Director, Creative

The Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (M&CSR) division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC is laser-focused on improving the health and well-being of our customers and communities. We do this by expanding the scope of marketing to drive results for the business and our purpose. This includes optimizing new market opportunities, strengthening the Blue Cross NC brand, delivering business value for sustainable growth, and integrating social and philanthropic initiatives into our corporate footprint.

As part of the M&CSR division, the Creative group uses the power of creativity and craft to deliver on our goals. We are seeking a director-level creative leader with the vision, drive, and experience to elevate our brand, evangelize our purpose, and drive our business forward. Our ideal candidate has a proven history of building and inspiring teams that deliver beautiful, strategic creative work that achieves tangible results. They are skilled at conceptual thinking, distilling complex challenges into clear creative direction, and partnering with strategy and business leaders to better understand what is needed to succeed. All while fostering our brand and finding new ways to show and tell who we are, why we exist and how we serve our members and communities.

Please provide a link on your resume or separate attachment highlighting a strong portfolio demonstrating your creative craft, leadership and vision.

What You’ll Do

Be a mature, rational, seasoned, passionate, and brilliant creative professional.

Lead with empathy, diplomacy, and a teaching spirit. Understand when to give in and when to stand your ground, and always have the data/rationale to back yourself up.

Provide thought leadership on creative capabilities, trends, and best practices. Evangelize that the power of creativity will drive the business.

Champion the brand and tell its story. Become an expert on the brand and its voice, visual expressions, and guidelines.

Manage multiple creative teams: set expectations, oversee the quality of creative output, and lead team and professional development. Manage and mentor creatives from both copy and design backgrounds.

Plan, guide, and elevate creative output across brand, advertising, PR, digital, and social channels (B2C and B2B).

Lead by example. Roll up your sleeves and dive into the work when needed.

Implement storytelling, design thinking, and creative mining techniques, and lead teams in applying them to their daily work.

Oversee the development of creative briefs and strategy, and work with strategy and marketing leads for alignment.

Work with marketing, strategy and audience leads to better align teams for stronger, more effective creative.

Identify, evaluate, and oversee agency partners and vendors with the goal of setting our collective teams up for efficiency, effectiveness, and creative success.

Attend, oversee, and direct photo shoots, video/motion projects, and other content production as needed.

Work with project management to develop scopes (timing, vendor, etc.), set priorities, and manage workloads to ensure project completion within agreed-upon budgets and timelines.

Partner with marketing, strategy, business, and project management leads to ensure input is properly solicited to inform the work and ensure team success.

Immerse yourself in the business segments to understand their challenges, opportunities, and audiences.

Lead the development of creative strategy, concepts, and executions, including selling through to the business segments.

Liaise with M&CSR leaders and business segment partners to ensure deliverables are meeting or exceeding expectations and make plans for necessary adjustments.

Identify and apply tools and technology to infuse innovation, efficiency, and best practices into our work and processes.

Partner with studio, project management, and finance leads to develop process plans for team utilization and monitor performance.

Monitor the external environment across the healthcare industry to identify and act upon market competition, insights, trends, and opportunities.

Maintain a market-driven approach that seizes new opportunities, minimizes threats to our business, and enables the enterprise to remain a vital and competitive force in the market.

Support marketing leaders with market assessments, planning, competitive positioning, and product offerings.

Build relationships across the marketing division and business segments to foster collaboration, bolder thinking, and business alignment.

Develop and maintain effective working relationships with business unit leadership, SLT, Board, and other stakeholders as necessary to support the move to a market-driven culture.

Report to the VP, Creative.

What You Bring

Bachelor’s degree

10 years of experience with responsibility for creative leadership, management, and development

7 years’ experience leading teams and/or managing staff

In lieu of degree, 12+ years of experience in related field

What We Like

Creative leaders from both copywriting and art direction backgrounds are welcome.

Healthcare and health insurance experience is a plus but not required.

Case studies demonstrating how challenging business/brand problems were solved with a big idea, innovative thinking, tactics, etc. are strongly recommended.

Proven experience delivering innovative marketing tactics/campaigns across print, digital, video, email, etc. will be strongly preferred.

A strong grasp of how to communicate with audiences across the current digital landscape (including capabilities, trends, and best practices for major social platforms) is a priority.

If you’re ready to make a career out of making a difference, this is the opportunity for you.

We invite you to check out our careers site to see we value diversity and inclusion at all levels of our organization. We have inclusion challenges throughout the year and affinity groups that are an integral part of our culture!