VP, Creativity & Innovation
Woodruff - Full Time
Kansas City, Mo | Columbia, Mo | Remote Flexible
Description
The VP, creativity & innovation (C&I) is a newly created leadership position at Woodruff. We’re looking for a transparent, innovative and results-driven leader with a diverse background to lead our creative, user experience (UX) design and packaging & production teams.
We are looking for an experienced, curious and collaborative leader to head our C&I core strength. Woodruff’s six core strengths center our business on areas our clients need, seek and value, and what we need to focus on to be a healthy organization.
The ideal candidate will be a proven creative talent with a diverse background committed to fostering a culture of empowerment, creative excellence, innovation and exploring what’s possible.
Agility, an entrepreneurial spirit and rich creative, digital and new business experience are desired. The VP of creativity & innovation will help spread the passion for new and emerging technologies and how they can be used to bring value to our people and clients. Their focus will be to expose, guide and inspire our team and clients to embrace innovative thinking and practices to grow market share.
The VP of creativity & innovation will be a member of Woodruff’s Vision Team, working closely with our CEO, president, CSO, EVP of strategy & integration, VP of connections & community, VP of operations & engagement, VP of revenue & diversification and VP of people & culture to drive forward-thinking strategies and impactful creative solutions in order to achieve our goals and build a strong business and culture of trust.
This person could be located in the Kansas City, MO, office; Columbia, MO, office; or remote.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Creative & Innovation Leadership
Build trust with Woodruff team members and clients. Be an active listener and seek to understand our history, processes and what each Woodruffian brings to the team.
Dive into our client’s business and demonstrate a commitment to helping them be successful.
Inspire, empower and lift up our creative & innovation team members, including those skilled in design, writing, production, desktop production, social design, art direction, video production and UX/UI design to encourage continuous learning. Ensure they know their voice matters and unleash innovation and creative excellence.
Guide our team in exploring new strategies that will elevate our approach and lead to more impactful solutions for our clients.
Identify opportunities for Woodruff to bring additional value to our clients through creativity (thinking, execution, strategy, technology) and innovation.
Improve our current practices, embrace relevant technology & approaches and prepare for the needs and expectations of clients to ensure we remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment.
Continue to build Woodruff’s culture of exploring what’s possible and being brave enough to pursue the unexpected.
Contribute to a healthy and enviable culture, built on shared respect, reflective of our ethos, inspiring for our team and resulting in a great place to work.
Help identify and explore emerging tools like AI, integrating them into our creative and organizational processes to stay ahead of the curve and deliver additional value to our clients and team.
Spread the passion for new and emerging technologies and how these can be used to solve problems, bring value to our people and clients, and prepare us for the future.
Bring expert knowledge of industry-standard software, tools, exercises and techniques that elevate our work, such as Figma, design systems, human-centered design and design thinking.
Help our innovation & diversification growth group identify, assess and market new product ideas.
Cross Function Collaboration
Work closely in an open, collaborative manner with leadership and team members in people & culture, connections & community, revenue & diversification, operations & engagement, strategy & integration and new business development.
Actively share knowledge with team members from different disciplines and help all teams work closely together.
Be conceptual when working with an integrated team, understanding how traditional advertising, paid media, social, email and other channels can impact the user experience and how the concept can carry through a complex user journey.
Ensure that everyone — creative, strategy, operations, account and other teams — is aligned and working efficiently to deliver seamless projects/solutions.
Diversity of Experience and Perspective
Bring experience from a wide range of industries and roles to the Woodruff team to facilitate continued team growth and value.
Deliver experience and perspective to ensure our team remains inspired, encouraged and relevant, and delivers high value to our existing and future clients.
Bring a diverse, fresh perspective to our approach, preventing stagnancy and helping evolve processes when necessary.
Client Strategy and Consultation
Ensure the alignment of client goals and our strategy. Help our clients better connect with their customers and achieve their business objectives.
Work closely with our strategy & integration team to become an insight-driven, customer-centric agency and help our clients better understand and embrace the customer-centric perspective in problem-solving and innovation.
Seek opportunities to bring additional value to the C-suites of our clients through thought leadership, creativity and innovation.
Marketplace Growth
Help position Woodruff as a leader in customer centricity and creative excellence, especially as clients continue to demand innovative, digital-first solutions.
Build a culture of exploring what’s possible and being brave enough to pursue the truly unexpected.
Encourage experimentation to learn and grow. Foster testing and trial and error, with a high degree of discipline. Push for and promote ambiguity, playing the odds and taking calculated risks. Navigate uncertainty with a positive attitude.
Actively seek new business opportunities where we can expand our creative problem-solving and innovative thinking, grow our business and our people.
Don’t let us get comfortable in what we know. Keep us sharp. Learn new industries and explore unknown territories as often as possible.
Knowledge and Skills:
Proven design, creative and critical thinking, problem-solving skills
Extensive experience using Adobe Creative Suite
Direct experience with Figma, Miro, InVision Studio or alternative collaborative interface design tools
An entrepreneurial spirit, forward-thinker
Happy to build relationships and trust, connect the dots, find a better way to solve existing problems
Ability to identify simpler ways to solve problems
Ability to embrace our core value of freedom — to be bold, to experiment, to challenge, to act and to celebrate — and a history of doing so throughout their career.
Leader Behaviors:
Open-minded and active listener
Continually grows people and business
Truthful and transparent
Decisive and accountable
Forward-thinking
Proactive and communicates in a positive manner.
Education/Experience/Certification(s):
15+ years of relevant experience — design, journalism, creative writing, communications, digital/experience design or advertising degree preferred
Both agency and non-agency experience is applicable
Experience in leading a cross-functional team
Packaging design and/or production experience preferred
Change management experience
Digital, UX/UI methodologies experience
Product development, design thinking, human-centered design.
