Associate Creative Director Design Jobs in Maryland

At RP3, we believe wildly original ideas are the most powerful force in marketing.

The Creative Director is responsible for making those ideas the standard—not the exception.

With a copywriter’s instinct for language, voice, and story, this leader develops breakthrough ideas that solve business challenges, build brands, earn attention, and drive measurable results. They lead multidisciplinary teams while remaining a maker. They are able to shape the line, script, manifesto, narrative, or presentation that unlocks the work.

The ideal candidate is an exceptional conceptual thinker, hands-on creative leader, mentor, and business partner. They know how to turn strategy, audience insight, and culture into ideas people care about—and how to help teams carry those ideas through every channel with craft and consistency.

As a steward of RP3’s creative culture, the Creative Director combines high standards with generous leadership. They build client trust, develop talent, contribute to agency growth, and use AI and emerging tools deliberately to expand possibilities without outsourcing taste, judgment, or accountability.

What Success Looks Like

• Leads teams to create original, strategically grounded campaign platforms that drive business results.

• Establishes and maintains a high bar for concept, craft, and cohesion across accounts and disciplines.

• Builds trusted client relationships and serves as a persuasive strategic and creative partner.

• Creates an environment where rigorous thinking, collaboration, experimentation, and healthy debate thrive.

• Develops future creative leaders while staying close enough to the work to make it better.

• Balances creative ambition with audience needs, business objectives, budgets, timelines, and production realities.

• Contributes to agency growth through new business, thought leadership, and a visible point of view on creativity.

• Builds responsible AI practices that accelerate exploration and iteration while protecting client confidentiality, intellectual property, accuracy, and brand integrity.

• Produces work that strengthens RP3’s creative reputation and is worthy of industry recognition.

What You'll Do

Define Creative Vision

• Translate brand strategy, audience insight, and cultural context into clear creative territories and integrated campaign platforms.

• Set a distinctive creative point of view for brands and ensure it can stretch across paid, owned, earned, social, experiential, and emerging channels.

• Guide teams beyond the first expected answer toward ideas that are original, useful, and emotionally resonant.

• Help shape the long-term creative vision, standards, and capabilities of the agency.

Lead Concept and Verbal Excellence

• Lead creative development from brief through production across multiple accounts, teams, and workstreams.

• Review, edit, and elevate concepts and copy—from campaign platforms, naming, and voice systems to headlines, scripts, social, digital experiences, and long-form storytelling.

• Protect a clear brand voice and conceptual throughline as ideas adapt across channels, formats, audiences, and moments.

• Partner with strategy, account leadership, media, production, technology, and project management to make ambitious ideas real.

Inspire and Develop Talent

• Mentor Associate Creative Directors, Senior Art Directors, Senior Copywriters, and emerging creative leaders.

• Build high-performing teams through clear expectations, regular feedback, coaching, and opportunities to grow.

• Help identify, recruit, onboard, and retain exceptional creative talent and trusted external partners.

• Model curiosity, accountability, resilience, and respect—especially when timelines are tight and the work is still evolving.

Build Client Confidence

• Serve as a senior creative advisor who understands the client’s business, brand, audience, and competitive landscape.

• Frame, present, and sell ideas with a compelling narrative, strategic rationale, and confidence about how they will come to life.

• Navigate feedback and complex stakeholder dynamics while protecting the idea, improving the work, and building trust.

• Guide clients through creative risk, production choices, and new technologies with clarity and sound judgment.

Drive Agency Growth

• Lead and contribute to pitches, organic growth opportunities, agency marketing, awards submissions, and thought leadership.

• Identify shifts in culture, consumer behavior, platforms, production, and technology that can create an advantage for clients and RP3.

• Help evolve RP3’s creative offerings, processes, partnerships, and reputation in ways that support sustainable growth.

• Represent the agency with credibility in client rooms, industry forums, awards programs, and professional networks.

Champion Responsible Innovation

• Set a practical vision for using AI to support research synthesis, divergent concepting, message exploration, voice prototyping, copy variations, and presentation development.

• Teach teams to prompt with strategic intent, interrogate generic output, verify facts and claims, and rewrite until every word feels specific, human, and on brand.

• Establish review standards for accuracy, originality, bias, disclosure, brand safety, client confidentiality, intellectual property, and usage rights.

• Know when AI adds value, when traditional craft or production is the stronger choice, and how to distinguish exploratory comps from approved final assets.

Why RP3?

Here's what we offer:

• Hybrid flexibility - RP3 is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, so if you are DMV-based, that is definitely a bonus — but not a barrier. If you can get here by train, plane, or automobile, you are in the running. We want the right person, wherever they are.
• A culture built on curiosity, kindness, accountability, and wildly original thinking
• Company-paid health, life, short-term disability, and long-term disability insurance
• Employee-paid dental and vision plans
• 401(k) with immediate employer match
• Inclusive, world-class family leave policy
• Generous PTO - including Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Paid Holidays, Personal Time, and Karma Days
• Summer Fridays - we shut down at 2 PM every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day
• Voluntary benefits including commuter benefits and pet insurance

Compensation

Salary Range: 150,000 - 175,000 Annual DOE

We believe in paying people fairly and transparently. Final compensation will reflect individual experience, qualifications, and internal equity considerations

Equal Opportunity Employer

RP3 is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team that reflects the clients and communities we serve. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. Different perspectives make better work.

**This job is not available in CA or NYC. Must be located in Central or Eastern Timezone. Must be located in the US.

• A portfolio demonstrating breakthrough conceptual thinking, exceptional copy and storytelling craft, creative leadership, and impactful integrated campaigns.

• 10+ years of agency or integrated marketing experience, including meaningful creative leadership responsibility.

• A track record of leading multidisciplinary teams, major client relationships, and integrated work from brief through production.

• Deep expertise in copywriting, brand voice, campaign platforms, scripts, naming, narrative, and the verbal side of creative strategy—paired with strong visual judgment.

• Demonstrated success creating work that earns attention, builds brands, and drives measurable business results.

• Experience mentoring senior talent, developing creative leaders, and raising the quality of a department—not only individual assignments.

• Strong understanding of how creative strategy, craft, channels, production, and measurement work together.

• Curiosity about culture, technology, platforms, and evolving audience behavior, paired with the judgment to separate signal from novelty.

• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted writing and research tools to expand exploration and speed iteration, with disciplined editorial judgment and responsible-use practices.

• Exceptional communication, collaboration, presentation, prioritization, and leadership skills.

The RP3 Difference

The best copy-led Creative Directors at RP3 are equal parts visionary, editor, mentor, strategist, and maker. They find the sharp human truth, articulate the idea so others can see it, and partner closely with art and design leaders to build a complete creative world. They know the difference between more words and the right words—and between faster output and better thinking.

They build trust. They elevate talent. They push creative boundaries. And they create the conditions where wildly original ideas can thrive.

Because at RP3, creativity isn’t just what we do. It’s how we create growth.

Position and Hours

This is a full-time position requiring strong leadership, accountability, and adaptability. Occasional flexibility may be required to support agency and client needs.