proven experience bringing the wildest of ideas to life.

Responsibilities

Specifically, we can depend on you to:
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Help to sell creative vision both internally and to clients
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Work with the sales team to develop world class pitches, with a focus on story telling
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Using insights, create experiences that translates into business opportunities and value
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Conduct co-creation/ideation workshops with senior executive and C-level clients
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Work with multi-disciplinary teams to define and deliver products across multiple platforms core to Avanade

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Ensure that the regional creative team collaborates with all other business functions within and outside of the Region, consistently delivering an exceptional, unified end-to-end customer experience across stages, channels, and touchpoints in the customer journey
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Build and manage a diverse and inclusive creative team with deep domain expertise
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Encourage growth mindset, problem-solving, strategic thinking, and customer-orientation among the team
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Oversee and review design deliverables; constantly up-level the creative output of the team
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Oversee the coordination of offshore creative teams for project deliverables

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Mentor direct reports and team members
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Set objectives for the team that help to drive business performance
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Some travel needed, will discuss in interviews

What you bring to the team

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12+ years of relevant design experience

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5+ years' experience managing people and teams
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Experience in narrative creation, storytelling, pitching, and selling innovative solutions for Fortune 100-1000 clientele
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A bachelor's degree in design, graphic design, or a similar field, or the required equivalent experience. A master's degree in a related discipline is a plus.
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An inspiring portfolio that demonstrates expertise in design principles and solutions
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Extensive experience of visual design, foundations of UI design, layouts, graphics development, typography, color,and visual theories

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Knowledge of customer experience anduserexperience disciplines, such as UX design, information architecture, research, usability,and content strategy
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Expert knowledge in most top creative tools and platforms (Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Figma, etc.), and experience with W3C HTML / XHTML, CSS is a plus
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Experience working with cross-functional teams
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Trained in digital design, web,and mobile development in an enterprise environment
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Experience with B2B and B2C highly valued

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Capable of understanding and communicating the technical feasibility of solutions
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Able to work with technologists to translate design into deliverables
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Ability to coach, motivate, grow, course-correct, and guide a team
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Demonstrated history of working with external clients at the senior level (Director, VP)
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Expert level written and verbal communication skills, including ability to comfortably present to the senior level of our clients (remote and public speaking)