{"id":2180802,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ds-smith-creative-director","title":"Creative Director","company":{"id":1795137,"name":"DS Smith","domain":"dssmith.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/dssmith-com","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":82,"open_postings":33,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.727,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":41,"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"}},"role":"Marketing","role_family":"Marketing","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":76000,"max_usd":184000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_cell","sample_n":37},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-09T14:55:56Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-13T00:38:31Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"Creative Director - POS & Shopper Marketing\nAbout the Role\nWe're looking for an exceptional Creative Director for a global role defining the vision, capability and operating model of our Central Design Studio. Combining creative leadership, organisational development and commercial acumen, this role will build the teams, technology and ways of working needed to deliver outstanding creative work across global priorities, including POS, retail activation and shopper marketing programmes.\nWorking closely with business leaders and major global FMCG clients, you'll act as a strategic creative leader and trusted advisor. You'll shape the Studio's long-term direction, lead its Studio Management and Project Management functions, and deploy creative resources against the highest-value global priorities. You'll also translate complex business challenges into clear creative opportunities and compelling strategic recommendations for clients.\nThis is a high-impact leadership opportunity to build future capability, organisational structure and talent plans; accelerate the adoption of AI, automation and emerging creative technologies; and create a culture that balances creative excellence, operational rigour and commercial performance. As an integral contributor to pitch responses, you'll help shape and articulate our company value proposition and broader strategy, ensuring our creative offer is distinctive, relevant and commercially compelling.\nKey Responsibilities Include:\nSetting the creative vision and standards across global POS and retail marketing programmes.\nTranslating consumer behaviour, category dynamics and retail insights into clear creative strategies that create measurable impact.\nChallenging briefs to uncover the underlying audience need and conversion opportunity.\nChampioning design excellence, innovation and continuous improvement across the creative function.\nLeading creative development across POS, retail activation, merchandising and branded environments.\nEnsuring solutions balance customer engagement, brand objectives, sustainability, manufacturability and commercial performance.\nActing as a trusted strategic advisor to global brand, marketing and senior client stakeholders.\nPresenting and defending creative recommendations through compelling storytelling and strategic rationale.\nBuilding, mentoring and inspiring high-performing multidisciplinary creative teams.\nDefining the long-term vision, capability roadmap and operating model for the Central Design Studio.\nDriving the adoption of AI, automation and emerging creative technologies to enhance innovation, quality and efficiency.\nEstablishing performance measures across delivery excellence, talent development, utilisation and client satisfaction.\nThis role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of global retail marketing and design, combining strategic leadership with hands-on creative impact in a dynamic international business.\nAbout You\nYou're a retail-focused creative leader with the ability to move seamlessly between strategy, creative direction, execution and senior stakeholder engagement. You understand that exceptional retail design is about solving both customer and business challenges through creativity and insight.\nWe're looking for:\nHighly experienced in senior creative leadership roles within retail marketing, retail design, brand activation or POS environments.\nDeep expertise in consumer strategy and behaviour, path-to-purchase and retail environments.\nExperience developing POS and retail activation solutions for major FMCG or consumer brands across global or multi-market programmes.\nA strong portfolio showcasing strategic thinking, creative leadership and design excellence.\nProven success leading and developing multidisciplinary creative teams.\nStrong stakeholder management skills with the confidence to influence and challenge senior client stakeholders.\nCommercial understanding of retail production, implementation and activation.\nKnowledge of sustainability, emerging retail technologies and AI-enabled creative development.\nExperience working across multicultural teams and international markets.\nAbout Us\nTMS Global is a leading subsidiary of DS Smith International Paper, a renowned global packaging services company. Operating across 97 global markets, TMS Global specializes in retail display, print, and packaging outsourcing. Our TMS family consists of just over 300 people who are spread internationally across Europe, AMEA and the Americas.\n\"To fulfil our purpose of redefining packaging for a changing world, we aim to build a diverse, motivated and engaged workforce. Our goal is to create a culture of inclusion where everyone is treated fairly, differences are valued and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.\nOur people come from diverse backgrounds, bring different perspectives, ideas and experiences to generate unique solutions focused on present and future sustainability challenges. We welcome all candidates to apply, even those not meeting all criteria.\"\n#LI-CP","description_format":"text","description_chars":5045,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Manufacturing","Packaging & Labeling","Packaging Design"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-09T14:55:56Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":41,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/ds-smith-creative-director","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/ds-smith-creative-director.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-13T05:37:07Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8579,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1795137},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1795137"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fds-smith-creative-director"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fds-smith-creative-director"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fds-smith-creative-director"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/ds-smith-creative-director\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fds-smith-creative-director"}]}