Senior Manager, Creative Services & Creative Operations

Role Summary

Senior Manager, Creative Services & Creative Operations leads building, leading, and scaling a modern in-house creative agency. Partner with the US Pet Health and Farm Animal Marketing teams to deliver high-quality, high-velocity creative content production across all channels. Serve as a creative authority and systems architect, blending creative direction with operational excellence to transform how marketing content is planned, produced, and delivered, and build a future-ready team that effectively integrates AI-enabled tools into everyday creative production while operating within a regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Establish and evolve the creative vision, standards, and content frameworks across US Pet Health digital initiatives.
• Ensure consistent brand expression, storytelling quality, and customer experience across channels.
• Act as a senior creative authority, reviewing and guiding high-impact work and resolving creative challenges.
• Partner with brand and marketing leaders to align creative output with business objectives and demand generation strategies.

• Design and optimize scalable, end-to-end content production workflows (from intake and ideation through production, versioning, review, and distribution).
• Transition the organization from campaign-based execution to always-on, modular content production.
• Implement systems that enable content reuse, personalization, and lifecycle marketing.
• Identify bottlenecks and continuously improve speed-to-market, throughput, and quality.

• Own the creative and content operations technology roadmap, including DAM, CMS, workflow automation, and collaboration tools.
• Identify, pilot, and scale AI-enabled creative workflows (e.g., ideation, copy generation, design assistance, localization, versioning, QA).
• Establish governance, best practices, and guardrails for responsible AI use in partnership with legal, compliance, and IT teams.
• Evaluate new tools and vendors, build business cases, and lead adoption across the creative organization.

• Lead and grow a multidisciplinary in-house team including writers, designers, content strategists, and creative operations specialists.
• Define future-state skill sets and hiring profiles aligned with AI-enabled and system-driven creative production.
• Champion upskilling, training, and change management to help the team adopt new tools and ways of working.
• Foster a collaborative, innovative, and high-performance creative culture.

• Drive adoption of in-house agency services by clearly articulating value, capabilities, and service models.
• Build trusted partnerships with marketing, brand, lifecycle, and channel teams to understand needs and prioritize work.
• Manage demand intake, capacity planning, and prioritization across the organization.
• Deliver measurable improvements in efficiency, cost effectiveness, speed, and creative quality.

• Ensure all creative output meets brand standards, regulatory requirements, and internal quality benchmarks.
• Oversee quality assurance throughout the creative process and hold final accountability for delivered work.
• Establish and track KPIs related to delivery, quality, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Utilize project and workflow management tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence) to ensure transparency and accountability.

Qualifications

• Required: Education – Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or a related field.
• Required: Experience – 5+ years in creative, content, or digital marketing roles with proven leadership of in-house agencies, content studios, or creative operations teams; strong understanding of digital content creation, web development processes, and lifecycle marketing.
• Required: Top Skills – Creative direction and brand stewardship across digital channels, with experience designing and scaling content production workflows and operating models with agility and speed; a tech-first approach with demonstrated ability to integrate new technologies, including AI, into creative or marketing workflows; experience with marketing and creative operations technologies (e.g., DAM, CMS, MRM, workflow tools); entrepreneurial mindset with strong stakeholder management, leadership capabilities, and clear communication that simplifies complex concepts.
• Preferred: Experience working in regulated industries (healthcare, pharmaceutical, or life sciences).
• Preferred: Hands-on experience piloting or scaling generative AI tools for creative or content production.
• Preferred: Background in content strategy, modular content systems, or personalization at scale.
• Preferred: Experience driving operational efficiency while improving creative quality.

Additional Requirements

• Travel: 15-20%
• Location: Hybrid work environment; Indianapolis, IN (Global Elanco Headquarters)