Fractional Creative Director

The Baby Academy is hiring a commercially minded Fractional Creative Director to set creative direction and elevate performance-aware creative across channels in a lean, AI-forward model.

Responsibilities

Own development of high-level creative concepts across paid media, social, web, email, brand campaigns, partnerships , and other customer touchpoints

Translate business goals, customer insights, cultural observations , and brand strategy into distinctive creative ideas

Define creative territories, campaign concepts, visual approaches, and testing hypotheses that the Production Designer can extend efficiently

Continuously uncover new creative opportunities instead of relying only on assigned briefs or predetermined requests

Help set the standard for what “great creative” looks like and raise the quality bar across the organization

Apply evolving brand strategy and visual identity to ensure work is distinctive, consistent , and adapted to each channel and objective

Partner with growth, paid media , and agency teams to understand creative performance patterns in what wins and what underperforms

Turn performance insights into new creative hypotheses, structured iterations, and repeatable tests

Operate with a dual mindset: brand-building and commercial discipline , balancing emotional resonance, clarity, differentiation, and measurable results

Stay close to customer feedback, social comments, organic content performance, competitive activity, and emerging cultural signals

Contribute to a repeatable creative testing approach that increases organizational learning speed

Provide clear, high-quality creative direction to the Production Designer and creative partners, while staying hands-on to develop, build, refine, or prototype personally when needed

Convert concepts into actionable briefs, references, design systems, and feedback to enable fast, high-quality execution

Review and refine creative output to ensure a consistently high standard before launch

Create an effective division of labor so senior time stays focused on ideas, judgment, direction, and quality, while production handles adaptation, versioning, resizing, and executional volume

Guide creative across Meta, display, email, presentations, landing pages, web assets, social content , partner materials, and future formats

Partner with marketing leadership plus audience growth, lifecycle, content, clinical , and external agency teams to align creative with broader strategy

Use AI across ideation, concept exploration, visual development, production, iteration, and workflow design

Evaluate new AI tools and creative technologies that can materially improve quality, speed, or range

Develop workflows that let a lean internal team produce work that would otherwise require more time, budget, or external production

Proactively introduce the team to new capabilities and methods rather than waiting for the organization to prescribe them

Use AI to raise the ceiling of creative quality, not only to automate lower-value tasks or replicate the same work

Bring the evolving brand strategy and visual identity to life across day-to-day marketing execution

Ensure brand coherence across paid media, social, email, website, landing pages, presentations, partnerships, and other customer-facing experiences

Protect consistency while avoiding guidelines that become creatively restrictive or repetitive

Identify where customer-facing experiences can be improved visually and recommend solutions

Collaborate with external brand/creative agencies when appropriate, translating strategic brand work into practical internal systems and execution

Requirements

Significant experience operating at Creative Director level , including owning creative direction, leading major concepts and campaigns, and raising creative standards

8+ years of progressive creative experience, ideally including senior Creative Director or equivalent leadership in an agency or consumer brand environment

A portfolio showing ownership of creative ideas, campaigns, brand systems , and direction of other creative talent (not just individual execution)

Strong understanding of digital and performance creative , including channel adaptation for paid social, web, email, display, and other touchpoints

A performance-creative mindset: excitement about learning what performs, why it performs, and how that shapes the next idea or test

Fluency with AI-enabled creative tools and a track record of using technology to improve quality, capability, or efficiency

Experience directing designers, production resources, freelancers, agencies, or other creative partners, with confidence to remain hands-on when needed

Excellent taste, communication, judgment, feedback, and cross-functional collaboration skills

Ability to operate effectively in a fractional model by prioritizing high-leverage creative work, moving quickly, and enabling clarity for executional resources

Role Details

Job type: Part time, 20 hours/week

Monthly retainer: $6,000-$7,000 (depending on experience)

Location: 330 N Wabash Ave, Chicago, IL 60611, United States (hybrid)

Office expectation: minimum 1 day/week , working alongside the CEO, VP of Marketing, and Senior Leadership Team

Reports to: VP, Marketing

Creative Support

Full-time Production Designer supporting high-volume execution, adaptation, versioning, and production

Technologies

AI

Meta

What Success Looks Like

Material improvement in overall quality, originality, and distinctiveness across paid media, web, email, social, campaigns, and brand experiences

Creative function generates new ideas and testing hypotheses rather than operating reactively as production-only

Improved creative performance tied to stronger connection between commercial results, customer insight, and what the team builds next

Production Designer receives clear direction to efficiently turn strong concepts into high-volume, polished, channel-appropriate execution

Brand becomes increasingly consistent and recognizable while staying fresh, relevant, and channel-native

AI meaningfully expands speed and quality, enabling work that previously required more time, budget, or external support

Marketing leadership experiences creative as proactive, commercially engaged, highly collaborative , and consistently raising the standard

Application Question

Have you led creative for a consumer-facing brand, including setting creative direction and directing designers, freelancers, agencies, or other creative resources?

Additional Info

Website: www.yourbabyacademy.com (current website, pre-rebrand)

#J-18808-Ljbffr