Monks
Website:
monks.com
Job details:
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We're not looking for a figurehead. We're looking for a creative force who leads from the front, shapes culture from the inside out, and knows exactly what it takes to get great work made. As Group Creative Director, you will be the creative conscience of the agency, setting the standard not just by assigning work, but by understanding the work deeply enough to unblock it when it matters most.
This is a role for someone who has earned their stripes in agency life, understands the full machinery of creative delivery, and whose hands-on technical knowledge makes them a genuine resource to the people around them, not just a title above them.
What You'll Do
Be the Practical Problem-Solver the Team Needs
- When the team hits a wall, you're the one who knows how to climb it. Whether it's a design execution challenge, a production constraint, a motion problem, or an AI workflow that isn't behaving, you can step in with a real, working solution rather than a theoretical one
- Your value in those moments comes from having actually done the work at some point, knowing the tools, understanding the process, and being able to show rather than just tell
- Identify creative and technical blockers early, and resolve them before they become delays or compromises in quality
- Establish ways of working that give the team clarity, reduce friction, and raise the floor on output
Lead with Craft and Creative Authority
- Set the visual and conceptual tone across campaigns, brands, and platforms
- Maintain a strong, consistent aesthetic point of view that elevates every piece of work that leaves the building
- Be the person in the room who can tell whether an idea is truly great, and articulate clearly and specifically why
Think Strategically, Create Deliberately
- Partner with strategy and account leadership to develop creative briefs that are sharp, provocative, and genuinely useful
- Translate brand positioning, audience insight, and business objectives into creative territory that is both distinctive and effective
- Anticipate client needs before they are articulated. Read between the lines of a brief and pre-empt creative pivots before they become problems
Scope, Plan, and Protect the Work
- Bring a grounded understanding of what it actually takes to execute ideas well, and use that to scope workstreams realistically and responsibly
- Identify early where a project might hit friction, whether creative, technical, or logistical, and resolve it upstream
- Build timelines and resource plans that protect quality without sacrificing pace
Communicate with Clarity and Conviction
- A sharp communicator both internally and externally, able to present ideas, navigate feedback, and align stakeholders with equal confidence
- A natural storyteller who can structure a narrative whether in a credentials deck, a pitch room, or an all-hands. The kind of person whose presentations people actually remember
- Skilled at reading a room and knowing when to push, when to reframe, and when something simply isn't working yet. Able to have those honest conversations with tact and without ambiguity
- Rally creative teams around a vision and give them the kind of direction that is specific enough to act on
Build and Elevate the Creative Department
- Mentor creative teams with specificity: not just what is wrong, but how to fix it and why it matters
- Create an environment where junior talent is challenged, developed, and retained
- Set the tone for creative culture: rigorous, curious, collaborative, and ambitious
Own the AI Creative Frontier
- Be the agency's lead practitioner and evangelist for AI in creative work. Fluent in generative image, video, copy, and audio tools, and always current with the evolving landscape
- Go beyond generation: architect AI-assisted workflows and production pipelines that meaningfully improve creative output, speed, and scale
- Identify where AI creates genuine creative opportunity versus where it compromises craft, and make those calls with authority
- Educate and upskill the creative department on AI tools, establishing shared standards for their ethical and effective use
- Collaborate with technology and production partners to design bespoke AI solutions for client challenges
Experience
What You Bring
- 15+ years in creative roles, with a significant portion spent in agency environments (integrated, digital, or brand)
- Proven experience leading creative departments or large multi-disciplinary creative teams
- A portfolio that demonstrates range across brand, campaign, digital, and experiential, with a clear and ownable aesthetic sensibility
- Industry award recognition is a strong differentiator and speaks to a consistent standard of creative ambition. Shortlists, wins, and a culture of entering work are all signals we take seriously
Hard Skills and Technical Range
- Genuine proficiency across the tools and disciplines relevant to modern creative production: design, art direction, motion, digital, and AI-assisted workflows
- Enough technical depth in each area to diagnose problems, propose solutions, and demonstrate them when needed
- Not expected to execute every deliverable day-to-day, but absolutely expected to know how, and to use that knowledge to make the team sharper
Creative and Strategic Capability
- A thinker and a maker in equal measure, able to move between strategic framework and craft-level execution without losing quality at either end
- Strong design instincts and visual literacy, equally comfortable directing photography, motion, digital design, and emerging formats
- The ability to hold a brand truth and a big idea simultaneously, and translate both into work that resonates
AI Proficiency
- Active, working knowledge of leading generative AI tools (image, video, language, audio): not surface-level familiarity, but genuine hands-on expertise
- Experience designing or implementing AI into creative and production workflows
- An informed, evolving perspective on where AI is heading and what it means for the creative industry
Communication and Storytelling
- Exceptional presenter and communicator, comfortable in the boardroom, the pitch, and the internal critique with equal conviction
- A natural instinct for narrative: how to structure a story, build tension, land a point, and leave a room energised
- Direct, clear, and credible in the way they give feedback and manage expectations
The Kind of Person You Are
- You don't just have taste, you can articulate it. You don't just delegate, you demonstrate. You're not threatened by AI; you're ahead of it. You've sat in enough pitches to know when an idea is campaign-ready and when it's still a sketch, and you're not afraid to say so clearly, even when it's uncomfortable.
- You know the difference between a production problem and a creative problem. You know when a brief is actually good. You've done the work yourself long enough to know exactly where teams get stuck, and you show up to those moments with practical answers, not just encouragement.
- You believe that craft and speed are not opposites. That strategy and beauty belong together. And that the best creative leaders are the ones still learning.
Why This Role
This is a genuine leadership position with real creative authority, not a bureaucratic title. You'll work on brands that matter, alongside people who care deeply about what they make. The agency is at an inflection point, investing seriously in AI capability, new creative formats, and a more integrated way of working. You'll help define what that looks like.
About Monks
Monks is the global, digital-first, data-driven, unitary operating brand of S4 Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and specialized expertise, Monks combines an extraordinary range of global Marketing and Technology Services to redefine how brands interact with the world. Through Monks.Flow, its flagship AI ecosystem for marketing orchestration, Monks transforms marketing into a growth engine, collapsing timelines and connecting brands to culture in real time. By deploying bespoke intelligent agents across disciplines and delivering culturally relevant, high-impact creative and digital solutions, Monks solves key critical business challenges across the entire brand enterprise to help brands sustain long-term impact.
Monks was named a Contender in The Forrester Wave™: Global Marketing Services, ranks among Cannes Lions' Top 10 Creative Companies (2022-25) and remains the only partner featured in AdExchanger’s Programmatic Power Players list every year (2020-24). Named Adweek’s first AI Agency of the Year (2023) and The One Show’s inaugural AI Pioneer Organization, Monks was also awarded Business Intelligence Group’s 2025 Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Award in both the Organizational and AI Product categories. As a trusted partner to cutting-edge innovators in tech, Monks earned titles such as Optimizely Experimentation Partner of the Year (2025), runner-up for the Adobe Firefly Partner Award (2024), and Workato’s AI Visionary Customer Impact Award (2024). Additionally, Monks achieved a record-breaking number of FWAs and continues to hold the most of any partner.
We are an equal-opportunity employer committed to building a respectful and empowering work environment for all people to freely express themselves amongst colleagues who embrace diversity in all respects. Including fresh voices and unique points of view in all aspects of our business not only creates an environment where we can all grow and thrive but also increases our potential to produce work that better represents—and resonates with—the world around us.
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