VP of Creative / Creative Director

Taoti is looking for it’s next Vice President of Creative / Creative Director

About the Job…

Taoti is looking for our next head of creative (our current guy is leaving town, so this is a rare opportunity to join our executive team and oversee all of creative within our agency!) 

Sometimes, when one reaches this level of their career in the creative realm, the job becomes mostly management and not much hands-on work anymore. So to be clear, that’s NOT what we’re looking for! We very much want a hands-on practitioner who is adept at driving creative work product as inspiring and managing the creative team. Someone who wants to get their hands dirty, be in the weeds, and lead the team from within the play and not just from the sidelines. Someone with both the big ideas that stand out as well as the ability to bring them to life, pixel by pixel. Someone with contagious energy and the ability to inspire and elevate the collective work of the agency. You get the idea.

The Day-to-Day

This is a hands-on type of role where you’ll be in the weeds with the work, clients, and teammates. As one of the most senior creatives on the team, you’ll be instrumental in coming up with ideas that will make a meaningful and measurable impact. You’ll help conceptualize them, pitch them to clients, execute on them, and work with (and sometimes oversee) others involved in executing them as well. You’ll mentor other creatives and be responsible for raising our collective bar as we look to elevate the caliber and effectiveness of our work. Overseeing others involves a degree of managerial duties, so there is a bit of that. But we try to run a lean operation so that our experts can do what they do and not spend all their time on the mechanical aspects of the job.

Note: This is a full time, in-house, W2 job. While we generally offer a hybrid work policy for most of the team, as part of the executive team, we need you in the office most of the time to help lead, inspire, and bring energy to the agency. That’s not to say you can never work remotely when there is good reason to do so, but generally speaking, we need our senior leadership to be a presence in our offices on Capitol Hill.  

The Big-Picture Goals for the Job:

1. Be a ‘big ideas’ person and raise the bar for our creative body of work
2. Ensure all of our creative output meets quality and brand standards
3. Help win new business
4. Bring the energy and help actively drive culture
5. Keep the gas pedal down on innovation and quality
6. Build, coach, and inspire the best creative team possible
7. Make sure our work ‘moves the needle’ (makes a meaningful and measurable impact for someone)
8. And do all of the above with a constant eye on efficiency and effectiveness

The Type of Creative Director We’re Looking For

While there are many who are technically qualified, we are looking for someone who instinctively aligns with our brand and values. None of these are absolutes, but on a spectrum of competing priorities, here’s what we’re looking for:

• Someone who is hands-on and leads by example
• Someone who brings the energy and is a presence in the room
• Someone who is a natural consultant and teacher
• Someone who gets video/motion and wants to do more experiential
• Someone who instinctively gets marketing
• Someone who takes pride in communication prowess (both written and verbal)
• Someone who is guided by process and best practices by not constrained by them
• Someone who fancies themselves a visionary
• Someone who can deal with the realities of budgets, timelines, and the need for efficiency (and to hold others to the same!)
• Someone who is not afraid to be critical and have tough conversations
• Someone who is intrinsically proactive and self-starting and thrives on bringing new ideas to the table
• Someone who is empathetic in every way, all day long
• And of course, we are looking for someone with a killer and diverse portfolio showing a wide range of creative abilities across lots of mediums.

What’s the corporate culture like?

“Fun but focused,” as one Taoti put it, is a great way to sum up our culture. We’re a fun and casual shop. The kind of place where you can wear whatever, come and go as you please, and have autonomy over your own day for the most part. But we take the work seriously and believe deep in the mission to make meaningful and measurable impacts for our clients. All the perks and shenanigans and borderline irreverent tone are fun, but to really fit in here, you need to be about the work. 

 

We believe in something we call our “QIST Culture.” Quality. Innovation. Service. And Teamwork. We are always striving to improve these four areas (to the extent that we have a fund of a quarter million dollars per year that anyone can spend from in the interest of going above and beyond towards any of these four values.  

 

We also believe in total transparency and open communication across teams and across ranks. Instead of chain-of-command, we want everyone to have and share their own voice. Every other Thursday, the CEO holds ‘CafeClutch’ just so he can hear ideas and feedback directly from the team instead of through the filter of management. 

 

Want to see what life at Taoti looks like? Check out our Instagram or ‘about us’ video. There’s even a 360 tour of the office.

What about benefits?

• 5+ weeks of PTO (including 11 holidays). This number goes up automatically with each year of tenure.
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance. (50% for qualifying dependents.) And we have good insurance. 
• Paid family leave for men and women (including PTO plus short and long-term disability options.) 
• 3% retirement plan matching (plus access to a financial advisor). 
• Home buyer help (including a $1200 closing credit) 
• Mobile phone reimbursement 
• You can opt for a company-supplied PC or Mac laptop. Or if you want to use your own, we’ll reimburse you for it. 
• Charitable contribution matching 
• Tax-free metro benefits 
• A sincere respect for work/life balance 
• Money and time off allocated for professional development (also increases with tenure) 
• A diverse team hailing from over 12 countries last time we checked 
• A very hip/cool/funky/quirky office space on Barracks Row, in the heart of Capitol Hill. Just 2 blocks from the metro! 

 Of course, the above is a quick list. Our handbook covers all the gory details.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Great ideas happen when diverse perspectives come together. Those perspectives are Taoti’s secret sauce. So building a diverse team and culture where everyone has a voice and is included in the process is not just the right thing to do. It’s good for business. We’d love your own perspective to add to our mix! We’re eager for new, diverse voices to join the team and sincerely hope people from every walk of life will apply! 

A bit more about Taoti…

Established in 1996, Taoti Creative is a boutique, full-service creative agency located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. We are privately owned and have no corporate overloads (nothing personal, WPP.) We do stuff like web development, social media management, branding, experiential marketing, video, AR/VR, etc. Our mission is to ‘move the needle’ for our clients. We leverage technology, creativity, and innovation to generate meaningful and measurable results for our clients—that’s what drives us. Speaking of clients, they’re about 50% non-profits, 20% commercial, and 30% government. Some of our customers include World Bank, USAID, DC Water, Discovery Education, American Chemical Society, Jane Goodall Foundation, and dozens of ‘National Association of _________,’ etc. Our full-time team of about 70 employees is about 65% in-house and 35% remote. We hail from over 12 countries. And for the last four years in a row, we’ve made the Inc5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States. There’s of course plenty of additional information on our website. If you’ve not done so already, be sure to check out our culture video: https://vimeo.com/289302105. Or if you’re feeling virtual, here’s guided tour of the office in 360 video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7KkzdmSGTM (Warning: not suitable for printers.)

Next steps… 

If you’re qualified and interested, please apply on our website (www.taoti.com/careers.) Please note that these job ads often get placed onto other websites with their own application systems (we’re looking at you Jooble!) and some sites (looking at you Indeed!) have made up random salary ranges, so if you see one of those, know that it’s not from us. We aren’t able to respond to applications that don’t come through our own website (Because we use software to manage our hiring process, and without it, it would be the wild west here. So please be sure you’re applying on our website.) 

Pretty please, no recruiters.

Taoti Creative