Happy New Year everyone – Key opportunities for January – London Agencies

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to a peaceful and prosperous 2011 for us all.

Below is a snapshot of some of the key opportunities I am working on this month. As ever, if any appeal and you want to find out more about them, please email me at tim@timothycreative.com or call me on 07710 419 702, or click on the role itself to see more detail.

The same is true if you’re looking to make a new hire (clients) or make a change (candidates) – please feel free to get in touch to chat through your options and whether I can help.

- Senior Art Director / Group Head – Integrated and Digital Agency – c.£60k
- Word-Of-Mouth Creative Head – Specialist WOM Agency – £40k-£60k
- Copywriter – retail and shopper marketing experience – To £40k
- Hyper Designer – 360 Digital Agency – To £50k
- Senior Designer – Digital Agency – To £50k
- Creative Teams (junior, midweight and senior) – 360, Digital and Integrated Agencies – £20k to £75k plus
- Deputy Creative Director – Boutique Integrated Agency – To £50k
- Junior Copywriter – Specialist WOM Agency – £25k
- Digital Strategist – Digital and Design Agency – To £40k
- Digital and Offline Designer – Integrated Agency – To £40k
- Head of Digital Creative – Integrated and Direct Agency – To £60k
- Junior Planner/Strategist – Design Agency – To £35k
- Midweight Creative Team – Integrated Agency – To £50k

Thanks for reading. I’m looking forward to working with you in 2011.

Very best wishes,

Tim

Hyper Designer – Digital and 360 Agency – London – £30k-£50k

As with the previous role, my client is looking to add real value to their creative offering through the hiring of a Hyper Designer.

The ideal candidate will be an original thinker who takes creative concepts and translates them into an animated and interactive visual format. Candidates will need to be fully conversant in all industry-standard design packages, including Flash and be able to make a character leap from ladder to level or integrate bespoke video with crafted interface design, able to express the essence of a brand in a single gesture.

This role is also about the future. The role is as much about delivering thinking that extends beyond current established formats and knowing/having an opinion about what will become possible in interactive rich media, as it is about working within present day techniques.

Ideal candidates will be digital natives, with a wealth of experience with a range of internet-related technologies (ideally multi-platform); they’ll show a passion for design, movement and storytelling; and they’ll have the desire to share, promote and deliver this wealth experience to clients and the wider team, to strengthen the agency’s brand and market leading position.

Key skills include:
- Flash (ActionScript and XML)
- Working knowledge of After Effects and Premiere (or similar)
- Hands on experience of working with video footage (including the planning of shoots)
- Excellent Photoshop and Illustrator skills
- Experience of 3D modelling (3D Studio Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, etc) would be great to have
- As would experience of working on mobile and/or interactive TV platforms.

If a role like this interests and you’d like to find out more, please email me at tim@timothycreative.com or call me on 07710 419 702. Thanks for your interest.

Creative Teams – Senior, Midweight and Junior – Digital 360 Agency – London – £neg

I am looking for 3 creative teams – a junior, midweight and senior team for a digital / 360 agency client of mine. The agency is excellent – part of a network – and at the forefront of digitally focused 360, integrated brand communications. The team there work with some tremendously high profile clients/brands and are a genuine fusion of marketing and technology, right where advertising is at, now.

In all the teams, I am looking for conceptual experience and a proven track record in creating innovative integrated campaigns (recognised and awarded as such, if possible). For each position I want to see an ability to produce concepts and design work at a consistent excellent quality, as well as a track record that demonstrates experience delivering ‘digital out’ integrated campaigns for clients and brands.

Art Directors’ will need to show ability and skill in typography, design and concept generation, whereas Copywriters’ must be able to demonstrate strong tonal writing skills for both long and short copy.

For all the positions we would expect teams to have good content and production knowledge, a keen understanding of digital communications and social media strategic opportunities and experience of working with design tech teams.

In addition, core skills will include:
- strong working knowledge of experience design, brand development and interactive commerce
- competency on the Mac, with knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator, etc
- a commercial understanding of the work aligning with business objectives

Juniors will need 1-2 years experience in an integrated, Ad, DM or digital agency. £20k-£25k.

Midweights will have at least 6-7 years experience, as well as experience leading creative briefs and experience delivering pitch winning work. £30k-£45k.

Seniors will be recognised as an awarded, 360 integrated, expert creative team, and have experience nurturing more junior members of the creative department. This position will deputise for the Creative Director in terms of managing the creative floor as and when needed. £60k plus.

Salaries for each are negotiable and will reflect experience and responsibities.

If you’re interested in finding out a little more about any of these three team roles, please email me at tim@timothycreative.com or call me on 07710 419 702. I’ll happily take you through what it is that I’m looking for.

Creative No.2 – Boutique Ad and Integrated Agency – London – To £50k

I really enjoy working with this client. They’re a fun bunch who have carved out a pretty unique niche within the world of advertising, working 360. And their CD is great – a real culture Zeitgeist, interested in anything and everything. (Ask him about his music career…)

He’s on a quest to find a senior creative to help unburden him a bit. What he wants is a capable and responsible big ideas person with both art direction and copy skills, experienced in ATL/TTL/BTL.

This person needs to be a lover and producer of concepts, words and pictures. Someone with vision and maturity; someone who can generate exciting marketing ideas across various genres (ads, POS, dm, experiential and digital for instance) and see them through with a good eye for the look and feel, as well as a clear ability to compose and structure the messaging.

And while this position isn’t officially a Deputy Creative Director role, the person coming in would be the next most senior creative within the agency, answering only to the CD and the MD – hence they need to be as responsible as they are talented, as they will lead creative on numerous projects and they’ll need to oversee freelancers and juniors and make client presentations.

So, in essence, this role is for someone who has around 7 years under their belt who:
- is great at ideas
- is excellent with words
- is a brilliant designer/art director (perhaps they studied it at Central St Martins, Bucks or Falmouth?)
- has good scamping skills
- is mature and responsible
- is able to communicate internally and with clients
- has basic Mac skills and knows a little Photoshop, Indesign or Illustrator
- wants to grow their career, step up and take on more responsiblilty.

If this sounds like an interesting position then please get in touch to find out more. I can be emailed at tim@timothycreative.com or called on 07710 419 702. It’s a great role and the person coming on board would join a really forward thinking energised/dynamic and fun team. It’s a great opportunity.

Conceptual and Ideas-focused Copywriter (with some basic design capability) – WOM Agency – London – c.£25k

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful techniques for delivering sales/advertising/marketing success for brands today. The client I am working with is a leading global specialist in WOM marketing, and a passionate advocate of the value of sustained and authentic brand conversations. They help companies understand why word of mouth should be at the heart of every aspect of their advertising.

They are looking for a copywriter to work across their accounts and strengthen their team. The person coming on board will be a power house of ideas, able to deliver thinking that will start conversations and strengthen the relationship that brands have with their consumers.

The role is fascinating and fast paced. The person coming in will be expected to have a breadth of knowledge that won’t just reflect Soho, advertising and middle class interests. This role is about delivering the creative process, from ideation through to final execution, and as such my client is looking for people who are sharp, motivated, interested, with different backgrounds who, in short, offer a different take on things.

Candidates looking at this opportunity should be deeply embedded in social media and have a passion for culture, psychology and people. They should have 2/3 years experience, as well as a background that demonstrates knowledge of the FMCG and other blue chip brand sectors. Candidates will be ideas generators in the first instance, able to write and able to deliver basic design using Photoshop, etc. But my client isn’t looking for a designer who can write a bit. They’re definitely looking for a copywriter who knows how to turn on a Mac and use basic design packages to showcase their ideas a little. This role is all about delivering ideas.

The ideal person will be commercially savvy, understanding of the fact that the work they do sells things, and they’ll be passionate and interested, with a definite opinion about the world around them.

For the agency everything revolves around being able deliver content and engaging consumer experiences – be that through mobile, experiential, peer to peer, etc. Candidates will be expected to have a little experience in design and a basic usable knowledge of Photoshop. If this sounds interesting and fun (it is!), ping me a note at tim@timothcreative.com or call me on 07710 419 702 and I’ll fill you in.

Senior Art Director (Group Head) – Integrated and Digital Agency – London – To £60k

Whilst many other agencies talk about the ability to integrate offline and digital communications, my client actually does it. They fuse the best of core communication skills (data insight, planning customer journeys, brand understanding) with the skills of the digital world to create a unique agency, one which is genuinely able to help clients choose the right channel and message for their conversations with customers.

Based in North London, they are now looking to add to their creative department and recruit an exciting senior Art Director and Group Head. They’re looking to talk to someone who can demonstrate excellent concept and craft skills, as well a folio of recognised (awarded) work (including strong digital concept/implementation), and some speculative thinking. And the energy to drive this agency into their next phase of growth.

Ideally candidates will have come through an integrated agency background, have core experience within dm, integrated and digital and be looking to take their career to the next level, within a highly awarded, recognised central London agency environment.

If you’re interested and would like more information, please contact me on tim@timothycreative.com or 07710 419 702, giving CV and pdf/online portfolio details. It’s a great role and opportunity.

Digital Strategist – Brand, Design and Digital Agency – London – £34k-£40k

For my client, an award winning creative communications, design and digital agency, this role will be one of the key faces of digital within the team, able to recognise when digital is ‘fit for purpose’ and when it’s not.

The person coming on board will be responsible for developing the agency’s digital opportunities, supporting their positioning through blog posts, white papers, internal direction, client comms, etc, as well as research and planning (gathering an understanding of each clients’ business goals, analytics, etc) and IA (employing usability best practice, etc).

As well as being a replacement for someone who is leaving, this position also presents an opportunity to hire in someone who will be able to lead accounts outside of defined projects, and take the strategic lead on a number of the agency’s larger accounts. Over time, as the teams grows and others are employed to oversee IA and research, this position will become more managerial too; so there’s definite scope for career development.

In terms of actual experience, I am looking for a midweight, someone who is a strong digital advocate, usability proponent, strategy developer, great communicator and presenter of vision and plans.

The person coming on board will be a self starter for sure; keen, confident and quick to learn. They will have worked in digital for most of their career (within either pure play or integrated environments) and had responsibility for developing digital strategies and creating websites for large clients.

This is a great opportunity to take the next career step and join an evolving and dynamic agency that integrates digital into a total brand and communications strategy for their clients, ensuring as I said earlier, that it plays a role that is fit for purpose, working in tandem with offline channels.

If you’re interested in finding out a little more about this position, please drop an email to tim@timothycreative.com or call 07710 419 702 and I’ll fill you in. Thanks for your interest.