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About us:

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here.

The Lead Creative Strategist, Brand – Serves as a central point of contact for efforts related to upholding, stewarding and protecting the Target brand across the enterprise including leading a portfolio of strategic brand initiatives. This role extends brand stewardship beyond Creative and Marketing to help teams across Target make choices that create a clear, consistent Target brand experience.

As a hub of Target brand expertise, the role translates brand strategy into practical guidance, educates partners, connects the right teams, evaluates brand fit, and holds the line on brand standards. Drawing on guest, cultural, business, and performance inputs, it identifies insights and opportunities and facilitates decisions that strengthen how the Target brand shows up across priority experiences and channels.

The role partners with Creative, Marketing, insights, and enterprise teams to clarify objectives, ownership, and intended outcomes, and guides work through ambiguity. It uses strong judgment, facilitation, and influence to build agreement, and brings the most significant brand decisions and tradeoffs to the Chief Brand Officer and Marketing/Guest Experience leadership.

The role does not own creative execution or the strategy for Target-owned brands.

Key responsibilities

Steward the Target brand across the enterprise

·       Represent the Target brand as a credible voice with partners and leaders, and serve as the connection point for significant Target brand questions, opportunities, and requests.

·       Translate Target brand strategy, principles, and guardrails into practical guidance that helps partners make consistent choices across experiences and touchpoints.

·       Assess brand relevance, strategic fit, and readiness; connect work to the right teams and clarify ownership and decision rights.

·       Hold the line on brand standards: identify work that doesn't reflect the Target brand, redirect it with partners before it advances, and escalate to Brand leadership when needed.

·       Educate partners on the Target brand through simple tools, routines, and learning that make the brand easier to understand and apply independently.

Lead a portfolio of strategic brand initiatives

·       Lead a focused set of priority Target brand initiatives, as set with the Chief Brand Officer, by defining scope, success measures, and stakeholder alignment.

·       Actively manage the brand ecosystem with responsibilities ranging from facilitation to development of key initiatives.

·       Coordinate cross-functional partners to manage dependencies, solve brand challenges, and translate strategy into aligned action.

·       Lead the brand strategy and roadmap for the Stores of Influence program, partnering with activation teams on execution and recommending storytelling and expansion opportunities.

·       Oversee the Stores of Influence budget: track spend against plan, partner with Finance and activation teams on forecasting, and recommend investment tradeoffs to Creative leadership.

·       Maintain the planning routines, decision points, and learning agenda that keep Stores of Influence on track as a Target brand and guest-experience platform.

·       Capture learning from each initiative and recommend what should scale, what should stay market-specific, and how future Target brand decisions should evolve.

Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description.  Job duties may change at any time due to business needs. 

About You:

·       7+ years of relevant experience in brand management, creative strategy, brand strategy, or agency account or engagement management.

·       Demonstrated experience stewarding a large consumer brand across functions, channels, or experiences and translating brand strategy into practical guidance.

·       Experience leading cross-functional strategic initiatives from direction-setting through alignment and learning.

·       Experience managing a program or initiative budget, including tracking spend, forecasting, and making investment recommendations.

·       Strong understanding of how enterprise strategy, brand positioning, creative strategy, marketing, and guest experience work together.

·       Excellent judgment, influence, and facilitation skills, including the ability to evaluate brand fit, clarify tradeoffs, and align senior stakeholders without formal authority.

·       Ability to synthesize guest, cultural, competitive, business, and performance inputs into a clear strategic point of view.

·       Strong written, verbal, presentation, and story telling skills, with the ability to make complex ideas clear and actionable.

·       Strong taste level and creative point of view, with the confidence to challenge off-brand work while respecting creative ownership.

·       Comfort creating structure through ambiguity and balancing long-term brand stewardship with immediate business needs.

·       Four-year degree or equivalent experience.

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota. 

Benefits Eligibility

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

In compliance with state and federal laws, Target will make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to candidate.accommodations@HRHelp.Target.com. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed through this channel.