Agency:Critical Mass
Job Function:Creative
Job Subfunction: Creative Direction
Job Description:CREATIVE DIRECTOR - COPY
At Critical Mass, the Creative Director - Copy sets the bar. You're the sharpest point of view in the room, and you have the standards to prove it.
You push work until it's original enough to matter. You sell it with conviction, and you don't back down when it's worth defending. That instinct extends everywhere - the work, the culture, the brief that needs to be challenged.
Your taste is deep, built from a genuine curiosity about art, culture, and the world. Craft isn't a checkbox for you; it's close to an obsession, and it shows in everything you touch.
You WillIdeas & Creative Direction
- Lead the creative vision for your accounts, setting a point of view that's original, unexpected, and impossible to ignore
- Actively use and teach AI tools across your team, ensuring they elevate craft rather than replace it
- Lead and inspire multidisciplinary teams, guiding creatives, strategists, and account partners toward a single, cohesive vision
- Challenge stakeholders - clients and internal teams alike - when the work or the thinking deserves better
- Oversee high-visibility projects from concept through delivery, protecting the idea at every stage
Selling & Communication
- Be the creative voice on your accounts. Present, defend, and sell ideas with clarity and conviction, and have the confidence to challenge senior stakeholders when the work demands it
- Lead new business efforts, pitching ideas that win and set the tone for future work
Craft & Execution
- Set and protect the creative standard across every account you touch, ensuring nothing ships that isn't up to it
- Own final creative quality across brand and campaign work, from big idea to finished execution
- Bring storytelling instincts to every brief, understanding how to build narratives that connect emotionally and culturally
Account & Project Leadership
- Serve as point of escalation for both clients and internal teams. Find the right path forward without compromising the work
- Balance ambition with pragmatism, knowing when to push and when to protect timelines and budgets
Team & Culture
- Inspire a culture of ambition and craft, where good is never good enough
- Mentor creatives at every level, developing the next generation of creative leaders
- Represent Critical Mass in the industry - through award recognition, speaking opportunities, and creative reputation
You Have- 6+ years of creative leadership experience, ideally in an agency or equivalent environment
- A portfolio that shows strong conceptual thinking and craft across brand and campaign work
- A sharp, informed aesthetic sensibility, shaped by deep engagement with culture, art, fashion, film, music, and the world
- Experience leading and mentoring multidisciplinary creative teams
- Proven experience presenting, selling, and defending creative work to senior clients and stakeholders
- Hands-on experience with AI creative tools, with the ability to teach and guide others in using them well
- Experience leading or contributing significantly to new business pitches
- A genuine passion for the craft, and the relentlessness to protect it
What We Offer:- Global maternity and parental leave.
- Competitive benefits packages.
- Vacation, compassionate leave, personal/sick days, and flex days.
- Access to online services for families and new parents.
- Early Dismissal Friday's (off at 3:00 PM local time every Friday).
- 12 affinity groups.
- Internal learning and development programs.
- Enterprise-wide employee discounts.
Our new hires & employees are the future of our organization, and we want to set you up for long-term success. In an effort to do so, we expect our team to work from an office a minimum of 3 days a week.
Los Angeles: $175,000-$230,000
