Associate Creative Director

Golin Ketchum; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Golin Ketchum is seeking an Associate Creative Director to lead high-impact, headline-driving ideas for top-tier brands. The role emphasizes autonomy, client face time, and strong presentation and production skills within a hybrid Chicago office.

You will build and refine concepts, mentor juniors, and direct brainstorms, collaborating with strategists and account teams to deliver standout work for diverse clients including QSR, airline, and financial brands. A strong portfolio is essential.

Qualifications

• 5–7 years of experience selling and executing earned-first ideas for big clients.
• Portfolio required to demonstrate capabilities.
• Strong leadership, feedback, and mentoring abilities.

Responsibilities

• Direct brainstorms and lead creative sessions.
• Mentor junior team members and elevate team thinking.
• Present concepts to clients and defend the vision.
• Collaborate with strategists and account partners to shape ideas.

Skills

Portfolio

Leadership

Pitching

Production skills

Collaboration

Job description

## Associate Creative DirectorApply: Hybrid: Chicago, Illinois, United States of America: Full time: Posted 2 Days Ago: R14832**Agency:**Golin Ketchum **Job Function:**Creative **Job Subfunction:**Creative Direction**Job Description:****Associate Creative Director**Golin Ketchum is looking for an ACD to join our team!Golin Ketchum is the most awarded public relations agency of the decade. We create change that matters for our clients and our people. The kind of change that earns attention and shapes culture to build business.Formed in 2026 from the merger of two iconic PR agencies, Golin Ketchum combines fearless creative and strategic excellence, fueled by Omnicom’s industry-leading data and AI solutions, to uncover powerful insights and execute work that builds and protects the world’s greatest companies. With specialized expertise across consumer and brands, corporate affairs, healthcare, technology, and food, agriculture and nutrition, we deliver integrated, high-impact communications services at scale.At Golin Ketchum, culture matters. We are fiercely ambitious yet fundamentally kind and collaborate obsessively with the best clients in the world.Want to create change that matters with us? Here are the details:**What You’ll Do:*** ACD’s at Golin Ketchum have a lot of autonomy, facetime with clients, ability to flex and grow their presentation, leadership, pitching and production skills.* This particular role will be predominantly working on THE QSR brand, an airline, and everything from candy to credit cards as well.* You’ll take rough concepts and make them better. You’ll know what's interesting. What's getting in the way and what it could become.* You’ll build with other creatives, strategists, and account partners. Giving good feedback. Accepting good feedback. You will make the people around you better.* You’ll direct brainstorms. You'll mentor juniors. You'll help the team see where the strongest thinking is.**What You Have:*** A successful ACD at Golin Ketchum is a highly curious, culturally savvy individual who loves to collaborate on first-ever, headline-driving ideas.* An ideal candidate has 5-7 years of experience selling and executing earned first ideas for big, meaty clients. Can collaborate with other disciplines and clearly convey the vision for their work, why it is right for the brand, and how it is relevant to the consumer.* You have a portfolio that proves it.*Golin Ketchum is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Golin Ketchum recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.*$130,000 *Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager. Our objective is to increase this requirement over time, and many of our agencies as well as Omnicom’s corporate group already require five days of in-office attendance.* Omnicom is committed to hiring and developing exceptional talent. We agree that talent is uniquely distributed, and we’re focused on developing inclusive teams that can bring the best solutions to everything we do. We strongly believe that celebrating what makes us different makes us better together. Join us—we look forward to getting to know you. We will process your personal data in accordance with our Recruitment Privacy Notice.