Creative Director

Wallop is an established hospitality marketing agency with a portfolio that includes some of the world’s most beloved travel and hotel brands.  After 20 years, Wallop is a global player, with vaunted expertise in digital strategy, websites, direct booking, sales insights, and other key elements of hospitality marketing systems. 

Today, Wallop is moving toward a more mature and complete creative agency offering. The goal is to foster more cohesive, many-layered client relationships – and lean into brand strategy and creative as part of this. Our IP, ConvergeTMF, gives us deeper evidence-based insight into guest motivations, guiding decisions across every category of our work.  

We have an existing brand strategy, creative practice, and team. The time has come to step it up into a more strident and holistic offering. That’s where our new Creative Director comes in.

This is a rare leadership opportunity to build your own practice, process, team dynamic, and vision from the ground up – in an established agency with enviable clients and strong existing systems. It’s a chance to write a new story, and command your own division as it blooms. 

We’re looking for a Creative Director to take Wallop to a new level, with a focus on:

• Evolving our creative practice (to reliably produce award-winning, high-performing brands that generate impact across our workstreams)
• Refining Wallop’s brand (to strengthen positioning, and reflect the cohesive integration of tech + creative insight)
• Fostering team growth (to cultivate a confident and self-reliant team of creative individuals)

What you’d do: 

• Work with our creative teams (currently two designers) to foster best practices and cultivate individual and team growth
• Derive complete brand platforms rooted in strategic insights, and built for digital channels and deliverables
• Establish a creative process with ownable sequence, framing, and signature Wallop outputs
• Spin those brand platforms into campaigns, websites, films, F&B brands, and other manifestations across the hotel brand ecosystem

• Integrate that creative process with Wallop’s evolving IP, ConvergeTMF, a ‘traveller motivation framework’ that uses evidence-based insights on audience drives to guide more resonant work across Wallop’s offering
• Establish repeatable Wallop processes and operational standards around brand and creative execution
• Closely interface with client services, digital strategy, web development, film, and other cross-functional teams – your creative work would interlock with technical platforms that test its effectiveness, prove its value, and refine and sharpen the work over time
• Build client relationships with a focus on holistic growth and continuity of thought across their marketing ecosystem
• Actively seek and cultivate new client relationships that fit the Wallop vision
• Steer an ongoing expression of Wallop’s own brand and positioning to reflect the company’s move toward a more cohesive holistic offering, higher-value collaborative scopes, and a stronger and more artful aesthetic profile

This is an opportunity to build your vision, your team, and your process around your own ideals – a fresh start, with clear market opportunities, and a long path of growth ahead. 

To be successful in this role, you will be an:

• An established CD, ACD, or Senior AD with notable agency experience (5-10 years)
• Accomplished, with big-name clients in your portfolio (ideally, you’ve worked in the travel and hospitality space, but not mandatory)
• Experienced building structured creative process and fostering team growth
• Conversant in digital execution, with a strong portfolio demonstrating your grasp of the opportunities and constraints of digital channels
• Excellent at building rapport and cultivating client relationships 
• A clear communicator who can explain complex ideas simply
• Able to hold your own in a call or team meeting (you have strong opinions) 
• Warm and empowering in your approach to team members and client relationships
• An ardent proponent of brand strategy; you see its crucial importance – but also know that aesthetic impact has its own power, beyond rationales 
• Fascinated by the storytelling and cultural potential in travel and hospitality, and already have a vision for how brands in the space could evolve

Personal Notes:

• You are smart, curious, and eager to learn
• You like people, and people like you
• You’re team-oriented but equally happy to work on solo projects
• You enjoy problem-solving and finding solutions 
• Ideally based in Vancouver

In-Person Attendance Expectations

• Attend Company town halls and culture-building events as scheduled.
• Participate in mandatory team or department meetings requiring in-person presence.
• Attend executive off-sites, town halls, and strategy meetings in person.
• Reasonable notice will be provided for all required in-person events.
• Travel required for such events will be covered by Wallop in accordance with Company policy.

At Wallop, we believe that diversity is a strength and a core value. We are committed to creating a more inclusive workplace and actively encourage applicants from underrepresented groups, including LGBTQ and BIPOC. We are dedicated to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates. If you require any accommodations, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

About us

If you have a passion for travel, you’ve landed in the right place. We’re building a team to become the world's leading digital agency for experiential travel, unique properties, and one-of-a-kind hospitality brands. Our ideal employees have an interest in and a desire to develop expertise around the niche we operate in. You’ll work with some of the most unique luxury travel products and destinations in the world. Your job will be to deliver digital services which bring these experiences to life. 

While Wallop has moved to remote working, the responsibilities of this position required applicants to be local to our Vancouver office. For those who are keen to meet in real life, our WeWork office is a great place to connect and collaborate with colleagues.

Working at Wallop

• Salary range of $130,000 - $160,000
• 20 days of vacation (4 weeks) to start
• Flexible working hours and days 
• Ability to work remotely or from our Vancouver office
• Extended health and medical benefits
• Extended Christmas holidays
• Profit share program - when we win as a company, you win as well
• Annual health and wellness spending account (for use by you and your family)
• $30 home office stipend per pay period
• $1000 one-time home office set up
• Provided Macbook Pro for work use
• Extended Easter weekend (Easter Monday & Easter Friday)
• Summer company beach day and winter holiday party
• Ability to work from another country to extend a vacation or time in your home country
• Parental leave salary top-up during your first month’s leave