WANTED: Director of Marketing & Communications

Our Ideal Candidate

The Director will play a key role leading our growing MarCom team and will provide strategic marketing and communications oversight on client accounts. This role is a blend of developing high-level strategy that achieves a client’s marketing and communications needs and executing the day-to-day tactics. 

Logistics

This is a full-time, in-house role based out of our Washington, DC office. You can be 'mostly remote' most of the time, but because our clients like white boards and face time, this particular role needs to be able to meet with local clients on-site or in-office, so we need you to be in the DMV area. And you MUST be a US citizen (or green card holder) due to the requirements of some of the contracts we have with our clients.

What You’ll Be Doing

You’ll work across the agency, engaging with designers, strategists, project managers, and other senior leaders to provide marketing and communications services to our clients, This includes managing a team of at least 5 people and focusing on the following key activities: 

• Dive into our clients’ marketing and communications needs. 
• Create and oversee strategies and tactics that accomplish our clients’ goals. 
• Participate in business development by contributing to proposals and engaging in presentations.
• Provide agency leadership on marketing and communications. 
• Lead and mentor the team, helping them grow professionally

You’ll lead client engagements, from sales efforts through discovery and execution, and will also help guide other members of the MarCom team in various aspects of projects. Additionally, the Director will be responsible for upholding internal expectations for project execution and deliverable quality, ensuring Taoti’s clients are receiving industry-best strategy and service. 

What We’re Looking For

We want someone with a creative spark and who can create a strategic approach. We want someone who has ideated campaigns and successfully executed them for clients—and someone who can eloquently talk about this process and the effort that goes into it. Most of all, we’re looking for someone who is both strategic and tactical: you need to be able to set the high-level strategy, then execute on it every step of the way.

• A Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Comms, or something similar 
• At least 10 years of marketing experience, with at least 5 years of experience in a creative or advertising agency 
• At least 5 years of experience creating and executing marketing and communications campaigns and strategies, driving conversions , and building brands through a variety of tactics 
• At least 3 years of experience drafting new business proposals and pitching new business, ideally with a history of success 

• At least 4 years of experience managing a marketing team 
• Exceptional communication skills, writing ability, and experience working directly with clients on marketing projects
• Compelling and qualifiable examples of how you have created marketing strategies and campaigns that helped clients achieve their objectives
• Advanced understanding of audience research, audience targeting, and personas 
• Creative mindset with the ability to come up with interesting and out-of-the-box ideas 

• High attention to detail with strong organizational and time-management skills 
• Experience managing marketing analytics & social media
• Experience with paid media tactics, especially paid social media and SEM

Career Growth

That’s one of the best parts about this role, specifically at Taoti. In a larger shop, the creative hierarchy is usually large, layered, and not-so-flexible. Or at a smaller shop, you may have lots of flexibility, but not enough of a team to really benefit from true collaboration. Taoti is the Goldilocks of creative agencies. We have enough clout to let you do top-tier work while being small enough to allow for the flexibility for you to carve out your niche and grow in a way that makes sense for you. So, your career trajectory has far more to do with your own aptitude and initiative than it does with an org chart.

What’s the corporate culture like?

“Fun but focused,” as one Taoti put it, is a great way to sum up our culture. We’re a fun and casual shop. The kind of place where you can wear whatever, come and go as you please, and have autonomy over your own day for the most part. But we take the work seriously and believe deep in the mission to make meaningful and measurable impacts for our clients. All the perks and shenanigans and borderline irreverent tone are fun, but to really fit in here, you need to be about the work. 

We believe in something we call our “QIST Culture.” Quality. Innovation. Service. And Teamwork. We are always striving to improve these four areas (to the extent that we have a fund of a quarter million dollars per year that anyone can spend from in the interest of going above and beyond towards any of these four values.

We also believe in total transparency and open communication across teams and across ranks. Instead of chain-of-command, we want everyone to have and share their own voice. Every other Thursday, the CEO holds ‘CafeClutch’ just so he can hear ideas and feedback directly from the team instead of through the filter of management. 

Want to see what life at Taoti looks like? Check out our Instagram or ‘about us’ video. There’s even a 360 tour of the office.

What about benefits?

• 5 weeks PTO for starters (includes 10 federal holidays)
• You can work mostly from home if you prefer (as is our default post-pandemic)
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance. (50% for qualifying dependents.) And we have good insurance.
• Paid family leave for men and women (including PTO plus short and long term disability options.)
• 3% retirement plan matching (plus access to a financial advisor). 
• Home buyer help (including a $1200 closing credit)
• Mobile phone reimbursement 
• You can opt for a company-supplied PC or Mac laptop. Or if you want to use your own, we’ll reimburse you for it.
• Charitable contribution matching
• Tax-free metro benefits
• A sincere respect for work/life balance
• Money and time off allocated for professional development (also increases with tenure)
• A diverse team hailing from over 15 countries last time we checked
• A very hip/cool/funky/quirky office space on Barracks Row, in the heart of Capitol Hill. Just 2 blocks from the metro! (With the office space doubling in size next year as we build a new building in the parking lot next door to our building.)
• Fun perks like a roof deck, wine/beer always on tap, regular company boat outings (boat is walking distance from the office), chill work environment, etc. 
• No real dress code (within reason, as long as you can be an adult about getting dressed for work)
• Annual global retreat (where we bring the whole team together for fun, games, and teamwork)
• Of course, the above is a quick list. See the handbook for all the gory details.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Great ideas happen when diverse perspectives come together. Those perspectives are Taoti’s secret sauce. So building a diverse team and culture where everyone has a voice and is included in the process is not just the right thing to do. It’s good for business. We’d love your own perspective to add to our mix! We're eager for new, diverse voices to join the team and sincerely hope people from every walk of life will apply! 

A bit more about Taoti…

Established in 1996, Taoti Creative is a boutique, full-service creative agency located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. We are privately owned and have no corporate overloads (nothing personal, WPP.) We do stuff like web development, social media management, branding, experiential marketing, video, AR/VR, etc. Our mission is to ‘move the needle’ for our clients. We leverage technology, creativity, and innovation to generate meaningful and measurable results for our clients—that’s what drives us. Speaking of clients, they’re about 60% non-profits, 20% commercial, and 20% federal government. Some of our customers include World Bank, USAID, DC Water, Discovery Education, American Chemical Society, Jane Goodall Foundation, and dozens of ‘National Association of _____________,’ etc. Our full time team of about 50 employees is about 65% in-house and 35% remote. We hail from over 15 countries. And for the last four years in a row, we’ve made the Inc5000 list of fastest growing companies in the United States. There’s of course plenty of additional information on our website. If you’ve not done so already, be sure to check out our culture video: https://vimeo.com/289302105. Or if you’re feeling virtual, here’s guided tour of the office in 360 video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7KkzdmSGTM (Warning: not suitable for printers.)

Next Steps

If you’re qualified and interested, please apply on our website (https://www.taoti.com/careers.) Please note that these job ads often get placed onto other websites with their own application systems (we’re looking at you Jooble!) and some sites (looking at you Indeed!) have made up random salary ranges. We aren't able to respond to applications that don’t come through our own website (Because we use software to manage our hiring process, and without it, it would be the wild west here. So please be sure you’re applying on our website.)