About Kasagi
Kasagi is a haven for anime fans of all backgrounds, providing a platform for artists, writers, animators, musicians, programmers, and more to collaborate and celebrate their shared passion. At Kasagi, we empower one another by democratizing the process of funding, creating, and enjoying the anime art form we all treasure.
Kasagi breathes life into beloved anime characters, allowing them to share their daily routines and interact with us in their free time. This connection fosters a deep bond between fans and their favorite characters. At the same time, Kasagi acts as a gateway to preserving the essence of anime for future generations to experience and love just as we do.
Under the Kasagi brand, we will launch anime-related lifestyle tech products in Q1 2024.
The Role
The Creative Director at Kasagi Labo is responsible for transforming our strategy into inspirational Japanese anime merchandise and engaging marketing content. While providing leadership to a global team of creative hires, you will oversee all our merchandise designs, branded marketing, and media campaigns to ensure we are always on brand.
You will work alongside the other departments (Merchandising, e-commerce, and Marketing) to help guide our overall brand strategy. A successful Creative Director must be able to straddle many different worlds and contexts, with no day being the same.
What you can expected to work on
Team Leadership:
- Coach and cultivate a diverse team of designers, including graphic designers, 3D designers, and anime artists.
- Develop effective creative toolkits for merchandising and marketing, aligning with overall brand strategy.
Merchandising:
- Leverage historical sales data, consumer insights, and competitive market research to shape creative decisions, ensuring that data and consumer preferences inform the creative team.
- Develop seasonal style guides and product toolkits across different merchandise categories.
- Produce concepts and campaign directions in alignment with brand guidelines, tone, and style.
- Supervise content development from conception to completion for anime merchandise design proposal and quality check of actual merchandise sample.
- Ensure our designs adhere to anime IP owner’s standards and guidelines.
- Track and follow up with licensees on pending submissions.
- Directly own and oversee the design process based on the IP project timeline to ensure products are launched as per schedule.
Marketing:
- Ensure all of Kasagi’s content and advertising across all our platforms and touchpoints is elevated and on brand.
- Lead an efficient creative process to support all the content and creative materials needed by the marketing and cross-functional teams, leveraging technology, automation, and sourcing intelligently to deliver small and large projects.
- Collaborate deeply with the marketing team in building the overall marketing strategy, analyzing results, identifying opportunities, and championing the power of creativity and insights to drive business.
- Undertake product photography across fashion and still life. Work collaboratively with the marketing team to direct shoots and videos.
What do you need to succeed
- 10 years of relevant experience, with five or more years in merchandise production.
- Extensive experience managing traffic across multiple campaigns simultaneously, from vision to production, on time and within budget.
- Strong creative vision, linking powerful and inspirational creativity to business impact.
- Exceptional coaching skills, capable of building the capability and effectiveness of a creative team.
- Proficient in Adobe’s Creative Suite (Illustrator and Photoshop); in-depth knowledge of AutoCAD/ Solidworks/ Fusion360/ Keyshot.
- Ability to build continuity in capability and agility while protecting capacity by keeping abreast of industry trends, design innovations, emerging technologies in the anime merchandising space, and thoughtful use of smart processes and technology/automation such as AI.
- Diploma or Degree in Industrial/Product/Toy Design or related field.
