Associate Creative Director Consumer Products

The Creative Squad Lead, Consumer Banking, reports into the Executive Creative Director and is responsible for leading a team of creatives and delivering integrated marketing and communications that drive awareness, consideration, acquisition, engagement, and retention across Citizens checking and deposit products.

This role combines strategic creative leadership with an understanding of consumer banking, performance marketing, and product storytelling in a regulated industry. The ideal candidate can turn complex product features into clear creative content that motivates customers while protecting brand integrity.

They will partner closely with Checking & Deposits marketing, product, strategy, media, analytics, compliance, channel, and production teams to create distinctive, effective work across the customer journey.

Emphasis on copy writing, concepting, and content creation leadership over visual communication.

Key Responsibilities

Creative Leadership & Project Oversight

• Participate in the development, review, and approval of creative briefs, ensuring alignment with business objectives, product strategies, audience insights, channel roles, and measurable outcomes.

• Lead creative development across integrated acquisition campaigns, product launches, promotional offers, customer onboarding, lifecycle communications, cross-sell initiatives, and always-on marketing.

• Guide teams in translating checking and deposit propositions into simple, differentiated, customer-centered stories that make the value clear and the next step compelling.

• Balance brand-building ambition with direct-response discipline, ensuring the work is both distinctive and designed to perform.

• Champion connected customer experiences across paid, owned, branch, digital, social, email, direct mail, landing pages, video, and in-app or authenticated channels.

• Use customer insights, competitive context, testing, and performance signals to continuously strengthen the creative work.

Team & Resource Management

• Lead a squad of designers and copywriters supporting Consumer Banking priorities across acquisition, engagement, and retention.

• Manage and mentor 4-6 direct reports

• Balance resources across strategic campaigns, high-velocity offers, product updates, testing roadmaps, and ongoing business needs.

• Provide clear creative direction, constructive feedback, and decisive approvals that raise the quality of the work and keep delivery moving.

• Mentor creative talent in product storytelling, performance creative, integrated campaign development, and regulated communications.

• Partner with Account Management and Operations to anticipate demand, manage capacity, clarify priorities, and deliver work on time.

• Foster a culture of craftsmanship, accountability, curiosity, creative excellence, and continuous improvement.

Collaboration & Process

• Serve as the primary creative partner for Consumer Banking marketing and product stakeholders.

• Collaborate closely with strategy, media, analytics, UX, channel, compliance, legal, production, and external partners to develop effective and compliant creative solutions.

• Bring a strong customer perspective to cross-functional conversations, advocating for clarity, relevance, accessibility, and a frictionless journey.

• Create alignment early by clarifying the core customer problem, single-minded proposition, proof points, offer hierarchy, and desired action.

• Support the development of modular creative systems, templates, and toolkits that increase speed and scale while preserving brand quality.

• Drive consistency across channels while adapting the idea and message to the distinct role of each touchpoint.

Quality & Delivery

• Maintain high standards for concept, copy, design, information hierarchy, accessibility, production quality, and customer experience.

• Review work across formats including paid media, social, email, direct mail, web and landing pages, branch materials, digital signage, video, presentations, and sales enablement materials.

• Ensure rates, offers, rewards, disclosures, and product details are communicated clearly, accurately, and in accordance with brand, legal, regulatory, and compliance requirements.

• Protect the strength of the creative idea through versioning, localization, channel adaptation, and production.

• Anticipate and resolve challenges related to changing business priorities, offer complexity, approval cycles, testing needs, production timelines, stakeholder expectations, and capacity planning.

• Identify opportunities to improve performance and customer understanding through sharper messaging, stronger design systems, and more purposeful experimentation.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in creative leadership, advertising, brand marketing, performance marketing, financial services marketing, consumer products, retail, or a related field.

• Emphasis on copy writing, concepting, and content creation over visual communication.

• Strong portfolio demonstrating integrated campaign thinking, product storytelling, brand stewardship, and measurable marketing creativity across digital and physical channels.

• Experience creating customer acquisition, lifecycle, promotional, or product marketing communications. Experience in banking or another regulated category is preferred.

• 5+ years of experience leading creative teams, managing senior stakeholders, and balancing multiple concurrent, high-priority initiatives.

• Ability to make complex products and offers feel simple, relevant, differentiated, and human.

• Strong understanding of channel strategy, customer journeys, direct-response principles, testing, optimization, and modular content systems.

• Excellent concepting, copy, design judgment, presentation, and communication skills.

• Collaborative and strategic leader with sound judgment, high standards, and keen attention to detail.

What Success Looks Like

• Checking and deposit work is more distinctive, more consistent, and easier for customers to understand.

• Creative ideas connect brand and performance rather than treating them as separate goals.

• The squad delivers with greater clarity, speed, accountability, and confidence.

• Partners experience the Creative Squad Lead as a proactive strategic advisor, not simply an executional resource.

• Creative systems scale efficiently across offers, audiences, markets, and channels without becoming generic.