Creative Services Manager

JOB TITLE: Creative Services Manager

LOCATION: Abu Dhabi/Dubai

CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, full-time

REPORTING TO: General Manager

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

This role exists to lead Acorn Strategy’s Creative Studio with bold, strategic thinking and hands-on execution.

The Creative Services Manager is responsible for shaping brand and creative strategies in collaboration with the General Manager and Group Account Director, while also overseeing the development of campaign concepts, brand identities, applications, guidelines, and collateral. In this role you will provide creative leadership across Acorn’s core services, from campaign asset development and motion graphics to copywriting and design.

You are the custodian of quality control, ensuring all creative outputs meet world-class standards. As both strategist and doer, you delegate effectively to drive operational efficiency but are also ready to step in and deliver work directly when needed.

This role requires bilingual expertise (Arabic and English), a strong track record with GCC and global brands, and commercial acumen to ensure projects are both creatively exceptional and commercially sound.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Brand & Creative Strategy

• Partner with Acorn’s Strategy team and Group Account Director to craft compelling brand and creative strategies.
• Lead conceptualisation of integrated campaigns, from insight-driven ideas through to execution, across digital, social, advertising, and events.
• Provide strategic creative direction for brand identity creation, applications, and guidelines, ensuring clarity and consistency across all touchpoints.
• Require minimal input from client servicing by proactively developing independent, insight-led creative solutions.

Creative Studio Leadership & Service Enhancement

• Lead the Creative Studio, overseeing design, copywriting, and motion graphics, while reviewing all ongoing work and providing real-time feedback.
• Set quality standards across the studio, ensuring deliverables meet the highest benchmarks of creativity and strategic alignment.
• Guide and mentor team members to enhance skills, expand responsibilities, and take on leadership opportunities.
• Identify capability gaps and lead recruitment of new talent to strengthen the studio.
• Drive a culture of continuous learning, keeping the team in tune with global trends, award-winning practices, and emerging tools.

Creative Direction Across Deliverables

• Oversee and guide the animation and motion graphics team, providing creative direction and ensuring outputs align with campaign and brand objectives.
• Lead design and production of campaign assets and brand collateral, ensuring outputs are visually compelling, strategically aligned, and commercially viable.
• Maintain oversight of all studio work, balancing delegation with hands-on execution when deadlines or priorities require.

Tools, Subscriptions & Resource Management

• Act as custodian of creative tools, software subscriptions, and memberships, ensuring timely renewals and assessing emerging technologies for adoption.
• Manage studio resources effectively, ensuring accurate allocation of time, tools, and costs across projects.
• Monitor industry-standard rates and ensure deliverables are scoped appropriately for profitability.

Proactive Leadership & Operational Efficiency

• Anticipate challenges and propose innovative operational solutions to improve efficiency.
• Traffic management duties to assign tasks, balance workloads, and manage multiple priorities.
• Step in personally when needed to deliver high-quality work during urgent or peak periods, setting an example of proactive leadership.

Copywriting & Storytelling

• Provide direction and frameworks for copywriters, crafting headlines, taglines, and storytelling angles that strengthen campaign narratives.
• Ensure messaging resonates with both global and Arabic-first audiences, balancing cultural nuance with international appeal.

Visual Design & Creative Excellence

• Bring expert proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, AI generative tools, storyboarding, and relevant video editing software.
• Set design standards across the studio, ensuring creativity and consistency across all outputs.
• Contribute directly to design and production when needed to support deadlines or elevate key deliverables.

Commercial Acumen & Business Growth

• Demonstrate strong understanding of costing creative projects, resource allocation, margins, and profitability.
• Support business growth by contributing to pitches, scoping creative deliverables accurately, and optimising resource use.
• Identify opportunities to expand Acorn’s creative service offering, ensuring it evolves with client and market needs.

WHAT YOU WILL GET IN RETURN

• Access to the Employee Assistance Program
• Employee Recognition Program
• Internal training opportunities to advance career development

ABOUT ACORN STRATEGY

Voted Large Agency of the Year and winner of multiple international awards, Acorn Strategy is a full-service communications consultancy with offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Melbourne, Perth, and London, and an ever-expanding client roster. We are an integrated marketing, public relations, and digital consultancy that delivers sharp, agile, and creative strategies to help grow our clients’ business.

OUR CULTURE

We understand that our success depends on recruiting and retaining the highest quality individuals. We have created an environment for people to grow and learn through a culture that empowers creativity, innovation, and professionalism. The core values we live by are collaboration, agility, bravery, curiosity, and growth.

OUR PEOPLE

Over the years we have come to realise that although each of our team members are unique, we each share a series of personal traits that have successfully linked us culturally as a team and as an agency at large.

ACORN STRATEGY is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are dedicated to creating and building a respectful and empowering environment. We aim to create an inclusive workplace that supports our diversity and increases our potential to produce work that better represents and resonates with the world around us.