The Agency is a new creative development team at msnbc.com dedicated to advancing our ad experiences. This new team is looking for a Director.
The ideal qualifications to lead the team include:
- A strong vision for where online advertising is headed, ideally from working with or for ad agencies.
- A proven advocate and facilitator between business needs and user experience who can champion compromise with a positive tone and build relationships with agencies, third party vendors and Microsoft sales groups.
- An adept hands-on manager who can juggle priorities while challenging staff to grow their responsibilities.
- An expert ad strategist, web designer, developer and/or producer with a portfolio of innovative work who's willing to lead by example.
Responsibilities include:
Visionary: Imagine new and unique advertising experiences to support our content. Think like an ad agency and then balance those ideas with our business needs and editorial sensibilities. Look beyond one-time deals toward scalable new models. Show these ideas internally and externally through compelling visual presentations.
Advocate & facilitator: Collaborate with other Creative Dev teams focused on storytelling, R&D and site structure to better monetize their work. Become a virtual member of the sales and business development departments, advocating the strategic value of cohesive user experiences. Forge strong relationships with ad agencies, third party vendors and MS ad services (DART, Atlas, Ad Expert, etc) to drive scalable solutions. Expect the occasional conflict between the content and business sides. Always stay positive and pursue compromises that ultimately result in better experiences.
Manager: Keep a detailed awareness of each project in the Agency team's portfolio and its status at all times. Be able to shift priorities quickly. Set the vision and tone for the team and then delegate. Challenge direct reports to take on increasing responsibilities on projects. Coach them to develop new skills and expose them to all aspects of our business.
Contributor: All Creative Dev managers must be highly experienced in producing, designing and/or developing. Expect to actively contribute to projects, set standards for the quality of work and answer detailed questions on behalf of the team.
Required Skills:
- BA/BS degree or equivalent in visual communication, design, advertising, marketing or computer science.
- 7+ years working in online design, production or content.
- 7+ years working with or for advertising agencies, third party ad vendors and/or Microsoft ad platforms.
- 4+ years in a management role
- Mastery online ad models and agency landscape. Demonstrated hands-on experience with web technologies including HTML, CSS, Javascript and Flash. Expert-level user interface design and usability. Strong conceptual communication skills for presenting ideas. Experienced with complex content management systems.
