Back to jobs
New

Creative Director, Design (Hybrid)

Chicago, IL

About Rewards Network 

For 41 years, Rewards Network has been helping restaurants grow revenue, increase traffic, and boost customer engagement through innovative financial, marketing services, and premier dining rewards programs. By offering unique card-linked offers, we introduce diners to fantastic restaurant experiences, leveraging advanced technology and data analytics to deliver value to restaurants, diners, and our strategic partners' loyalty programs. 

Our Culture  

At Rewards Network, you'll be part of a driven and diverse team that excels in collaboration, issue resolution, and taking ownership of both personal growth and the company's success. We take pride in partnering with the world's most powerful loyalty programs to drive full-price paying customers to local restaurants through marketing services and flexible funding options. Our engaging and rewarding environment is designed to help you gain your full potential. 

Job Overview

The In-House Creative Director is the guardian of the visual representation of our brand. You will lead an internal team of designers, and external content teams to build differentiated, consistent, sophisticated, recognizable, and engaging brand experiences across every instance where Rewards Network is present: marketing, product, service, digital and physical spaces. 

The scope extends well beyond our own brand. Rewards Network powers nearly 20 white label, well established loyalty programs, giving you the opportunity to represent and bring to life some of the most recognized brands globally while ensuring each experience is distinctive, engaging, and true to the partner’s brand.

By working cross-functionally across every team, you ensure that brand identity and integrity shines consistently for our restaurant customers, our loyalty partners, our dining members, our investors, and broadly across our industry.  By deeply understanding the competitive landscape, you ensure that our brand is recognized amongst our competitors by differentiated, sophisticated design that communicates thought leadership and success.  

This is a hybrid position and requires in-office presence Tuesday through Thursday each week in Chicago.

What you’ll bring to the table: (Responsibilities)  

  • Brand Stewardship: Evolve and protect the overarching visual identity, tone of voice, and design standards across all corporate assets and deliverables. 
  • Experiential & Spatial Direction: Partner with events and field teams to translate brand pillars into physical touchpoints.
  • Campaign Execution: Support multi-channel marketing campaigns and offer strategies from concept to execution across Rewards Network brand and all personalized partner brands.
  • Product & Brand Storytelling: Create compelling visuals for different restaurant offer types across many different customer segments and partners.
  • Translate new product and technical features, AI innovations, and complex ecosystem value propositions into clear, emotionally resonant, and accessible creative narratives.
  • Design System & Brand Governance: Scale, evolve, and maintain comprehensive design systems and brand guidelines that operate effectively across every touchpoint and communication vehicle across all functions (marketing, product, sales, service).
  • Interactive & Digital Craft Leadership: Direct the creation of cutting-edge digital experiences, including immersive web animations and videos, sales enablement materials, product explanations / demonstrations / tutorials, customer testimonials, and leadership thought pieces.
  • Creative Operations & Scaling: Build and optimize agile creative workflows, determine tooling/technology needs (such as Figma, Adobe CC, and emerging AI-assisted pipelines), and efficiently allocate internal team resources or external agency partners.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, Partnerships, Engineering, Field and Service teams to co-create and support go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
  • Content Production: Oversee production, use, and implementation of high-volume, photography, videography, and promotional campaigns for all channels.
  • Team Cultivation & Mentorship: Lead and inspire an internal team of designers and copywriters, fostering a high-performance culture of experimentation and craft.
  • Company Values: Exude Rewards Network’s company values: be open, honest and direct; put customers at the center of everything we do, set a high bar and achieve it, think and act like an owner and always with integrity, presume trust, celebrate others, and have fun.  

Do you have the right mix of ingredients: (Requirements)

  •  Ability to build and govern brand identity systems to ensure a more cohesive and thoughtful brand.
  • Balancing Rewards Network innovation with partner brand standards. Produces distinctive co-branded creative while staying compliant with an airline or hotel partner's brand book and approvals.
  • Multi-channel experience in email, paid social, display, landing pages, app UI, print and event. Performance driven creative that drives leads, sales, spend in marketplace.
  • Team leadership and development. critique that raises work without crushing it, career pathing, workload tri-age across 2 to 6 designers.
  • Expert in Figma, Adobe CC, project management software, presentation tools like PowerPoint, AI tools.
  • Creative operations. Intake, briefing, routing, review cycles, version control, asset classification.
  • Stakeholder navigation and presentation with the ability to defend work and thought process to leadership, partner teams, and executives in the business.
  • Vendor and freelance management with the ability to source, scope, brief, budget, and QC for photographers, videographers, animators, and overflow capacity.

Education, Certifications and Experience:

  • Bachelor's degree in art, design, marketing, business, or related field.
  • 6+ years of experience in creative, marketing, or design with at least 2 years of leadership experience.
  • Demonstrated experience leading a portfolio of multiple concurrent, related programs from inception to launch.
  • Experience working with creative tools, systems and technologies.
  • Experience presenting program-level status to executives and senior-leaders.

What you’ll love about us: 

Comprehensive benefits package, which includes:

  • This is a full-time, exempt position and the base compensation for this opening in Chicago is expected to be $140,000-$160,000 annualized, depending on level, candidate experience, skills, and other factors. This position will be eligible for an annual bonus program with a 15% bonus target for total at target of $161,000-$195,500.
  • Competitive Paid Time Off and company holidays
  • Generous dining reimbursement when you dine with our restaurant clients 
  • 401(k) plan with a company match
  • Two medical plan options- Standard PPO or High Deductible Health Plan (HSA with company match for HDHP participants)
  • Partnership with Rx n Go, offering certain prescriptions for free
  • Two dental plan options and a vision plan
  • Flexible Spending Accounts and a pre-tax commuter benefit program
  • Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance Plans
  • Short Term and Long Term disability 
  • Company-paid life insurance and AD&D insurance, supplemental employee, spouse, and child life insurance 
  • Employee Life Assistance Program
  • Hybrid working space in our state of the art office downtown located by the Metra and Ogilvie train stations
  • Catered lunches provided on Tuesday's in our Chicago office
Rewards Network is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE). We encourage and strongly support workplace diversity.

Expected Pay Range

$140,000 - $160,000 USD

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Rewards Network? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Rewards Network’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 07/31/2029

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.