Associate Creative Director - Copy & Strategy

Job description

Watson is looking for an accomplished Associate Creative Director to help oversee strategic planning, writing, and ideation for social, digital, and 360° campaigns. The ideal candidate will confidently balance between entertainment and traditional brand marketing while having experience leading, not just campaigns, but teams of strategists, writers, and community managers.

As an ACD (Strategy & Copy) at Watson, you’ll be both hands-on and help oversee the creative and strategic direction of our campaigns. You’ll partner and support the creative and production leads while ensuring a clear and paralleled direction is provided to the strategy and creative teams. In addition, you’ll develop strong client partnerships across pitch presentations and campaign production. 

Reporting to the ECD, this position will lead on all new business pitches from breaking down RFPs, leading and organizing brainstorms, developing ideas, writing campaign proposals, and ultimately pitching the work alongside the project leads. Once the campaign is active, the ACD determines and outlines the strategic direction of the campaign and maintains the standards of the winning proposal — keeping a close proximity to the production through strategic alignments, creative reviews, and collaborations with the creative and account team.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience at a creative agency or studio with success in building and leading teams.
• Strong written communication, with a proven history of crafted and impactful narratives.
• The ability to develop, teach, and implement long-term strategy while practicing short-term solutions.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, to clients, filmmakers, and internal team members.
• Thorough and up-to-date understanding of the social and digital landscape.
• Ability to break down a client brief and translate campaign, client, and internal goals to a wider team. 
• Expertly organized with an ability to succeed under pressure, juggling multiple clients, teams, and deadlines.
• A natural thought leader with an active curiosity, passion, and understanding for strategic and creative innovation, digital technology, and fan-forward experiences. 
• Ability to problem solve both individually and within a team. 
• Successful track record in developing and delivering pitches with varying audiences, genres, and verticals.
• Confidence and competence in leading the day-to-day executions of a project or campaign in tandem with the creative and account teams. 
• Strong and inspiring leadership skills with the ability to guide a team of strategists, writers, and community managers.
• An artful understanding of craft, quality, and creativity across writing, visuals, and holistic campaigns. 
• An inherent drive to spark conversation through your work — whether it be discussion, shares, comments, or press. 

Due to the collaborative and senior nature of this role, the right candidate will need to be based in Los Angeles or open to relocating. 

Responsibilities

• Develop the holistic campaign strategy to properly guide the creative, the communication, and the overall direction of the work.
• Concept and ideate across social, digital, and experiential applications. 
• Lead the gamut of campaign writing efforts across tone of voice, copy, and community management direction. 
• Oversee presentation development for new business pitches — particularly around the strategic, conceptual, and written efforts.
• In partnership with the creative and account leads, proactively keep production moving efficiently and effectively over the course of the campaign.
• Provide thoughtful feedback to creative, writing, and CM team members to ensure strategic and creative expectations remain considered and aligned. 
• Proactively spearhead daily collaboration between strategy, creative, and accounts teams.
• Lead brainstorms and help shape and guide our thoughts around social, digital, experiential, and partnership concepts.
• Be an active partner in client conversations, leading calls and answering questions that pertain to creative and strategy.
• Work closely with designers and editors to ensure the strategic and creative narrative is properly implemented in the work.
• Foster and deliver distinctly exceptional work across writing, ideas, and design. 
• Drive proactive innovation through continuous research and sharing of relevant work, industries, and fields across the core team and agency.
• Guide and mentor strategy and writing team members to develop their strengths, build their careers, and feed into their annual review process.

About Watson

Watson is a team of multidisciplinary makers, thinkers, and doers collaborating with some of the top entertainment studios and brands in the world. We create immersive stories, campaigns, and content with a focus on craft and conversation.

For 15 years, we've been dedicated to the details, thoughtful design and copy, and an ongoing search for ideas that spark discussion. We strive to break the conventions of our industry, our tools, and our platforms in order for our work to be more noticed, valued, and discussed.

Our work spans across AV, digital, social, print, experiential, and OOH for brands like A24, Amazon, Disney, FX, Mattel, WB, and more.

Watson is independently-driven, creatively-led, and minority-owned.