Global Creative Director - Shoptalk

Global Creative Director, Shoptalk

USA - New York HQ, United States
· Permanent
· Hybrid

Shoptalk, producer of the world's most important retail and commerce events and a global pioneer in event design, is looking for a Global Creative Director to bring fresh thinking and new perspectives to our global brand.

We produce four events a year in Las Vegas, Nashville and Barcelona that bring together tens of thousands of retailers, brands and the people shaping the future of commerce. Our brand has to feel unmistakable everywhere it appears, from the registration email a guest opens to the entrance they walk through on arrival and the stages they watch content on.

This role oversees our creative vision end to end, including leading the team responsible for defining and shaping how Shoptalk looks and feels. It spans the full creative arc and impacts our event lifecycle, online and offline. Core creative focus spans concept and theme, look and feel across every channel, social and content that carries the brand between events, on-site signage and way finding, event stage sets and on-site experiential moments and activations.

You will manage our in-house design team and work closely with operations and marketing.

• Direct the creative look, feel and themes for our events.
• Work hand in hand with operations, marketing, content and leadership so ideas are shared rather than imposed.
• Set the visual that brings Shoptalk to life: the big ideas, the narrative, typography, colors, overall experience and visuals.
• Present and defend that vision to operations and senior leadership, then evolve it year over year so the portfolio stays unmistakable.

• Create a design system that makes marketing, web, social, email, app, signage, stage and activations read as one event, online and offline.
• Evolve scalable standards, templates and guidelines that hold up whether the canvas is a social tile or a 40-foot wall, and that all teams, general contractors and freelancers can run with.
• Act as the steward of brand consistency.

• Visualize and connect marketing design, social media visuals and content marketing for the brand.
• Shape the look of social, new content properties and campaign creative that drives registrations.
• Keep audiences close year-round with always-on creative between events.

• Oversee the anchor creative output of the team that our operations team manages: site signage and way finding assets, entrance and registration moments, hanging and aerial signage, stages, lounges, directional systems and sponsor recognition builds.
• Manage production of graphic files that hold up at scale, with real command of substrates, color and typography at distance.
• Execute to lead times and deadlines.
• Design to spec and partner with operations teams on builds, staying on brand and on time.

• Collaborate on art direction for session stages, partnering with operations teams and design agencies on scenic, lighting and structure.
• Partner on on-site experience elements that make the event feel like Shoptalk: the immersive and sensorial moments that make guests stop and post.

• Bring the same creative bar to the commercial side of the business: sponsor recognition, branded sponsor activations and co-branded partner moments.
• Provide creative support for the sponsorship sales team.
• Help partners show up in a way that feels native to Shoptalk rather than bolted on.

• Work within creative and production budgets, build scopes and production calendars set by operations teams, working back from load-in.
• Set the ways of working that keep a small team and a busy bench moving.
• Balance creative ambition against what can be built and installed on time and on budget.

• Lead, hire, grow and develop a small in-house design team, and direct freelancers, set design studios and specialists.
• Brief clearly and give direct, actionable feedback that raises the work.
• Build and direct the external…