As a company begins to grow, evolve, and even change its direction there can come a time where you need to start hiring for positions you didn’t need to fill before. A creative director is one of those positions where people don’t always hire them from the start, but the position holds a lot of merit and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Here’s a closer look at what exactly a creative director does, which businesses benefit from hiring one, and if your company may in fact need one.

What is a Creative Director?

How can you tell if you need a creative director if you aren’t sure what the position entails? Basically this is the person who is in charge of your design department. This means they manage everything, from the photographers and creative staff, to the printer and vendor that are working on each individual project. The creative director ensures that the project flows smoothly and stays on focus.

The creative director also works as the liaison between the staff working on the project and the client or executives, or whoever has asked for the project to be done. Because they are in a managing position they also tend to have the final say when it comes to creative decisions.

Which Businesses Use a Creative Director?

The most typically place you’ll find a creative director is in the PR industry. Most ad agencies tend to have a creative director in order to oversee the many different projects that flow through the business. It allows the executives to focus on other things, and it gives the clients that reassurance that there is someone in charge.

Now you may think that a creative director is only necessary at large ad agencies, and because yours is still small it’s not necessary. This isn’t true. Any sized PR or ad agency can benefit from a creative director. It doesn’t matter if that director is just managing a dozen projects or hundreds; it’s always a good idea to have someone overseeing the various projects from all vantage points.

Where a creative director can really help out is in taking an ad campaign or idea that doesn’t seem to hit the mark, as they can add their own spin to better it. Remember, these are creative individuals as well. They would have had to start in the entry level positions and work their way up, which means they have had many years’ worth of experience in putting together effective campaigns with creative tools. In fact this is where your creative director can really shine by helping to shape all of your campaigns.

Think About the Future

As you consider hiring a creative director it’s important to think about the future of not just your own business, but the landscape in general. With today’s push to offer everything online and in a mobile fashion, your creative director needs to be able to work with these trends and provide clients with content that will resonate with today’s types of people. While you don’t necessarily need a separate online creative director, you do need one that is comfortable in this medium.