We are seeking a Creative Director who is both a strategic brand thinker and hands-on creative leader to join us at Allegacy Financial® at this exciting time for the organization. We have just embarked on a transformative brand strategy and identity and are looking for an experienced CD that will help steward our newly established brand identity system, developed by a leading branding agency, and thoughtfully evolve it across brand advertising and product marketing ensuring a cohesive, modern, sophisticated, and thoughtful brand expression and experience. This person will be instrumental in helping us establish our new internal creative agency.

The ideal creative leader has deep experience at a creative agency or in house creative agency, is highly collaborative and skilled at presenting strategic creative thinking that drives business growth to executive leaders and product owners.

This role requires someone who can seamlessly move between high-level brand advertising through product marketing channels that all support our business strategy. This person thrives on managing day-to-day creative execution - to defining scalable frameworks and supporting fast-moving business needs with thoughtful, polished, high-quality design solutions. Strong storytelling, presentation, and cross-functional collaboration skills are essential, along with a refined design sensibility and a practical, solutions-oriented approach.

Success in this role means creating a cohesive, scalable brand experience that strengthens trust with members, improves consistency across touch points, and enables internal teams and partners to execute with clarity and confidence. We are looking for a team member that thrives on improving our member experience in a fast-paced environment.

Role responsibilities:

• Helps establish and operationalize the new internal creative agency.
• Leads the visual design of the brand identity, serving as the primary authority on brand identity standards, and governance, and ensuring consistent expression across all brand and product marketing channels (digital, print and physical touchpoints such as our branch network, experiential and sponsorships) while allowing flexibility within a framework for different audiences and needs.
• Works collaboratively to tell the organization's story in a clear, crisp and compelling manner across digital, video, print and at conferences.
• Leads the creative development of product marketing across all business lines.
• Optimizes and maintains the new Brand Site (powered by Frontify) and oversees development of assets, templates and toolkits that enable scalable, consistent brand and marketing execution and support organizational efficiency.
• Collaborates with internal teams and agency partners to ensure brand adherence and consistency visually and verbally.
• Proactively evaluates and recommends enhancements to increase efficiencies from AI to new software solutions.

Requirements

Role requirements:

• Proven experience as a CD agency side or in internal creative agencies creating, evolving, and executing on complex brand identity systems and product marketing for financial services brands.
• Comfortable developing creative campaigns to solve complex marketing product needs and can clearly articulate the why behind the campaign or visual identity direction.
• Has worked in financial services and understands the regulated environment.
• Defines additional standards such as co-brand, naming and branch interiors and signage.
• Presents to senior leadership with comfort, confidence and conviction.
• Seeks to build strong relationships and collaborates with internal stakeholders.
• Strong attention to detail, develops polished presentations, and ensures cohesion across channels.
• Ability to flex from the complex to the low hanging branding needs with no ego.
• Has a love for branding systems and wants to be a part of a wonderful team and credit union helping North Carolinians thrive.
• Demonstrates the Allegacy Financial values.

Experience & education requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in brand and marketing design in in-house creative agencies at a financial institution or agency side working on a financial services brand.
• Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, Marketing, Visual Communication, Media Arts or relevant area of study preferred.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating a strategic and holistic approach to creating, evolving, and executing complex brand identity systems across the full customer journey.
• Strong experience with full Adobe Creative Suite, Figma and other best-in-class design software, including AI-enabled extensions and workflows.
• Seeks to understand, learn and strong collaboration skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Location:

• This role is based in Charlotte or Winston-Salem, NC with 3 days in office. There will be occasional travel to our Financial Centers in NC.