How To Become A Group Creative Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is a group creative director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Yash Egami

Group creative directors utilize their immense creativity and exemplary skills in management to lead the creative vision of a product or service for a company. They handle a team of creatives, including art directors, copywriters, graphic artists, and illustrators, to create promotional campaigns and creative content for the organization.

Essential duties of a group creative director also include presenting creative strategies to management, overseeing brand visuals, developing storyboards, developing trademarks, and evaluating the performance of their creative staff. They also play a crucial role in hiring the best creative team members for the company.

Most group creative directors are degree holders with majors in graphic design, advertising, fine arts, and other creative-related fields. They also have years of experience in the industry and have worked their way up from an entry-level position to a supervisory or management one. As such, they have proven proficiency in leadership and success in creative projects. The average salary of a group creative director is a whopping $241,000 per year. With this kind of compensation to consider, the position of a group creative director requires high levels of education, experience, and expertise in multiple facets of creative design.

What general advice would you give to a group creative director?

Yash Egami

VP, The One Club

A recent Forrester report says that the ad industry will lose 50,000 jobs through 2021, with 35,000 of them already lost since the pandemic. The traditional ad agency model was already in trouble, with many brands hiring away talent and creating their own in-house agencies. Add to that the recent reckoning with the Black Lives Matter movement, and what we're seeing is an industry that is being forced to go through monumental change in order to survive.

While traditional roles like art director or copywriter are on the decline, the good news is that, in an effort to reinvent themselves, agencies are seeking creatives with digital skills like UX design and programming. The rise of in-house creative departments has also meant more opportunities for job seekers within brands rather than agencies. And because of the demand for more diversity from clients and those within advertising, recruiters are making more of an effort to hire multicultural talent.

At The One Club for Creativity, we've been at the forefront of change in the industry through our diversity and inclusion, professional development and gender equality programs. We recently hosted our annual multicultural career fair, "Where Are All the Black People?" that brought together thousands of diverse talent with 40 agencies and companies looking to hire. We launched One School, a free online program for Black creatives who want to get into the industry but don't have a portfolio or the economic means to afford to go to ad school. And we're working on upskilling courses for professionals who want to reinvent themselves or keep up with the changing demands of our industry.

So if you're a recent graduate who specializes in art direction, our advice would be to keep an open mind about what kind of company you want to work for and think about expanding your skillset to include digital skills so that you can future-proof your career. Where you are isn't as important because, since the pandemic, agencies have become more comfortable with working remotely and they are more open to having a workforce not centered on the traditional agency hubs, like New York or Los Angeles.

ScoreGroup Creative DirectorUS Average

Salary

10.0

Avg. Salary $237,604

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.9

Growth rate 4%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.9

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.63%

Asian 7.47%

Black or African American 4.41%

Hispanic or Latino 14.70%

Unknown 5.55%

White 67.23%

Gender

female 21.59%

male 78.41%

Age - 39

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 39

Stress level

7.9

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.2

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.0

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a group creative director

Explore group creative director education requirements

Most common group creative director degrees

Bachelor's

84.5 %

Master's

8.2 %

Associate

5.6 %

Start to develop specific group creative director skills

Skills	Percentages
Client Relationships	12.84%
Creative Direction	7.84%
Business Development	6.49%
Digital Marketing	5.41%
Graphic Design	4.97%

Complete relevant group creative director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New group creative directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a group creative director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real group creative director resumes.

Research group creative director duties and responsibilities

Direct and manage talent including, directors, directors of photography, editors, graphic artists, and composers.
Lead and supervise creative teams and create award-winning advertising campaigns and programs that target physicians, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals.
Develop the GUI / UX for presenting and categorizing the video content.
Recruit and retain a high-performance team of strategists, designers, UX architects, and account managers.

Get group creative director experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a group creative director. The most common roles before becoming a group creative director include creative director, associate creative director team lead and art director.

Prepare your group creative director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your group creative director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a group creative director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable group creative director resume templates

Build a professional group creative director resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your group creative director resume.