Creative Director - Brand Narrative

In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames began a film with a picnic beside Chicago’s lakefront. Over the next nine minutes, Powers of Ten traveled out toward distant galaxies and back into the microscopic world inside a human hand. An enormous subject became a journey you could follow, built around a simple change in perspective. Images, language, movement, and sound brought the idea to life together. That’s the kind of creative thinking we’re looking for at Mercury: finding a compelling idea inside something complex, then bringing together the people and crafts that make it unforgettable. We’re looking for a Creative Director to build and lead Brand Narrative , a new team within Brand Creative. You’ll turn company strategy, product truths, customer insight, and cultural observations into original concepts for our most important launches, campaigns, and brand moments. You’ll originate ideas yourself and stay closely involved as they become finished work. Your background might be in art direction, design, or copywriting. What matters is your ability to develop exceptional concepts, recognize the best idea wherever it comes from, and bring the whole creative studio together to make it real. Whatever your starting discipline, you’ll bring deep experience in film-led storytelling. You’ll lead Brand Narrative in close creative partnership with your peers leading Brand Design and Writing. Together, you’ll shape concepts, language, and visual expression from the beginning, bringing distinct perspectives and shared ownership to the work. You’ll contribute strong ideas of your own, invite others to challenge and improve them, and build on theirs. This is a role for someone who enjoys making work together, not developing ideas in isolation and handing them off. You’ll also shape what Brand Narrative becomes. That means building its culture, developing its people, and establishing ways of working that make the entire studio more creatively ambitious. The opportunity is to make great work while building a team that can keep making it. What you’ll do In your first year, your focus will be roughly 70% leading creative development for our highest-priority launches and campaigns, and 30% building the Brand Narrative function. Originate and lead big creative ideas. Partner with Product Marketing and Brand Marketing on the brief, then turn the agreed audience, opportunity, and product proof into original creative concepts. Develop ideas that can take distinctive forms across film, social, out-of-home, digital, experiences, and partnerships. Bring ambitious concepts to life with your creative peers and the full studio. Work side by side with the Brand Design and Writing leads and their teams from the earliest explorations through delivery. Develop ideas together, exchange thoughtful critique, and make creative choices that draw on each discipline’s expertise. Stay hands-on, contribute through your own craft, and partner closely with Motion and Production throughout. For film, remain closely involved through scripts, visual development, production, and the final edit. Build audience and distribution thinking into the idea. Shape concepts around how people will discover, watch, and share the work. Work with marketing partners to consider channels and viewing contexts from the beginning, so the work belongs where people encounter it rather than simply being resized to fit. Push beyond the first good answer, and learn quickly. Lead thoughtful concept development and critique. Use rough scripts, prototypes, and AI tools to test ideas quickly, learn, and move the strongest work forward. Know when to keep exploring and when to commit, then protect what makes an idea interesting through feedback and production. Find opportunities before a brief arrives. Bring curiosity about Mercury’s products, customers, and the wider world. Develop proactive ideas and cultural opportunities that give the brand something meaningful to say or do. Help decide where creative ambition matters most. Partner early with Product Marketing, Brand Marketing, Product Design, Comms, and Insights. Help identify which moments deserve our largest creative investment, present recommendations to senior leadership, and use results from marketing and insights partners to inform what comes next. Build and lead Brand Narrative. Define the team’s purpose, priorities, creative standards, and ways of working. Help hire and develop the team, shaping its structure and capabilities. Set clear expectations, and coach people to grow their judgment and conceptual strength. Create a culture where the best idea wins. Make room for experimentation, honest feedback, and contributions across disciplines. Lead with generosity and conviction, share ownership of the work, and help people challenge one another without making creativity a competition for credit. Build practices that strengthen the work. Establish a clear path from insight and an agreed brief to concept and execution, with useful critique and close collaboration throughout. Develop relationships with external creatives and agencies who can add a distinctive perspective or capability when needed. What you’ll bring A strong creative foundation in art direction, design, or copywriting. Your portfolio shows original concepts developed into ambitious, well-crafted work across multiple formats. You can explain what you contributed, how the idea evolved, and how collaboration made it better. Deep film experience. You’ve developed film-led ideas from concept through production, with strong instincts for story, scripts, performance, pacing, and sound. You understand how these choices work together to make an audience feel something, not just make a film look good. A track record of deep creative collaboration with design and writing peers. You’ve led ambitious multidisciplinary work from concept through production by building trusted partnerships. You bring a clear point of view, listen closely, work through creative disagreements constructively, and recognize when someone else’s approach makes the work stronger. You can show how your collaborators shaped the outcome, not just what you personally originated. Strong taste, cultural awareness, and product curiosity. You can get close to a complex business or product, find the human truth within it, and turn that understanding into something clear, surprising, and memorable. Experience developing creative people and shaping how a team works. You give specific, useful feedback, set a high bar with care, and create an environment where people can take creative risks. You’re excited to build a new function, including the everyday practices that give it a culture. Clear communication and sound judgment. You can rally people around an ambitious concept, explain why it deserves investment, and navigate competing perspectives without losing the idea. You take ownership in ambiguous situations and balance creative ambition with the need to move work forward. What success looks like A year in, you’ll have led major launches and film-led campaigns from original concept through finished work, with Brand Design and Writing as creative partners from the beginning. The studio’s disciplines will have shaped the work together, with audience and distribution informing the creative approach. Brand Narrative will have a clear identity, shared creative standards, and working practices that help people test and develop stronger ideas together. Alongside planned launches, you’ll have established a pipeline of proactive opportunities that gives Mercury more ways to express its product ambition with originality and cultural relevance. Please include a portfolio featuring film-led work and broader campaign concepts. We’d love to understand your role in developing the ideas, the choices you made through production, and how you brought the work to life with others. Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role. #LI-KP1 Total Rewards The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options/RSUs), and benefits. Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry. New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers. Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following : US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $189,400 — $236,700 USD US employees outside of New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $170,400 — $213,000 USD Canadian employees (any location): $179,000 — $223,700 CAD