Job Title: Director of Marketing
Location: Chicago Architecture Center
Department: Marketing
Salary Range: $100,000-$110,000 Annually
Reports To: Chief Brand Officer
FLSA Status: Full-time, Exempt
Job Purpose
This position will play a leadership role on the marketing and communications team. As Director, you develop, lead, and inspire the team in scalable, measurable marketing and creative strategies and contribute toward the organization’s strategic goals. Success in this role requires critical thinking and creative problem solving to drive market distinction, brand awareness and evolution, content innovation, and community engagement. The position will work alongside the Director of Communications and across departments including tour operations, public engagement, retail, civics, learning/education and exhibitions to ensure all branded content aligns with strategy. Processes, goal setting, and inter-departmental meetings should be prioritized to position Marketing and Communications as a strategic partner within the organization.
Duties and Responsibilities
Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- Drive strategic marketing initiatives and activations for the brand; ensuring a cohesive narrative and seamless rollout meets desired deliverables and KPI’s.
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Lead the creation, execution, and implementation of marketing plans for all CAC departments, including Tourism (river cruise, walking & bus tours), Open House Chicago, exhibitions, civics portfolio, public engagement, retail store, venue rentals & events, and programs/education.
- Lead media buying and placement alongside agency partners.
- Champion access, representation, and inclusion throughout all marketing initiatives.
- Ensure external messaging aligns with strategic plan.
- Guide creative content development and innovation across social media, website, email, written pieces including program reports and presentations, and video content.
- Ensure creative excellence. Be the guardian of the CAC branding and style guidelines, drive creative processes and approvals for graphic designers, copywriters, and digital content creators.
- Lead brand development for new CAC initiatives; identify when brand refinement is needed for existing CAC programs; work with stakeholders to evolve our brand(s) to align with our position as the standard for architecture centers globally.
- Lead audience research initiatives and leverage data and competitive insights to optimize engagement touchpoints, content, and revenue opportunities. Work with digital advertising agency to implement testing and demonstrate trackable efforts towards audience development.
- Serve as liaison with contractors, including media, digital and PR agencies.
- Digital Media agency: Increase online visibility, manage, and execute digital advertising. Including: Optimize Google AdWords grant; propose strategic digital advertising budget, create display and/or retargeting ads, and paid social that will deliver healthy pipeline of prospects, and move donors through lifecycle optimizing engagement, retention, and revenue.
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Web Development Agency: Manage and own healthy digital presence across architecture.org and the CAC app. This includes regular maintenance, oversight of agency projects, providing oversight of digital team for website/app builds for new or evolving programs and technology, and other related tasks.
- Media Buying agency: Create revenue-generating promotions + campaigns to address specific strategic goals; Measures and reports performance of all digital marketing campaigns, evaluates against goals (ROI and KPIs) and interprets data into actionable next steps to improve and optimize channel performance.
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Cultivate strong external partnerships (industry members, non-profit/cultural/community organizations, business partners, etc) to develop grassroots portfolio, trade deals and promotional partnerships that reach new audiences.
- Work directly with cross-department teams to create communications materials to support their goals and projects.
- Collaborate with Development team to offer marketing benefits to corporate sponsors and other funders
Team Management:
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Develop and inspire direct reports to achieve established goals in alignment with the organization’s strategic plan; energize and bring teams together.
- Ensure direct reports work cross-functionally to promote programs, products, categories, or experiences from inception to launch.
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Formalize team and individual goals that can be readily measured and refined against org objectives. Set clear job descriptions for new, evolved roles.
- Onboard new and existing team members.
- Build a team culture of accountability, curiosity, always learning, transparency, and recognition.
- Ensure the Chief Brand Officer is updated on a timely basis on key initiatives and gives approval on all new creative/campaigns before launch.
- Establish cadence for 1:1, team meetings, and inter-departmental check-ins.
- Coach and course-correct team members as needed.
Skills and Qualifications
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B.A. or B.S. Degree in Marketing or related field.
Experience
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5-7 years of experience in marketing, acquisition campaigns, digital marketing, creative development and project management.
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Management experience for multi-faceted teams. Experience managing external agency partners and holding them accountable to deliverables and quality standards.
- Proven success in creating brand equity through a balance of consistency and innovation.
- Excellent writing and storytelling experience in a professional setting
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Systems experience with website CMS (Builder.io, Airtable); e-mail marketing platform (Klaviyo); CRM system (Tessitura, Netsuite), content scheduling (Sprout Social, etc.); Google Analytics, and Meta Business Suite.
- Working knowledge of Microsoft business software and Adobe Creative Suite products, including Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.
Skills
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Passion for Chicago’s architecture, the built environment and/or the architecture and design industry.
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Must be a highly organized self-starter with the ability to multitask and function effectively under pressure.
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Creatively passionate; able to present and defend ideas that contribute to organization goals.
- Comfortable with fast-paced, cross-functional working environment; highly resourceful and works gracefully under pressure with tight deadlines and multiple internal clients.
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Ability to establish and maintain effective relationships with staff, volunteers, and constituents.
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Very hands-on with the tactics; can-do approach and unwavering focus on business results.
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Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills.
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Must be willing to travel within the Chicagoland area.
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Periodic evening and weekend work is required to assist with on-site production of events.
Working Conditions
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Supplemental Information to Assist Organizations In Their Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
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http://www.niqca.org/documents/ADAPhysicalRequirementsChecklist.pdf
Physical Requirements
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Supplemental Information to Assist Organizations in Their Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
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http://www.niqca.org/documents/ADAPhysicalRequirementsChecklist.pdf
Direct Reports
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Sr. Graphic Designer
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Web Manager/UX Designer
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Digital Content Strategist
- Social Media Specialist
