Part-Time Creative Director: AI-Driven Brand & Performance

Designer Jobs; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 72,000 - 84,000; Part time

Job summary

The Baby Academy is hiring a commercially minded Fractional Creative Director to set creative direction and elevate performance-aware creative across channels in a lean, AI-forward model. This role is part-time (20 hours/week) in Chicago, with a monthly retainer and hybrid office expectations.

Lead high-impact concepts across paid media, social, web, email, and brand campaigns, translating business goals and brand strategy into distinctive ideas.

Qualifications

• Significant experience operating at Creative Director level, owning creative direction.
• 8+ years of progressive creative experience with leadership in an agency or brand.
• Portfolio showing ownership of brand systems and direction of other talent.
• Strong understanding of digital and performance creative across channels.
• Performance-creative mindset with data-driven testing.
• Fluency with AI-enabled creative tools and tech-driven improvements.
• Experience directing designers, freelancers, agencies, or collaborators.
• Excellent taste, communication, judgment, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Ability to operate in a fractional, high-leverage model.

Responsibilities

• Own development of high-level creative concepts across paid media, social, web, email, brand campaigns, and other touchpoints.
• Translate business goals, customer insights, cultural observations, and brand strategy into distinctive creative ideas.
• Define territories, concepts, visual approaches, and testing hypotheses for production extension.
• Continuously uncover new opportunities beyond briefs.
• Set the standard for great creative and raise the quality bar across the org.
• Apply evolving brand strategy to ensure work is distinctive, consistent, and channel-appropriate.
• Partner with growth, paid media, and agencies to analyze performance patterns.
• Turn performance insights into new hypotheses, iterations, and tests.
• Balance brand-building with commercial discipline.
• Stay close to customer feedback, social content performance, and emerging signals.
• Develop repeatable testing approaches to accelerate learning.
• Provide clear direction to Production Designer and partners; stay hands-on when needed.
• Convert concepts into briefs, references, and design systems.
• Review and refine output to ensure high quality before launch.
• Organize work so senior time focuses on ideas and judgment.
• Guide creative across Meta, display, email, landing pages, web assets, and more.
• Collaborate with marketing leadership and external teams to align with strategy.
• Use AI across ideation, development, production, and workflow design.
• Evaluate new AI tools to improve quality, speed, or range.
• Develop lean workflows for high-volume output.
• Proactively introduce new capabilities to the team.
• Use AI to raise the ceiling of creative quality.
• Bring evolving brand strategy to life in day-to-day execution.
• Ensure brand coherence across channels while staying fresh.
• Maintain consistency without overly restrictive guidelines.
• Identify opportunities to visually improve customer experiences and propose solutions.
• Collaborate with external agencies translating brand work to internal systems.

Skills

Creative Director level

8+ years

brand systems

digital & performance creative

AI-enabled creative tools

directing designers/agencies

cross-functional collaboration

fractional model

Job description

The Baby Academy is hiring a commercially minded Fractional Creative Director to set creative direction and elevate performance-aware creative across channels in a lean, AI-forward model. This role is part-time (20 hours/week) in Chicago, with a monthly retainer and hybrid office expectations.

Lead high-impact concepts across paid media, social, web, email, and brand campaigns, translating business goals and brand strategy into distinctive ideas.