Senior direction
without the
senior hire.

A creative director in the room for a set number of hours a month, defined up front. Direction, judgment, and quality control across everything your team ships, without a two hundred thousand dollar line on the payroll.

Fee$4,500 – $8,500 / month
TimelineMonth to month
FormatScoped to hours or deliverables
NoticeThirty days, either way

Who this is for

  • You have designers and no one senior enough to direct them.
  • The head of marketing is approving creative and knows it is not their job.
  • You are between creative directors and do not want the work to drift for six months.
  • You use freelancers and each one produces something that looks like a different company made it.
  • The budget for a full-time creative director is not there yet, and the need is.

How it runs

01

Set the bar

A first month spent understanding the brand, the team, the calendar, and the standard the work has to clear. Ending in a written point of view on what is working and what is not.

02

Direct the work

Standing reviews on a fixed cadence. Briefs written or sharpened before work starts, feedback given in one pass rather than five, and final calls made so nothing sits waiting on a decision.

03

Raise the team

The reason to do this rather than outsource production. Your designers get directed by someone who has done the job, which is how people get better.

04

Stay accountable

A monthly written summary of what shipped, what improved, and what is still in the way. If the arrangement stops being worth the fee, that document is where you will see it first.

What you get

  • A fixed number of hours a month, agreed up front and tracked honestly.
  • Standing creative reviews on a cadence that fits your calendar rather than ours.
  • Brief writing and campaign direction across paid, organic, web, and sales material.
  • Direction of your internal and freelance designers, including hiring input when you are adding to the team.
  • Brand consistency enforcement across every channel, which is mostly the unglamorous work of catching drift early.
  • A monthly written summary of what shipped and what changed.

What it is not

Scope boundary

A fractional creative director directs; production capacity is a separate arrangement. Some execution is normal inside the hours, but if the underlying need is volume rather than judgment, the monthly retainer is the honest answer and costs less.

Borrow a director

Tell us the shape of the problem and we will tell you honestly whether the Fractional Creative Director is the right answer to it. We reply within two business days.

Prefer email? hello@ambolt.co. If we are not the right studio for this, we will say so and point you somewhere better.

Tell us
what is
broken.

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