AVP, Marketing & Creative Services

The Associate Vice President (AVP) of Marketing & Creative Services leads the development and execution of strategic marketing initiatives that enhance brand awareness, drive student recruitment and retention, and support institutional priorities.

The AVP manages three teams: marketing and brand strategy, creative services and marketing operations. Aligned with these functions, this leader oversees integrated brand campaigns, paid advertising strategy, creative content development, project management and data/insights for the department, ensuring alignment with academic affairs and student affairs to increase the prospective student pipeline.

As a member of the college’s expanded leadership council, this individual will collaborate with communications leadership, creative services, and the digital experience team, as well as departments all across the college to ensure consistent and compelling brand positioning across all channels.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. People leadership: Working people leader overseeing layered team of professionals across marketing/brand management, creative services and marketing operations/project management. Fosters a culture of creativity, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making. Supervises and leads assigned staff by setting goals, assigning tasks, managing work schedules and workloads, evaluating performance, and making employment decisions, including hiring and termination.

2. Marketing and brand strategy: Responsible for developing and executing data-driven integrated marketing strategies that strengthen brand positioning, drive student (customer) acquisition and enhance retention. Create themes and concepts, identifying target audiences and media selection, coordinating with other functions within communications, digital experience, academic affairs and student affairs.

3. Brand management: Define and protect brand identity, voice, and visual guidelines across all channels and touchpoints.

4. Campaign oversight: Lead the planning, execution and optimization of multichannel campaigns (digital, social, out-of-home, broadcast, radio, print, sponsorships, events). Oversee media placement strategy for the college, ensuring alignment with recruitment, admissions, and enrollment goals.

5. Budget and ROI management: Oversee paid marketing budgets, track performance metrics, and ensure measurable returns on investment. Maximizes budget to drive impact and conversion. Routinely report insights to optimize campaign performance and conversion rates.

6. Creative content strategies: Works with the director of creative services to direct the creative process for marketing; seizes opportunities to extend the brand integration process to meet the needs of a wide range of audiences and evolving communications and marketing environment.

7. Project management: Oversee marketing operations and project management office, ensuring efficient workflow and cross-departmental collaboration. Develop project management processes to optimize productivity, streamline approvals, track marketing deliverables.

8. Vendor management: Manage external marketing agencies and vendors, including media buyers, advertising firms, and creative partners. Develop and maintain relationships with key agency partners, ensuring strategic alignment and cost efficiency. Coordinate contract negotiations, budget management, and performance tracking for outsourced marketing services.

9. Cross-departmental collaboration: Work closely with communications, creative services, and the digital experience team to ensure consistency in messaging and branding across all platforms. Serves as advisor and partner with academic affairs and student affairs, collaborating and aligning on prioritization of narratives, programs and audiences to build marketing plans that support the college’s strategic priorities.

10. Editorial planning: Ensure teams participate in, share information for and maintain a cross-functional editorial calendar to drive coordination of message sharing, audiences, and objectives.

11. Overall: Create an environment in marketing where high-quality creative work is valued and celebrated.

12. Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Requirements and Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited institution in Marketing, Journalism, Communications or related field.
10+ years of experience in strategic marketing management and staff management role.
Demonstrated people leadership experience
Demonstrated paid advertising and budget management experience.

Additional Information

Reporting Relationships:

Direction Received: Reports to Vice President of Communications, Advancement and External Engagement

Direction Given: Responsible for direct supervision as a first-line supervisor over professional and administrative support staff, including three people leaders and their direct reports.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Worker Characteristics:

Proficient in brand creation and management, including integrated brand campaigns across all mediums – digital, social, print, out-of-home, broadcast and more.
Strong expertise in brand marketing, paid media strategy, and digital marketing.
Knowledge of media buying and placement, and advertising environment.
Experience managing and optimizing marketing budgets.
Excellent communications and interpersonal skills.
Excellent project management skills.
Strong leadership and supervisory skills, including leading people leaders. Experience leading creative teams and overseeing content development across multiple platforms.
Client relationship building and management skills
Strong knowledge of marketing workflow tools, project management software, and analytics platforms (e.g., Monday.com, Trello, Asana).
Proven ability to vendors, contractors and agency relationships.
Strong analytical skills with the ability to measure and optimize marketing campaign performance.

Working Conditions:

In-office working environment during typical operating hours for college. Some minor lifting of equipment. Some light walking between college buildings.
Some travel between campuses.
Occasional after-hours work when supporting crisis situations or large-scale production shoots.

Salary:

$120,000.00 – $145,000.00 Annually

Benefits:

Central Piedmont is happy offer a comprehensive and affordable benefits package to full-time employees including: