Executive Creative Director at Publicis Groupe

ROLE PURPOSE

• The Executive Creative Director is the senior creative leader responsible for the creative ambition, quality and reputation of the Publicis/client partnership.
• The role owns the creative vision and product across the client business, ensuring that strategy is translated into distinctive, effective and culturally relevant ideas that can live seamlessly across channels, platforms and experiences.
• The Executive Creative Director will lead a multi-disciplinary creative culture that combines world-class craft with digital-first thinking, data, technology, AI and new production models, ensuring the creative product evolves as quickly as the client's customers and the wider marketing landscape.
• A critical part of the mandate is to help move the partnership beyond traditional campaign delivery toward a future-fit creative model where creativity, strategy, media, data, technology, production and customer experience work together from the outset.

The Executive Creative Director is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the creative product delivers:

• Distinctive, effective and culturally relevant creative work.
• Strong creative leadership and client confidence.
• Integrated ideas that work across channels and experiences.
• High standards of craft and execution.
• Meaningful use of AI, technology and emerging creative capability.
• A high-performing, future-fit creative team and culture.
• Work capable of driving business effectiveness and industry recognition.

Responsibilities

CREATIVE LEADERSHIP & VISION

• Set and champion the creative vision and standard for the client/Publicis partnership, ensuring the work is distinctive, effective, culturally relevant and consistently of the highest quality.
• Act as the senior creative voice within the client leadership team and provide clear creative direction across major briefs, campaigns, platforms and experiences.
• Translate client business and brand ambitions into bold creative opportunities that build brand value and drive measurable impact.
• Lead the development of platform-neutral, integrated ideas that can live across brand, retail, digital, social, content, experience, commerce, media and emerging channels.
• Create a culture where ambitious ideas are expected, challenged, improved and protected through to execution.
• Ensure creative thinking moves beyond campaign delivery to help solve broader client business and customer problems.
• Remain deeply connected to South African culture, consumer behaviour, media, technology and global creative trends.

SENIOR CLIENT & BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP

• Build trusted senior creative relationships with client stakeholders and act as a strategic creative partner, not only a creative service lead.
• Understand the client's business, brand, customers, competitive environment and growth priorities sufficiently to challenge briefs and identify opportunities proactively.
• Present and sell creative thinking with clarity, conviction and strong business rationale.
• Partner with the Managing Partner and Head of Strategy to ensure the agency brings proactive ideas and opportunities to the client rather than relying only on incoming briefs.
• Create confidence with senior clients by balancing creative ambition with business relevance, feasibility and effectiveness.
• Respond constructively to client feedback while protecting the integrity and ambition of the creative product.
• Support the Managing Partner in strengthening the client's perception of Publicis as a strategic growth, innovation and transformation partner.

CREATIVE PRODUCT EXCELLENCE

• Own the overall creative standard and quality of work produced for the client.
• Lead the conceptual development and creative direction of major integrated campaigns and brand platforms.
• Oversee craft across copy, design, art direction, film, digital, social, content, experience and emerging formats.
• Ensure every major piece of work has a clear idea, strong strategic foundation and appropriate level of craft.
• Create effective creative review structures that improve work without creating unnecessary layers or delay.
• Protect creative quality from brief through production, adaptation, localisation and rollout.
• Use performance, effectiveness and audience learning to continually improve future creative work.
• Build a body of work capable of delivering both business effectiveness and meaningful industry recognition.

INTEGRATION & POWER OF ONE CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

• Act as the senior creative integrator across Publicis Groupe capabilities servicing the client.
• Work seamlessly with Strategy, Media, Data, Technology, Experience, Production, PR, Activation and other relevant disciplines to create genuinely integrated solutions.
• Ensure integrated thinking happens at the start of the process rather than being assembled after ideas are developed.
• Bring the best creative talent and specialist capability from across the Groupe into the client business where it adds value.
• Help remove discipline and agency silos that limit the quality or effectiveness of the work.
• Ensure ideas are designed to travel coherently across channels while making best use of each platform's role and behaviour.
• Partner with the Managing Partner to make Power of One visible in the quality and connectedness of the creative product.

AI, TECHNOLOGY & FUTURE-FIT CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

• AI, technology and emerging platforms are core parts of modern creative leadership and should actively improve both the quality of ideas and the way creative work is made.
• Champion responsible and ambitious use of AI across creative development, ideation, prototyping, production and optimisation.
• Ensure creative teams develop practical fluency in relevant AI tools, emerging technologies and new content-production methods.
• Identify where generative AI can increase creative exploration, speed, personalisation, variation and production efficiency without compromising originality or craft.
• Partner with Strategy, Data, Technology and Operations to develop AI-enabled creative workflows and new client propositions.
• Explore new creative possibilities enabled by data, dynamic content, connected identity, automation, personalisation and emerging interfaces.
• Ensure technology is used to expand creative possibility rather than simply automate existing output.
• Maintain appropriate standards around brand safety, intellectual property, governance, human oversight and quality.
• Keep the partnership ahead of changes in platforms, culture, consumer behaviour and creative technology.

CULTURE, INNOVATION & CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

• Create a creative culture that is curious, brave, collaborative, experimental and relentlessly focused on improvement.
• Challenge legacy creative processes and behaviours that slow the work or reduce its effectiveness.
• Champion new models of creative development that are faster, more connected, more iterative and more informed by data and performance.
• Lead creative participation in transformation initiatives and future ways of working.
• Encourage experimentation with new formats, technologies, partnerships and production approaches.
• Build external visibility for the work and the creative team through thought leadership, industry participation and outstanding creative output.
• Ensure innovation is linked to real client or customer value rather than novelty alone.

STRATEGY & EFFECTIVENESS PARTNERSHIP

• Partner closely with the Head of Strategy to ensure every major creative idea is grounded in a sharp strategic proposition and a meaningful human insight.
• Participate actively in upstream planning, brief development and key strategic workshops.
• Challenge and improve briefs before creative development begins.
• Use data, cultural intelligence, audience understanding and performance information to sharpen creative choices.
• Work with Strategy and Media to define the role of channels and platforms in bringing the idea to life.
• Ensure creative and strategic teams operate as one problem-solving unit rather than sequential functions.
• Support effectiveness case-building and learning from completed work.

BUSINESS GROWTH & NEW BUSINESS

• Contribute actively to growth of the client partnership through proactive creative opportunities, innovation and new capability.
• Play a leading creative role in major pitches, proposals and new-business opportunities.
• Help identify where new creative, content, experience, technology or production capabilities can solve unmet client needs.
• Develop compelling creative responses that demonstrate the breadth of Publicis Groupe capability.
• Support the Managing Partner in creating differentiated propositions that can expand the relationship.
• Use the strength of the creative product to build reputation, client confidence and commercial growth.

TALENT & CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

• Build, lead, mentor and inspire a high-performing, multi-disciplinary creative team.
• Manage and develop Creative Directors and senior creative leaders, creating clear accountability and succession capability.
• Attract and retain outstanding creative talent while building the right mix of permanent, specialist and flexible capability.
• Create an inclusive environment where different perspectives improve the work.
• Set clear expectations for creative quality, behaviour, collaboration and performance.
• Coach teams to become stronger conceptual thinkers, presenters, craftspeople and problem-solvers.
• Ensure creative talent develops fluency across digital, social, technology, AI and integrated brand experience.
• Partner with Operations and Talent on workforce planning, capacity and capability requirements.

PRODUCTION, CRAFT & EXECUTIONAL EXCELLENCE

• Partner closely with Production and Operations to ensure creative ambition is translated into excellent execution.
• Provide senior creative oversight through production, post-production, adaptation and rollout of major work.
• Ensure the right production partners, makers and specialist talent are selected for the creative ambition and budget.
• Balance craft, timing and commercial realities without defaulting to lower creative standards.
• Encourage smarter, more modular and technology-enabled production approaches where they improve speed, quality or scalability.
• Ensure brand consistency and quality across high-volume adaptation and content ecosystems.

OPERATIONAL PARTNERSHIP

• The Executive Creative Director owns creative ambition, quality and leadership, while the senior operations leader owns the operating engine that enables the creative product to be delivered effectively.
• Partner closely with Operations to ensure the creative model is properly resourced, prioritised and supported.
• Provide early visibility of creative resource and specialist capability needs.
• Participate in planning and prioritisation where creative capacity or quality may be at risk.
• Support efficient review, approval and workflow structures while protecting the time required for strong thinking and craft.
• Use agreed platforms, governance and ways of working to improve visibility, collaboration and delivery.
• Escalate structural or capacity issues that materially affect creative quality or client delivery.

PERFORMANCE, EFFECTIVENESS & ACCOUNTABILITY

• Create clear accountability for creative quality, team performance and delivery against agreed standards.
• Track the effectiveness and performance of major creative work and ensure learnings influence future output.
• Maintain visibility of creative team health, capability, workload and development.
• Use client feedback, performance data, effectiveness measures and awards outcomes as inputs to continuous improvement.
• Hold Creative Directors and teams accountable for both the quality of ideas and the quality of execution.
• Ensure creative leadership contributes positively to commercial, operational and client outcomes.

Qualifications

OPERATIONAL KPI’S

• Must have 15+ years’ experience
• Highly conceptual individual (Must demonstrate with at least 5 projects)
• Demonstrate exceptional strategic thinking (Provide 3 examples)
• Must have led the conceptualisation and execution of TTL campaigns and pure digital campaigns (Show minimum of 4 examples)
• Must demonstrate an understanding of digital platforms
• Track record of winning international and local awards i.e. Cannes, One Show, Loeries, Clios, Bookmarks etc.
• Show at least 1 international and 1 local gold medals
• Demonstrate how you’ve previously dealt with conflict
• In-depth working knowledge of existing and emerging technologies & platforms (advantageous)
• Be comfortable with AI being apart of the everyday activities of the role.

BUSINESS KPI’s

• Must demonstrate examples of leadership skills & problem solving
• A strong understanding of best practice interaction and visual design principles
• Oversee projects and manage and grow the team through the process.

THE PERSON

• Good understanding of influencer, Mobile, digital, social, out-of-home, guerrilla, activations and direct marketing
• Great time management
• Demonstrate ability to work under immense pressure & meet tight deadlines
• Adept problem-solving skills
• Strong communication skills with ability to provide rationales for creative choices made
• Strong presentation skills
• Able to work with team members & delegate effectively
• Understand the client’s business requirements, and understand how our services should be applied to solve business problem
• Sell an idea or campaign internally and externally

WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THESE TOOLS

• Illustrator (Advantageous)
• Photoshop
• Indesign
• After Effects (Advantageous)
• Figma (Advantageous)
• Keynote / PowerPoint
• ChatGPT, Claude AI, Midjourney and similar generative AI tools
• Google Web Designer & DV360 (Advantageous)
• Facebook Creative Hub (Advantageous)
• 3D Animation & Production (Advantageous)