Head of Brand & Creative

C&C Collective Private Limited · India

Cotton & Clay Collective · Candidate-facing Job Description Head of Brand & Creative

Cotton & Clay Collective

Location: Chandigarh, India

Function: Brand, Creative & Content

Reporting to: Managing Director & CEO

Level: Senior Leadership

Cotton & Clay Collective is building a digital-first fashion and lifestyle business for the Indian market. Our ambition is to create well-made, well-priced clothing that customers genuinely want to wear, supported by disciplined sourcing, strong product quality, a distinctive brand identity, technology-led operations and an exceptional digital customer experience.

We are building the business for scale from the outset. That means every leadership and specialist role is expected to operate across functions, use data intelligently, protect commercial economics and help create repeatable operating capability rather than simply execute a narrow job description.

The Head of Brand & Creative owns how Cotton & Clay is perceived, remembered and expressed. The role translates product quality and commercial ambition into a distinctive brand world across identity, campaigns, styling, photography, content, packaging and customer-facing design. It must protect long-term brand equity while operating at the speed required by digital commerce.

The mandate is clear: Build a recognisable and desirable Cotton & Clay brand system that customers can identify without seeing the logo, and create a high-output creative engine that strengthens both brand memory and commercial performance.

Define the memory structures that make Cotton & Clay distinctive.

· Own brand proposition, personality, tone, visual language and distinctive assets.

· Translate Quality first. Style always. into repeatable customer-facing meaning.

· Define brand guardrails without making execution formulaic.

· Intervene when short-term execution erodes positioning or consistency.

Set the creative standard across consumer touchpoints.

· Lead campaign concepts, art direction, photography, video, design and styling.

· Create briefs connecting business objective, audience insight and creative idea.

· Review output for craft, relevance and brand consistency.

· Develop an Indian-market point of view rather than copying global references.

Build an always-on pipeline rather than episodic production.

· Define content pillars and platform-specific formats.

· Plan production around drops, seasons, cultural moments and evergreen stories.

· Maintain a reusable asset library with clear usage rights and metadata.

· Balance hero production with efficient daily content.

Make product quality visible and understandable.

· Translate fabric, construction, fit and detail into compelling visual and written stories.

· Partner with Product and QA to avoid unsupported quality claims.

· Develop consistent photography and copy standards for PDP and campaign use.

· Create editorial narratives around category, occasion and styling.

Ensure the digital storefront feels like one brand.

· Own brand expression across homepage, collections, PDPs and editorial modules.

· Partner with Growth on testing while maintaining visual coherence.

· Improve content hierarchy and visual merchandising.

· Ensure mobile-first execution remains premium and fast to understand.

Create content people choose to engage with.

· Define channel-specific voice and visual behaviour.

· Create culturally relevant work without trend-chasing that weakens identity.

· Partner with Community on conversation formats and UGC integration.

· Build recurring formats that improve memory and production efficiency.

Extend the brand through people who fit it.

· Define creative criteria for creator and talent selection.

· Develop briefs that allow authenticity without losing standards.

· Identify collaborations that add cultural or product relevance.

· Protect usage rights, exclusivity and brand safety.

Carry the brand beyond the screen.

· Set direction for packaging, inserts, tags and unboxing.

· Balance premium perception with cost, sustainability and fulfilment practicality.

· Ensure physical touchpoints reinforce quality credentials.

· Review customer feedback on product presentation.

Use data to improve creative without designing by spreadsheet.

· Review hooks, imagery, formats and product stories with Growth.

· Distinguish direct-response performance from long-term brand-building purpose.

· Create structured learning from campaigns and tests.

· Refresh systems based on evidence while protecting distinctive assets.

Build the right internal and external creative model.

· Identify photographers, studios, production houses, stylists and specialist agencies.

· Negotiate production budgets, usage rights and delivery terms.

· Maintain clear ownership of source files and intellectual property.

· Benchmark production quality and cost and build preferred-partner relationships.

Build multidisciplinary creative capability.

· Define roles across design, content, copy, social, production and art direction.

· Coach team members and maintain clear craft standards.

· Create efficient review workflows and prevent approval bottlenecks.

· Develop succession and freelance bench strength for peak demand.

The role will be assessed primarily on outcomes, operating quality and sustained business impact rather than activity.

Brand

· Distinctive asset recognition

· Brand awareness and consideration

· Direct and branded demand

· Consistency across touchpoints

Creative Effectiveness

· Creative test win rate

· Engagement quality and saves/shares

· PDP and content-assisted conversion

· Creative fatigue and refresh velocity

Production

· Asset delivery against launch calendar

· Production cost versus plan

· Content reuse efficiency

· Rights and compliance exceptions

· Senior creative leader with strong fashion, lifestyle or premium-consumer taste.

· Able to articulate why work is right or wrong rather than relying on preference.

· Understands digital-native brand building and e-commerce requirements.

· Strong collaborator with Growth and Product without allowing short-term performance pressure to flatten the brand.

· High craft standards and attention to detail.

· Commercially aware of production costs, rights and speed.

· Comfortable directing external specialists and internal teams.

· Culturally curious and grounded in contemporary Indian consumer behaviour.

· Brand or creative leadership in fashion, beauty, lifestyle, retail or adjacent consumer sectors.

· Portfolio demonstrating distinctive brand systems and high-quality campaigns.

· Experience across photography, video, social and digital commerce.

· Experience leading agencies, studios and production partners.

· Strong knowledge of production workflows and usage rights.

· Experience building high-cadence content systems.

· Understanding of performance creative and testing is valuable.

· Experience developing creative teams.

· Taste-led but not precious — cares about quality and ships work.

· Distinctive — resists generic category conventions.

· Commercial — understands that creative must support a business.

· Collaborative — works effectively with data-led peers.

· Exacting — protects craft and brand details.

· Curious — understands culture, fashion and changing media formats.

· Resourceful — creates quality within realistic budgets.

· Consistent — builds systems, not isolated good campaigns.

Cotton & Clay develops a visual and verbal identity customers recognise across advertising, social, product pages and packaging.

Creative production operates continuously against the commercial calendar rather than becoming a launch bottleneck.

Product quality is communicated with clarity and credibility, increasing perceived value rather than relying on empty premium language.

Performance learning improves creative effectiveness without turning the brand into disconnected direct-response advertising.

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