Creative Operations Manager

The Creative Operations Manager helps to organize and evolve our creative processes, systems, tooling, projects, and programs that enable the team to scale and create best-in-class brand and customer experiences. The manager understands the connections between marketing and creative teams--having been a hands-on creative team member within an advertising agency or large internal creative team. To be successful in this role, the manager is intellectually curious and has a strategic mindset to help us move faster and produce better work from ideation through delivery.

This manager will serve as the liaison and key contact between the marketing and creative services team. They are responsible for not only managing the department workflow, capacity planning, project management and business operations, but also managing the collaboration over strategies to produce the final products.

What you will be doing as a Creative Operations Manager:

• Collaborate with marketing leads to determine priorities, manage key projects and problem solve requests when deadlines or asks are challenging
• Refine, improve, and scale our creative process to enhance speed and quality of delivery, standardizing processes for cross-discipline and cross-functional collaboration
• Audit our tools, finding efficiency across departments for consolidation, while advocating for adding new tools and resources that add value to the team
• Establish and document processes and procedures and help centralize resources and assets for ease of access
• Facilitate timely and clear communication between the design team, marketing stakeholders, and external partners
• Proficiently understand the complex needs of creative and marketing teams, and effectively communicate the creative perspective and point of view to non-creative stakeholders
• Manage vendors and agency partners to help scale our team, including budget management, scope creation and approvals
• Analyze and forecast demand and capacity to support staffing needs such as temp hiring, temp layoffs, attrition, hiring plans and general workload planning
• Contribute to quarterly and annual planning, representing the team’s budget, capabilities, capacity and constraints
• Set up, lead, and continuously improve the operations of the creative team including but not limited to: processes, standard operating procedures, onboarding procedures for staff and clients, technology systems and vendor management, financial management, and reporting strategies
• Prepare reporting and metrics dashboards related to time tracking, quantity and status of projects, team capacity and effectiveness, tiering, cycle times, expense budgets and other relevant data
• Support department leadership as part of a collaborative creative leadership team
• Train and mentor creative and boarder marketing team on project management tools and best practices
• Actively manage client relationship and workload alignments across the staff
• Educate clients and staff on cost savings opportunities

Requirements

Education:

• Bachelor's degree required

Experience:

• Minimum of eight years' experience in creative services roles, preferably in a hands-on
• Experience working within an in-house creative services group or external agency in a management and/or operations role
• Experience with automated workflow tools, such as Monday.com required, and DAM systems preferred
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite
• Demonstrated knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite
• Experience designing, implementing, measuring and optimizing programs, processes, structures and/or systems for improving organizational efficiency
• Well-versed on the current trends in branding, creative, social and communications to formulate plans that lead to the successful creation of brand and customer experiences

Skills & Experience:

• Entrepreneurial spirit and the desire and expertise to build a best-in-class in-house creative team
• Substantial knowledge and understanding of the creative process with fluency and hand-on experience with print, digital, traditional marketing/media channels, video and production capabilities
• Meticulous attention to detail with demonstrated ability for accuracy, critical thinking and thoroughness
• Superior time management, project management, organizational and leadership skills
• Ability to influence, manage and drive action in on-time and accurate execution of deliverables
• Works well in collaborative creative environments as well as independently proactively
• Operates effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment, and can work with urgency when needed
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams/efforts
• Strong leadership, analytical, verbal, written communication, presentation and interpersonal skills
• Ability to own complex project and process management initiatives with decisiveness
• Ability to analyze quantitative and/or qualitative data
• Ability to work well with a variety of constituencies and comfortable managing senior management to outcomes
• Superior customer service ethic

Keypath’s Core Competencies:

• Collaboration
• Commitment
• Lifelong learning
• Innovation