Art Director, Influencer

About Collectively:

Collectively - part of the Brandtech Group (formerly You & Mr. Jones) - is the global leader in influencer marketing; combining strategy, creative, and technology to deliver the most innovative influencer work. We partner with forward-thinking brands in technology, fashion, retail, gaming, entertainment, consumer goods, and more to build deeply integrated social activation strategies that drive relevance, awareness, and sales. Our work has been recognized by top publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Digiday, AdAge, and Business INSIDER, among others. We’ve also earned Effie, Webby, Glossy, IMA Fast Company, and OMMA awards for our programs.

Collectively is known across the industry as the partner who delivers the most creative, strategic, and effective programs, with the most sophisticated analysis and paid social offerings. But most importantly, we’re known to be genuinely committed partners to our clients, many of whom have worked with us for multiple years. We aspire to continue to provide an excellent workplace for our teams while delivering the industry’s most ambitious and thoughtful influencer collaborations. In 2020, we were named by Built In Bay Area as one of the Best Small Companies to work for.

About the Client Partnerships Team

The Client Partnership team leads the creator strategy and client servicing relationship through the lifecycle of an account at Collectively–ensuring our partnership with clients is successful, industry-leading and directly in support of our clients’ creator marketing ambitions.

This team is focused on cultivating and growing successful relationships with account stakeholders in our client community through best-in-class work and services–delivering strategic influencer marketing proposals/RFPs, industry-leading thought partnership and ongoing strategic direction throughout the lifecycle of our agency/client partnership to support brands in becoming more effective, innovative creator-centric marketers.

About This Opportunity

We’re looking for an Art Director to join our Strategic & Creative Development (SCD) function—an inter-team force designed to elevate Collectively’s competitive, high-stakes, and creatively ambitious work.

As a core member of Strategic & Creative Development, you’ll help lead the ideation and conceptual development behind our biggest opportunities: competitive RFPs, big-bet pitches, multi-platform campaigns, and high-visibility client initiatives. You’ll bring a deep understanding of creator culture, digital trends, and social storytelling to develop bold, resonant creative ideas built on genuine tension—the kind that stops thumbs, sparks conversation, and wins over audiences on their own terms.

This role sits within a hybrid Business Development + Client Strategy team, offering a unique vantage point at the intersection of creative thinking, cultural insight, and growth-driving business impact.

About Strategic & Creative Development

The Strategic & Creative Development function was built to sharpen how the agency shows up in moments that define our growth. SCD leads creative development across competitive pitches and marquee programs, partnering closely with Strategy, Business Development, Client Partnerships, and Analytics to bring clarity, craft, and cultural fluency to every RFP.

This role will play an active part in shaping and advancing what “best-in-class” looks like for our creative discipline.

What You’ll Do

Lead Creative for Our Biggest Swings — You’ll develop bold, tension-driven concepts that form the creative backbone of our most competitive pitches and flagship client programs. This means generating ideas that are platform-native, digitally fluent, and built on real cultural friction—transforming strategic territories into campaigns that earn attention, spark conversation, and resonate deeply with digital audiences who can smell inauthenticity from a mile away. And while social is home base, you’re equally comfortable thinking beyond it: from influencer-led events and experiential activations to influencer-led TV spots and fully integrated campaigns that show up everywhere a brand needs to be.

Turn Insights into Ideas — Great creative doesn’t start from a blank page—it starts from a tension. You’ll work closely with strategists to absorb audience research, digital trend signals, and category context, then transform that raw material into ideas with genuine creative conflict at their core: the friction between what a brand stands for and what culture is demanding, between what audiences expect and what surprises them, between the familiar and the unexpected. That tension is what makes ideas magnetic.

Bridge Creative and Strategy — You’ll work hand-in-hand with Strategy partners, participating in brief reviews and collaborative ideation sessions to ensure creative concepts are rooted in real insight. Your role is to be both creative lead and thought partner—ensuring every idea pushes into unexpected territory while laddering back to a clear strategic foundation.

Cross-Functional Partnership — You’ll partner closely with Business Development and Client Partnerships to bring creative thinking to business opportunities across net new pitches and key client programs. You’re comfortable moving between teams, translating creative vision into the language each audience needs to hear—and you genuinely enjoy the variety. One week you’re cracking a campaign for a big CPG brand, the next you’re in the world of luxury, beauty, or B2B tech. You flex your creative instincts to fit the category without losing your edge.

Tapped into Culture + Trends — You’ll help lead creative trend reporting and POV development, keeping teams wired into what’s shaping digital culture, social platforms, and Gen Z behavior in real time. You know the difference between a trend worth chasing and one that’s already peaked—and you know how to use that intelligence to build creative ideas with longevity, not just virality. You’ll contribute to playbooks and creative standards that level up our output and help clients earn genuine relevance in the creator space.

What You’ll Bring

Experience

• 4–7 years developing creative for social-first, influencer/ creator-led, or influencer-driven campaigns
• Proven track record concepting and producing work that earns attention, drives culture, and delivers results
• Deep fluency across platforms—you think natively in TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and whatever comes next
• Experience working in influencer marketing, social creative agencies, or digital-first brand environments (bonus points if you’ve been in the agency trenches)
• A genuine love for working across industries—from big CPG and beauty to luxury, tech, and B2B—and the creative range to shift registers between them without losing what makes each idea feel right for that world
• Bonus: experience using AI tools and moodboarding to generate visual mockups and creative visualizations—bringing ideas to life visually at the speed of a pitch so clients and teams can see the vision, not just read it

Expertise

• Ability to generate a high volume of strong ideas and pressure-test them quickly in a pitch environment—including knowing which ideas have enough tension to actually break through
• Strong digital and cultural radar—you live inside social media trends, understand what drives Gen Z behavior on and off platform, and can translate those signals into campaign concepts before they go mainstream
• Experience developing tension-rooted creative territories and campaign frameworks—ideas built on genuine cultural friction that give programs a clear identity, edge, and north star
• Comfort navigating the controlled chaos of pitch cycles and high-visibility RFP processes

Mindset

• Natural storyteller who can present creative ideas compellingly—verbally, visually, and on the page
• Collaborative spirit that thrives when working across Creative, Strategy, BD, and Account teams
• Deep, genuine fluency with digital audiences—not just demographic knowledge, but a real understanding of how they think, what they value, what they reject, and how to create work that earns their trust rather than their eye-roll
• Growth orientation—you’re excited to push the work forward and shape how we show up creatively

Craft

• Exceptional creative writing and concepting skills—you can articulate a big idea as clearly as you can visualize it
• Presentation skills that bring a room along for the ride, whether you’re pitching internally or to a client
• Creative ambition balanced with strategic rigor
• Ability to zoom out to big-picture concept thinking and zoom in to executional excellence

Pay

The pay range for this position is $98,000 - 110,000 Collectively takes into consideration a wide range of factors that are utilized in making compensation decisions including, but not limited to, skill sets, experience and training, qualifications and education, and other business and organizational needs.