At L.L.Bean, we believe the outdoors brings out the best in all of us. We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging and creating safe, inclusive spaces where everyone feels welcome—both here and Outside. We value individual differences and are dedicated to maintaining an inclusive work environment where everyone can bring the best of their experience and talents and truly thrive.
Position Purpose
At L.L.Bean, our mission is to inspire people to discover, experience, and connect with the outdoors. We are currently seeking a visionary Creative Director to lead the creative expression of one of America’s most iconic brands across all customer touchpoints.
The Creative Director is responsible for setting, driving, and owning L.L.Bean’s creative vision and creative strategy across product and brand marketing. This role exists to elevate the originality, relevance, and impact of L.L.Bean’s creative output, ensuring work is cohesive across photo, video, advertising, and social, unmistakably on‑brand, and deeply resonant with customers.
Reporting to the VP of Integrated Marketing, the Creative Director serves as the senior creative authority responsible for translating brand and business strategy into compelling creative systems and campaigns. This leader brings a strong point of view on storytelling, creative channel integration, and craft, balancing long‑term brand building with speed, momentum, and meaningful business impact.
Key Responsibilities
Creative Strategy & Vision
Own the creative strategy for how L.L.Bean shows up across photography, video, advertising, and social content, ensuring each medium plays a clear and intentional role in telling the brand story.
Translate brand strategy, customer insight, and business priorities into holistic creative platforms that work across channels while allowing each format to express itself authentically.
Establish and communicate a clear creative north star that guides all brand expression, from high‑impact campaigns to always‑on social storytelling.
Ensure creative work evolves with culture, platforms, and customer behavior while remaining true to L.L.Bean’s heritage and values.
Photo & Video Strategy
Set the creative vision and standards for photography and video, defining distinct visual approaches that elevate emotional connection, authenticity, and modern relevance.
Guide the balance between elevated product storytelling, lifestyle imagery, and brand narrative to ensure consistency without sameness.
Partner closely with production, studio, and external creators to push visual storytelling forward, embracing innovative formats, pacing, and techniques.
Ensure photo and video assets are conceived strategically to scale across campaigns, channels, and touchpoints.
Advertising & Campaign Creative
Lead creative strategy and direction for major brand and seasonal advertising campaigns, from concept through execution.
Champion big‑idea thinking that cuts through clutter and differentiates L.L.Bean in a competitive landscape.
Ensure advertising creative is insight‑driven, emotionally compelling, and clearly connected to both brand and business objectives.
Drive clarity and conviction in creative decision‑making to accelerate timelines and reduce unnecessary iteration.
Creative Direction
Provide senior creative leadership across art direction, design, copy, photography, video, and experiential execution.
Set and uphold a high bar for creative quality, taste, and originality, while encouraging thoughtful creative risk.
Translate strategic intent into clear creative direction that empowers teams, agencies, and partners.
AI-Driven Creative & Innovation
Demonstrated experience integrating AI into creative workflows to drive step-change improvements in speed, scale, and effectiveness across concepting, production, and content iteration.
Proven ability to identify, implement, and scale AI-enabled tools that enhance creative output, including ideation, asset generation, versioning, and optimization across channels.
Deep understanding of how to leverage AI-driven insights and creative intelligence to inform messaging, formats, and storytelling that improve performance and customer engagement.
Strong point of view on the role of AI in modern creative organizations, with the ability to balance automation with human-led craft to maintain originality, brand integrity, and differentiation.
Team Leadership & Creative Culture
Lead and inspire creative teams and leaders, fostering a culture of accountability, candor, collaboration, and creative ambition.
Encourage strong creative debate paired with decisive leadership to drive momentum and clarity.
Develop talent through coaching, real‑time feedback, and clear expectations.
Cross‑Functional Partnership & Influence
Serve as a trusted creative partner to marketing and cross functional senior leadership, articulating creative strategies, ideas, and trade‑offs with clarity and confidence.
Collaborate closely with key stakeholders across Marketing, Merchandising and other key functions, to ensure cohesive execution.
Success Looks Like
L.L.Bean delivers a cohesive, modern creative expression across photo, video, advertising, and social that strengthens brand equity.
Creative work shows greater originality, cultural relevance, and emotional resonance with customers.
Campaigns and content move faster with stronger conviction and fewer late‑stage pivots.
Social content feels more native, engaging, and brand‑defining rather than purely promotional.
Creative teams are aligned around a clear strategy, empowered to make decisions, and motivated to push ambitious ideas forward.
L.L.Bean earns increased attention, engagement, and advocacy through compelling storytelling and experiences.
Ensure creative work is both emotionally resonant for customers and commercially effective for the business.
Skills & Qualifications
10+ years of creative leadership experience, ideally within brand, retail, lifestyle, or purpose‑driven environments.
Proven experience setting creative strategy across photo, video, advertising, and social.
A strong portfolio demonstrating taste, originality, and customer‑first storytelling.
Experience leading internal creative teams and agencies with clarity, authority, and empathy.
Demonstrated success driving big‑idea campaigns, partnerships, and content ecosystems.
Strong creative judgment, point of view, and comfort making fast, high‑impact decisions.
Exceptional communication skills and ability to influence at the executive level.
Passion for the outdoors, authenticity, and L.L.Bean’s brand values.
L.L.Bean uses a market-based compensation approach. The anticipated starting base pay for this position is $180,000.00 - $215,000.00. Individual compensation may vary based on factors such as a candidate’s experience, qualifications, education, geographic location, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role.
If you care about the outdoors, joining L.L.Bean is a great way to feel good about what you do. Our benefits package makes a good thing even better, with programs and perks designed to support your health and financial goals. Plus, maintaining a healthy work-life balance and re-charging outside are all part of the plan.
If your experience looks a little different from what we've identified and you think you'd be great at this role, we'd love to learn more about you! At L.L.Bean, we believe the outdoors brings out the best in all of us. We strive to reflect this every day in our commitments to employees and partners and in our efforts to promote belonging.
