Role Summary: Group Creative Director (GCD)

The Group Creative Director (GCD) is a strong leader who will manage, inspire, and lead multiple creative teams at various levels. A strong conceptual thinker with a pulse on culture and technology who also demonstrates a thorough understanding of the digital/social landscape. This person also needs to be a great partner to Planning, Strategy, Account and Project Management teams. As well as being an exceptional collaborator with clients actively listening and understanding their true needs but also developing a trusting relationship that allows for the Agency to push for better and more surprising work. As GCD you are expected to understand and contribute to both the visual expression and content of the ideas you put forth.

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Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities

Creative Vision & Oversight

• Supervise a cross-functional team of multimedia graphic designers, art directors, copywriters, social media experts, photographers/videographers, and project managers in the strategic development of messages and deliverables – as well as external service providers.
• Conduct brainstorming sessions with creative teams, maintaining strategic and creative thinking to develop innovative and actionable creative initiatives in a fiscally responsible manner.
• Review and approve art and copy developed by the team, ensuring deliverables that effectively address marketing goals and challenges.
• Produce fresh, innovative work that translates complex ideas into compelling content and experiences for visually sophisticated audiences.
• Present, or oversee presentation of final concepts, and obtain approvals for deliverables.
• Drive the overall quality of the creative product whilst maintaining accountability to client objectives.
• Ensure quality of work is maintained/improved under your leadership.
• Spearhead and manage content strategy for both small-scale and large-scale projects, harnessing strategy, digital and brand design, compelling content, and technology.

Team Leadership & Development

• Provide feedback, clear, focused feedback to your creative teams regarding improvements that could be made to the work, the department and the agency.
• Attract top talent and retain best creative and strategic staff.
• Be responsible for your reporting lines and the effective management and the growth of your staff. This includes all HR requirements.
• Champion a culture of creative ambition, motivating teams to pursue work that meets international award standards.
• Disseminate learning to improve the outputs of the agency.
• Promote a culture of “solutions” within the agency.

Client & Project Collaboration

• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Prioritize work and resources across engagements based on short- and long-term needs, establishing production schedules by collaborating with cross-functional teams and production or web departments.
• Work with account teams to understand the clients’ brand and manage projects in a way that will support the delivery of the brand idea.
• Actively support and involve cross-functional team members at the appropriate time to resolve issues, and successfully deliver an excellent product from ideation through to flawless execution.

Industry & Market Acumen

• Possess in-depth knowledge and experience in developing and building brands.
• Ability to keep up to date with industry trends and standards in order to ensure that work is always fresh, world-class and original.
• Ability to be current with the latest trends of technology and visual influences across the entertainment and tech industries.
• Keep up to date with consumer engagement technologies and utility.
• Fast thinker: The Group Creative Director must be able to think fast, particularly during critical or stressful times and keep the team aligned and on track.
• He/she must have the ability to work independently and should be a self-starter.
• Good knowledge of required ecommerce best practices.
• Analyze campaign results and identifying opportunities for clear and motivating creative strategies.
• Analyze brand tracking, market trends, consumer need, and the competitive landscape to drive relevant creative product excellence.

Awards & Agency Reputation

• Lead the development of compelling creative award cases, ensuring that the agency’s best work is strategically positioned for regional and global recognition.
• Oversee the end-to-end process of awards entries, from identifying eligible work to crafting persuasive submissions and managing deadlines.
• Collaborate with creative and account teams to ensure that award-worthy ideas are nurtured from inception through execution.
• Maintain a repository of case studies and supporting materials to streamline future award submissions.
• Collaborate across the agency to help all aspects of our business thrive.
• Build the agency’s reputation both externally and internally.
• Concern yourself with the wellbeing of the agency’s culture, people and clients. Lead by example.
• Devise an award drive to produce better proactive work and ensure that this drive is efficiently run to create communication or utility “solutions”.
• Set and monitor KPIs related to awards entries and wins, making creative recognition a core measure of success for the department.
• Regularly review industry award calendars and proactively identify opportunities for the agency to participate and excel.
• Share learnings from award juries and past entries to continuously raise the standard of creative output across the agency.
• Represent the agency at key industry events, award shows, and juries, building relationships that enhance the agency’s profile and influence.

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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Number of award entries submitted annually (with targets for regional and global shows).
• Number of shortlists and wins achieved per year.
• Quality and impact of award case submissions, as measured by jury feedback or benchmarking against industry best practice.

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Professional, Technical Skill and Previous Experience Required

Skills

• Strong creative vision with an understanding of business objectives for clients and the agency.
• Highly skilled with leading a team of creative talent.
• Exceptional layout, typography composition, and production skills.
• Good communication, negotiations, and presentations skills, both verbal and written.
• Ability to make use of market research to influence strategic marketing and advertisements.
• Strong ability to multi-task.
• Great in digital and video disciplines.

Experience

• 10 years of related experience with 5+ years of creative direction in an agency.
• Prior experience with copywriting, design, or production.
• Prior project management experience, with a focus on creative direction.
• Understanding and past experience creating integrated content across all marketing channels including broadcast, digital, social media, paid media, mobile, print, outdoor, in-store and experiential.
• Proven experience with concept development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Degree or Diploma in digital design or writing (or a portfolio that shows competent skills).

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Ogilvy Africa: Company Overview

Ogilvy Africa is the largest network agency on the continent catering to 40 countries with a team of ~900 people across Central, East and West Africa. Headquartered in Nairobi - Kenya, Ogilvy Africa manages a portfolio of over 100 brands for clients such as AB Inbev, Airtel, Africa CDC, Bill & Melinda Gates, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Distell, Equity Bank, Exxon Mobil, Kenya Airways, Mastercard Foundation, Mondelez, NCBA, Nestle, Philips, PWC, SAB Miller, Sanlam, Standard Chartered, Total, Tullow, UNICEF, Unilever, Visa, Vodafone and WWF amongst others.

We offer services across the full spectrum of marketing domains including advertising (on and offline), Customer Engagement & Commerce, Digital Transformation, Shopper Marketing, Media, PR & Influence; all under one unified setup. We’ve also created proprietary marketing products in areas such as real-time marketing, social intelligence, virtual experiences, influencer management, e-commerce enablement and content hubs. Our unique operating model, One Ogilvy, allows clients and brands to cut the complexity of agency structures and create seamless omni-channel experiences for their consumers, across touchpoints. Fuelled by the holy trinity of content, data and technology; Ogilvy Africa strives to be the best-practice agency model, for Developing & Emerging markets.

In our 20+ years in Africa, we have won the highest number of regional and global awards for the region including Cannes Lions, Clio awards, Dubai Lynx Festival, SABRE Awards (Global and Africa); to name a few.

Ogilvy is a leading global creative network of WPP. Launched by David Ogilvy over 70 years ago, it’s referred-to as the Agency of Giants, by several industry experts.

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Ogilvy Africa Beliefs

• People need regular OS upgrades: Even the best OS will be obsolete tomorrow unless its constantly upgraded. Same is true for people.
• We need more cows than milk men: We are a culture of practitioners, not managers. We contribute before we comment.
• Creative about creativity: Creativity is, and will always be, our differentiator. Creativity now includes holy trinity of Data -Content -Tech.
• Diversity is a competitive advantage: New profiles, new skills, new styles of leadership make us a stronger company.
• Collaborative advantage > Competitive advantage: Find partners who are on top of their game at the skillset we need. It’s the only way to scale at the speed without pretending to have all the answers.
• Team > Individual: You get a lot more done when everyone stops worrying about who gets credit at the end. Teams Succeed; individuals fail.
• Fail often, fail fast: We see entrepreneurs in all our people and encourage a culture of pilots. Test, succeed and scale; or fail-fast learn, learn from the failure, and start something new.