Creative Manager Jobs in Portland, ME (NOW HIRING)

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 onbrand, 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 longterm 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 highimpact campaigns to alwayson 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 bigidea thinking that cuts through clutter and differentiates L.L.Bean in a competitive landscape.

• Ensure advertising creative is insightdriven, emotionally compelling, and clearly connected to both brand and business objectives.

• Drive clarity and conviction in creative decisionmaking 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, realtime feedback, and clear expectations.

CrossFunctional Partnership & Influence

• Serve as a trusted creative partner to marketing and cross functional senior leadership, articulating creative strategies, ideas, and tradeoffs 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 latestage pivots.

• Social content feels more native, engaging, and branddefining 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 purposedriven environments.

• Proven experience setting creative strategy across photo, video, advertising, and social.

• A strong portfolio demonstrating taste, originality, and customerfirst storytelling.

• Experience leading internal creative teams and agencies with clarity, authority, and empathy.

• Demonstrated success driving bigidea campaigns, partnerships, and content ecosystems.

• Strong creative judgment, point of view, and comfort making fast, highimpact decisions.

• Exceptional communication skills and ability to influence at the executive level.

• Passion for the outdoors, authenticity, and L.L.Bean's brand values.

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.