Manager, Social Media Creative Director

The Manager, Social Media Creative leads creative development for social-first campaigns and content across Vanguard's corporate social media channels. Reporting to the Head of Social Media, this role is a peer to the Manager, Social Media Strategy and Content and partners closely with social strategy, channel owners, analytics, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate business goals into clear, compelling creative direction. This leader owns the end-to-end creative lifecycle, guiding ideas from concept through approval while setting a clear creative vision across social platforms. They lead a team of writers, designers, and creative partners-shaping concepts, developing briefs and treatments, and ensuring final creative is brand-aligned, review-ready, and optimized for platform-specific formats.

The Social Media Creative team enables social media execution through strong creative direction, standards, and feedback, and partners closely with the Strategy and Content team, which owns channel strategy, publishing, scheduling, and day-to-day execution. Together, these teams translate strategy into high-impact creative that elevates the brand and meets the pace of social.

Key Responsibilities

• Accountable for creative concepting and creative direction for social first campaigns and programs, including platform native creative approaches such as video, motion, static, and modular templates. Consulted on channel packaging and publishing needs.
• Develop and socialize creative briefs, creative rationales, and production guidance that align stakeholders on objectives, audiences, key messages, and measures of success before creative execution begins.
• Direct and review creative concepts and work-in-progress, providing clear, actionable critique to strengthen outputs and ensure alignment to brand standards and business intent.
• Manage and develop a creative team (e.g., designers, motion/video, copy creatives) and/or agency partners responsible for producing social creative assets; hire, coach, set expectations, and support career growth.
• Oversee agency/vendor creative development as applicable, including partner briefing, creative direction, review cycles, and delivery standards.
• Establish and continuously improve creative development workflows (briefing, reviews, approvals, handoffs), ensuring creative work is developed efficiently and with consistent quality.
• Implement quality-control practices (e.g., checkpoints, standards, periodic audits) to uphold creative excellence and reduce rework.
• Partner with strategy/channel teams and writers to ensure creative direction is practical for execution and aligned to platform requirements; provide timely feedback within established review windows.
• Use performance insights (in partnership with analytics) to inform creative iteration-refining creative approaches, formats, and messaging direction based on what resonates.
• Oversee production governance for creative assets (including project tracking, backups, and archiving) to support reuse, continuity, and auditability.
• Support creative planning with appropriate budget awareness / cost efficiency and compliance considerations, ensuring creative is developed in a way that supports required review processes.
• Facilitate cross-functional creative working sessions with senior stakeholders to align on direction, priorities, and tradeoffs when scope/timelines shift.

• 10+ years of progressive experience in creative roles, with significant focus on digital, social, or brand content.
• Demonstrated experience leading creative development for social-first campaigns (concepting, art direction/creative direction, creative briefs/treatments, review and approval).
• Proven people management experience (hiring, coaching, performance management, developing talent).
• Strong portfolio demonstrating platform-native creative development, including short-form video/motion and social design systems or modular creative.
• Experience implementing workflows and standards that improve efficiency and creative quality (e.g., SOPs, review checkpoints).
• Strong stakeholder management skills; ability to frame creative rationales and align leaders and partners on direction.
• Proficiency with creative tools and production collaboration workflows (e.g., Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, video editing tools).

• Experience in financial services or similarly regulated industry environments, with familiarity working through structured review/approval processes.
• Experience guiding performance-informed creative iteration (partnering with analytics to refine formats/approaches).
• Experience managing external agencies and vendors for social creative production and delivery.