Creative Director

For over 40 years, National Business Furniture (NBF) has built beautiful, comfortable, and functional spaces for businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. We’ve helped our customers bring their visions to life by providing service that exceeds expectations at every juncture. These achievements are driven by strengths in leadership, sales, customer service, and beyond; truly, our people are the drivers of our success. Together, we help people create an environment where great work happens. By building a company culture where colleagues can trust and depend on one another, NBF has become more innovative and imaginative while remaining a tenured leader in the furniture industry.

We’re presenting an exciting opportunity for a Creative Director based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. S/he is a practiced people leader, an experienced and strategic creative leader, and a master of developing brand-building, audience-centric creative that engages audiences to achieve a desired result. This candidate should love being in the work and be as comfortable putting pen to paper as they are providing creative counsel. The Creative Director will report to the VP – Marketing.

What Makes This a Great Opportunity?

The Creative Director is the humble genius behind the development, look and feel, and visual representation of the National Business Furniture (NBF) brand. This leader will guide a team, through personal involvement, to rebrand National Business Furniture and, over time, will curate, cultivate and expand that brand presence to help drive significant business growth.

Here’s a General Overview of What You’ll be Doing:

Leadership & management

• Lead a team to develop an effective creative strategy, creative platform and all associated assets for NBF
• Be an inspirational leader who guides toward great and digs in to show how it’s done
• Be a connector, building relationships with team members in Strategy, Creative, Audience Engagement, Merchandising, Sales, E-commerce, and Supply Chain to tie brand creative to audience understanding, internal and external needs, the differentiated business offering, available product, and the NBF brand
• Build a culture on the team that is vibrant, curious, effusive about great creative, and oriented to performance
• Love creative, and be a champion of what good looks like

Rebranding & Brand Development

• Lead development of NBF’s refreshed brand identity: logo, visual identity, brand standards/style guide; over time, ensure brand consistency and standards of usage
• With agency support, develop a creative platform for NBF that brings the refreshed brand identity to life and establishes a differentiated position for NBF in market: creative platform with campaign and asset development direction/framework; overtime, guide the expansion and curation of the creative platform to bring new campaigns to life
• Develop internal and external rebrand launch materials, as well as creative direction for the launch itself

Creative strategy & development

• Determine the creative vision of the NBF brand, the associated creative strategy, and the manifestation of that vision and strategy through digital, print and other campaigns and assets
• Ensure that all creative produced meets the brand standards of excellence, effectively aligns with strategy, is optimized for specified channel(s), and is audience-ready
• Create and/or oversee the production of all forms of creative assets for internal (sales enablement) and external (customer/prospect audiences): a refreshed catalog as well as creative direction and assets for multi-touch and multi-channel campaigns
• Inspire the team live and breathe good creative — not developing creative for the sake of winning creative awards, but rather developing creative that brings the brand to life and engages and audience for mutual brand-business benefit and, as result, wins awards because of the outcomes
• Managing everything from ideation to execution: recognizing and championing great ideas, creative concept development, campaign and asset development, develop schedules, budget tracking, brand engagement and measurement of success
• Brainstorm and collaborate with Marketing and leaders of other functions to develop creative concepts, campaigns and assets; present concepts and options, with a willingness to learn, iterate and optimize with feedback

What We’re Looking For:

• Bachelor’s degree in advertising, design, marketing, or a related field
• Minimum of 10 years combined experience across creative team leadership, creative asset development, and brand identity design, including at least five years of people management experience, preferably in an agency setting
• Minimum 5 years experience leading a creative team of direct reports with proven experience developing team culture and achieving business-critical outcomes
• Proven experience developing creative to grow B2B audience-centric brands
• Demonstrated experience of transforming the strategic opportunity into best-in-class, on-brand creative solutions
• Full understanding of the production process for initiatives of various size, across multiple media platforms: web, mobile, experiential, social, video
• Excels at crafting and presenting smart and sometimes complex creative solutions in a straightforward and lucid manner, no matter the audience
• Ability to lead and mentor a team of art directors, copywriters, and designers while also effectively collaborating with other internal and external teams to drive results
• Ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• In-depth understanding of brand management and the broader overall marketing mix
• Passion for leading a team and working within a team, but also self-motivated to proactively attack the challenge-at-hand
• A can-do attitude and constant habit of going above and beyond what is required, as well as a sense of ownership and pride in your performance and its impact on NBF’s success
• Minimum in-office time per week: 2 days

It Would Also be Nice to Have:

• Proven experience personally developing brand identity packages for multiple B2B brands
• Furniture and/or retail product experience and industry acumen
• Experience as a creative director, art director, designer &/or copywriter in an agency setting
• Expertise working within Adobe Creative Cloud, Monday, Salesforce
• Ability to travel (<5%) and willingness to work flexible hours

We are an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, national origin, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.

If you need any assistance seeking a job opportunity at National Business Furniture, OfficeFurniture.com, or if you need reasonable accommodation with the application process, please call (800) 558-1010 or contact us at HR@NBF.com.

National Business Furniture