Fractional Creative Director

The Baby Academy; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 67,000 - 78,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible schedule (20 hours/week)

Monthly retainer $6k–$7k

Job summary

The Baby Academy is seeking a senior, commercially minded Fractional Creative Director to elevate how great creative gets made, shaping direction and mentoring internal teams and agency partners across paid media, social, web, email, campaigns, and brand experiences.

This lean, hands-on role focuses on ideas, creative judgment, and execution where senior talent adds the most value, with AI as a core part of the process.

Qualifications

• Significant prior experience operating at Creative Director level, setting creative direction and major campaigns.
• 8+ years in a senior creative leadership role within a high-quality agency or consumer brand.
• Strong portfolio showing ownership of ideas, campaigns, and brand systems.

Responsibilities

• Own development of high-level creative concepts across paid media, social, web, email, brand campaigns, partnerships.
• Translate business goals and insights into distinctive creative ideas.
• Establish what great creative looks like for The Baby Academy and raise the quality bar.
• Partner with growth, paid media, and agency teams to understand performance and patterns.
• Provide clear, high-quality creative direction to Production Designer and partners; stay hands-on when needed.
• Incorporate AI into ideation, concept exploration, and production workflows.
• Bring brand strategy and visual identity to life in day-to-day marketing.

Skills

Creative leadership

Brand strategy

AI-enabled creative

Digital & performance creative

Cross-functional collaboration

People management

Creative direction

Tools

AI design tools

Job description

The Baby Academy is seeking an exceptional, commercially minded Fractional Creative Director with outstanding creative instincts and a genuinely modern approach to how great creative gets made. We’re looking for an established Creative Director who has already led creative at a senior level across high-growth consumer brands, joining us on a fractional basis to bring external perspective, set creative direction and elevate the work produced by our internal team and agency partners.

This is a senior, hands‑on creative leadership role for someone with outstanding taste, strong conceptual instincts, and the ability to translate business and customer insights into creative ideas that work across paid media, social, web, email, campaigns, and brand experiences. The successful candidate will help determine what The Baby Academy should make, why it should work, and how each idea should evolve based on real‑world performance.

The role will operate within a lean creative model. You will be supported by a colleague focused on high‑volume execution, allowing you to concentrate your time on the ideas, creative judgment, experimentation, and hands‑on creative work where senior creative talent creates the greatest value.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the development of high-level creative concepts across paid media, social, web, email, brand campaigns, partnerships, and other customer touchpoints
• Translate business goals, customer insights, cultural observations, and brand strategy into distinctive, compelling creative ideas
• Help establish what great creative looks like for The Baby Academy and consistently raise the quality bar across the organization
• Partner with growth, paid media, and agency teams to understand creative performance and identify patterns in winning and underperforming work
• Provide clear, high-quality creative direction to the full-time Production Designer and other creative partners, while remaining hands‑on enough to develop, build, refine, or prototype creative personally when appropriate
• Use AI as a core part of the creative process across ideation, concept exploration, visual development, production, iteration, and workflow design
• Help bring The Baby Academy’s evolving brand strategy and visual identity to life across day‑to‑day marketing execution

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Significant prior experience operating at Creative Director level, with responsibility for setting creative direction, developing major concepts and campaigns, and raising the creative standard across a brand or portfolio of clients
• 8+ years of progressive creative experience, ideally including senior Creative Director, Creative Director or equivalent leadership experience within a high-quality agency or consumer brand environment
• A portfolio demonstrating not simply strong individual design execution, but clear ownership of creative ideas, campaigns, brand systems, and the direction of other creative talent
• Strong understanding of digital and performance creative
• Demonstrated fluency with modern AI-enabled creative tools
• Experience directing designers, production resources, freelancers, agencies, or other creative partners, combined with the craft and confidence to remain personally hands‑on when the work calls for it
• Excellent taste, communication, judgment, feedback, and cross‑functional collaboration skills

ROLE DETAILS

Fractional / Part‑Time - 20 hours per week

Monthly Retainer: $6,000-$7,000, depending on experience