Creative Strategist

Acrisure Mortgage, a leading national mortgage lender, is seeking a forward-thinking Creative Strategist to develop bold marketing concepts that differentiate our brand, engage our audiences, and support our business growth.

Position Overview

The Creative Strategist is responsible for transforming business objectives, products, audiences, and market opportunities into compelling, integrated marketing campaigns.

This role sits at the intersection of strategy and creativity. The Creative Strategist develops the central idea behind a campaign—identifying the audience, consumer insight, messaging approach, campaign concept, creative opportunities, and required assets—and then leads the broader marketing team through bringing that vision to life.

For example, the Creative Strategist may be given a specific mortgage product, such as an adjustable-rate mortgage, and be expected to develop a complete campaign around it. This could include determining the target audience, identifying the most compelling way to position the product, developing advertising and commercial concepts, outlining social and digital executions, and partnering with designers, content creators, video resources, digital marketing, and other team members to produce and launch the campaign.

The Creative Strategist is not primarily a production designer, copywriter, or brand manager. Instead, this role provides the creative vision and strategic direction that connects those disciplines into cohesive campaigns.

The Creative Strategist reports directly to the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer.

Key Responsibilities

Creative Strategy & Campaign Development

• Translate business objectives, mortgage products, market opportunities, recruiting initiatives, and strategic priorities into compelling creative campaign concepts.
• Own the development of campaign strategy from initial brief through creative execution.
• Identify the target audience, key consumer or business insight, campaign positioning, primary message, creative angle, and overall campaign concept.
• Develop original concepts for advertising campaigns, commercials, social content, digital advertising, email campaigns, landing pages, print materials, direct mail, recruiting campaigns, sales initiatives, and other external-facing marketing.
• Look beyond individual marketing assets to develop larger ideas that can be expressed consistently across multiple channels and formats.
• Present multiple creative approaches when appropriate and articulate the strategic rationale behind each concept.
• Identify opportunities to make traditionally complex mortgage products and concepts approachable, relevant, memorable, and differentiated.

Creative Direction & Execution

• Develop comprehensive creative briefs that clearly communicate campaign objectives, audience, positioning, messaging, concept, required deliverables, and creative direction.
• Lead creative initiatives from concept through execution, working collaboratively with designers, video resources, social media, digital marketing, vendors, agencies, and other production partners.
• Provide creative direction to cross-functional team members without necessarily having direct managerial responsibility for those individuals.
• Ensure the original campaign idea and strategic intent remain consistent throughout the production process.
• Review creative executions and provide clear, constructive direction to strengthen the work and maintain alignment with the campaign concept.
• Determine the mix of creative assets needed to successfully bring a campaign to market.
• Help develop concepts for commercials and video content, including the central idea, storyline, audience, tone, key message, and desired consumer response, while partnering with appropriate team members for scripting and production.
• Work collaboratively rather than replacing specialized creative disciplines, leveraging the expertise of designers, writers, videographers, digital marketers, and other team members to execute the vision.

Integrated Campaign Leadership

• Develop campaign ideas that can extend across paid social, organic social, digital advertising, video, commercials, email, web and landing pages, print, direct mail, sales materials, and other consumer-facing channels.
• Create integrated approaches for consumer mortgage products, loan officer marketing, recruiting, builder and joint venture initiatives, corporate campaigns, and other strategic marketing priorities.
• Partner with digital marketing and channel owners to understand where and how creative will be deployed.
• Ensure campaigns feel connected across channels rather than functioning as a collection of independent assets.
• Identify opportunities to repurpose and extend successful creative concepts into additional formats, audiences, or channels.

Creative Testing & Optimization

• Partner with digital marketing and other stakeholders to understand how campaign creative is performing.
• While not directly responsible for campaign analytics or overall marketing performance metrics, take ownership of the creative response to performance.
• Proactively identify creative that should be refreshed, replaced, expanded, or tested based on campaign results and audience response.
• Develop new concepts, variations, hooks, formats, and approaches for ongoing creative testing.
• Avoid allowing campaigns to become static; continually look for opportunities to improve the creative based on what the market is responding to.
• Use learnings from previous campaigns to improve future creative strategies and concepts.

Audience & Market Insight

• Develop a strong understanding of Acrisure Mortgage's consumer audiences, loan officers, recruits, builder partners, joint venture partners, and other key audiences.
• Stay aware of consumer behavior, advertising trends, cultural trends, competitor activity, and emerging creative formats.
• Translate market and audience insights into creative opportunities rather than simply following industry conventions.
• Look for unexpected or differentiated ways to communicate mortgage products and financial concepts.
• Bring outside inspiration and creative thinking into the organization while ensuring ideas remain appropriate for the mortgage industry.

Brand & Compliance Alignment

• Ensure campaign concepts and creative executions remain consistent with Acrisure Mortgage brand standards and overall brand positioning.
• Partner with the Brand Manager and other appropriate stakeholders to maintain brand consistency while developing fresh creative approaches.
• Understand established brand guidelines without being responsible for the day-to-day ownership or administration of those standards.
• Work closely with Compliance and other stakeholders to ensure marketing concepts and executions meet applicable mortgage advertising and regulatory requirements.
• Develop creative solutions within regulatory and brand constraints rather than allowing those constraints to limit creative thinking.

Collaboration & Communication

• Serve as a creative thought partner to the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and other business leaders.
• Collaborate with marketing, sales, recruiting, technology, joint ventures, builder teams, operations, and other departments to understand business needs and translate them into campaigns.
• Facilitate campaign kickoffs, creative reviews, brainstorming sessions, and concept presentations.
• Clearly communicate creative ideas to both creative and non-creative stakeholders.
• Build consensus around creative direction while maintaining a strong point of view and willingness to advocate for compelling ideas.
• Help create a collaborative environment where specialists can contribute their expertise to a shared campaign vision.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in creative strategy, advertising, integrated marketing, campaign development, agency strategy, or a related field. Candidates with greater experience are encouraged to apply, and the scope of the position may grow with the individual.
• Mortgage, financial services, real estate, or another regulated-industry experience strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to take a product, audience, or business objective and develop an original campaign concept around it.
• Strong portfolio or body of work demonstrating campaign thinking, advertising concepts, creative strategy, or integrated marketing initiatives.
• Ability to think conceptually while also understanding what is required to turn an idea into executable marketing assets.
• Strong understanding of digital advertising, social media, video, email, web, and traditional marketing channels.
• Ability to develop and communicate clear creative briefs.
• Strong presentation and communication skills with the ability to explain the reasoning behind creative decisions.
• Comfortable providing creative direction to designers, writers, video teams, agencies, vendors, and other specialists.
• Ability to balance multiple campaigns and initiatives in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong understanding of brand consistency and the ability to work within established brand guidelines.
• Comfortable receiving campaign-performance feedback and adapting creative approaches accordingly.
• Curious, inventive, collaborative, and willing to challenge conventional approaches.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this position is not measured by the volume of individual assets personally produced. It is measured by the quality of the ideas behind the work and the Creative Strategist's ability to turn business needs into campaigns that the broader marketing organization can successfully execute.

A successful Creative Strategist will:

• Consistently bring strong, original campaign concepts to the table.
• Turn products and business initiatives into ideas that audiences can understand and care about.
• Provide the marketing team with clear creative direction and well-developed campaign briefs.
• Connect individual channels and assets into cohesive campaigns.
• Effectively leverage designers, content creators, digital marketers, video resources, agencies, and other specialists to execute campaign ideas.
• Recognize when creative is not resonating and quickly develop new concepts or testing approaches.
• Maintain brand consistency while continuing to push the organization creatively.
• Become a trusted creative partner to marketing leadership and the broader business.
• Grow into increasing levels of creative ownership and leadership as the role develops.

Career Growth

This position is designed to provide meaningful growth for an individual who demonstrates strong creative judgment, leadership, and campaign development capabilities.

As the role evolves, the Creative Strategist may take on responsibility for increasingly complex campaigns, broader creative initiatives, mentorship of other team members, and greater leadership across the creative function, with potential advancement into senior creative strategy or creative leadership roles.

Acrisure Mortgage is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and maintains a Drug-Free Workplace. Applicants must complete all interviews without the use of AI or automated tools.