Creative Director

Marketwake; Atlanta (GA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive benefits

401(k)

Real PTO

Job summary

Marketwake in Atlanta seeks a seasoned Creative Director to shape and own the agency's creative direction. You’ll lead strategy, brand storytelling, and production across campaigns, digital, and content, building a culture where great ideas become powerful work.

You’ll mentor designers and writers, own pitches, and collaborate with leadership to position clients with bold, lasting brands. This role blends leadership with hands-on creation in a hybrid Atlanta setup.

Qualifications

• 12+ years creative experience, at least 3 in senior creative leadership.
• Portfolio that makes us want to meet you within 30 seconds of opening it.
• Fluent in Adobe, Figma, and whatever's coming next.

Responsibilities

• Own the creative direction and quality of output. Brand, campaign, digital, content.
• Build the team. Find the gaps, fill them, develop the people here, and make Atlanta a place designers and writers want to work.
• Sit at the table with leadership on positioning, pricing, and client strategy; Creative is our strategy.
• Be the face of the work at pitches, conferences, and awards.
• Make us better by envisioning the next version of the agency.

Skills

Creative direction

Brand strategy

Team leadership

Pitching

Tools

Adobe Creative Suite

Figma

Job description

Read this first

Most agency job descriptions are written by HR. This one isn't.

We're a small shop in Atlanta with the ambition of a big one. We're not the Big Six of advertising agencies. We don't pretend to be because we were built to be different. What we are is a group of people who care a lot about our work, who've outgrown the ceiling above us, and who are looking for someone to come in and help raise it with powerful creative direction for our clients.

That's what this job is: not running a department, but helping us shift the way we think about creative.

If you've spent the last decade making other people's agencies famous and you're ready to put your name on something, keep reading.

If you want a title and a steady run of brand refreshes, this isn't it.

Who we're looking for

You've done the work. You've got the portfolio, the awards, the case studies, the scars. You've been an ACD or CD somewhere good, long enough to know what great feels like and what mediocre smells like the second it walks into the room.

You can sell through painting a vision. You walk into a pitch and the room shifts. When you’re speaking,a client leans forward in the chair because you just made their problem feel like an opportunity. You've closed business not for the sake of the sale, but because you believed in the creative vision your team created.

You build worlds. A logo isn't a logo to you, it's a doorway. A campaign isn't a campaign, it's a position the brand will occupy for a decade. You think in systems and recognize your team members as the keys to making them successful.

You lead with care. The best creatives you've ever worked for made you better and made you feel safe enough to be bad before you were good. That's the kind of room you build. Not the screaming-genius cliché. The other kind, the one where people actually do their best work because they trust you.

You're not afraid of AI. You've already integrated it. You know what it's good at, what it's bad at, and where the craft still has to come from a human brain. You don't think the tools are the threat. You think pretending they don't exist is.

You're not afraid of fast. Or messy. Or clients who don't yet know what they want, because turning that into clarity is part of the job, and frankly, the part you're best at.

What you'd actually do here

• Own the creative direction and quality of output. Brand, campaign, digital, content. If it goes out with our name on it, the standard is yours.
• Build the team. We have incredible talent - I believe some of the best in the industry. We need you to find the gaps, fill them, develop the people already here, and make this the place designers and writers in Atlanta want to work. The org chart is yours to argue for.
• Sit at the table. You'll be in the room with our leadership on positioning, on pricing, on which clients we chase and which we walk away from. Creative isn't downstream of strategy here. Creative IS our strategy.
• Be the face of the work. Pitches, conferences, podcasts, panels, the awards circuit (if you want it). When clients in this city think "creative agency," we want them to think of your name as well as ours.
• Make us better than we are. We know what we're capable of. We're looking for someone who can see the next version of us before we can.

What's honestly true

We offer actual ownership of the creative direction of an agency, not the seventeenth seat at someone else's table. We can offer a culture that breathes life into our work, our people and our clients. We believe in what we do and enjoy it.

Some of our clients are sophisticated. Some are still figuring out what a brand is. Both can be great work, different muscles, same standard.

Our processes are imperfect. You'll inherit some good ones, some bad ones, but not a lot of "we've always done it this way" - you're welcome to break and build with us because we do that well here.

You will work hard. Not because we celebrate burnout (we don't, and we'll back you up when you protect your team), but because building something is harder than maintaining something, and we are here to build better worlds.

The basics

12+ years creative experience, at least 3 in senior creative leadership. Portfolio that makes us want to meet you within 30 seconds of opening it. Fluent in Adobe, Figma, and whatever's coming next. Atlanta-based or willing to be. This is hybrid, and presence matters when you're building a culture.

Comprehensive benefits, 401(k), real PTO that you'll actually take, flexible hours, and a leadership team that has your back.

About Marketwake

• 70+ person agency
• Best places to work 5 years in a row
• Inc 5000 5 years in a row