Senior Art Director

Company description

Publicis Groupe is not just a company you work for; it’s a platform for you to take your talent to the world.

If you want to help change the world, ideas alone are not enough. Real impact can only come from having meaningful access to a world of knowledge, people and resources. At Publicis Groupe, you are connected to our global network, intelligence, tools, clients, brands and 80,000 brilliant minds with expertise in data, technology, media, strategy, creativity and business transformation, all literally at your fingertips.

Go ahead, the world is waiting.

Publicis Groupe is the largest communications group in the world. Founded in Paris in 1926, we are present in more than 100 countries as leaders in marketing, communication, and digital business transformation. Two of its biggest solution hubs in Singapore - Publicis Communications and Publicis Media & Digital.

Publicis Communications, the creative communications hub of the Publicis Groupe, is a collective of the most passionate, purposeful, and progressive creative agencies in Singapore. They are Publicis Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, Prodigious, and MSL.

Publicis Media & Digital, which is comprised of global media agency brands Starcom, Zenith, Spark Foundry, and Performics, is powered by digital-first, data-driven global practices that together, help our clients navigate the modern media landscape.

Our two other solution hubs, Publicis Sapient and Publicis Commerce, empower businesses to embrace digital transformation and equip them with a total commerce experience.

Overview

This is not a typical senior art director role. We are looking for someone with an uncommon perspective: deep FMCG knowledge paired with an eye shaped by fashion, pop culture, and an understanding of how global beauty trends emerge and spread.

You will be responsible for elevating how major brands, particularly in the beauty space, show up across every touchpoint. This means knowing where beauty is headed, not just where it is. It means bridging FMCG rigour with the cultural weight of editorial work, the restraint of high fashion, and the speed of culture. Your work will travel across Asia to Australia, directly shape the visual language of brands genuinely trying to evolve, and partner closely with our Creative Director team on briefs spanning social, communications, film, digital, retail, and beyond.

Responsibilities

Craft & Visual Excellence: Beauty Elevation Beyond Category Codes

• Elevate beauty beyond typical FMCG visualization. Bring the aesthetic sensibility, pace, and attitude of fashion, editorial, and pop culture into beauty work. Your visual language should feel modern, young, hip, and fresh, not constrained by category codes.
• Make design choices that are not just strategic. They’re culturally bold enough to stand out. The work should feel distinct from category defaults, challenge it and iterate.
• Build distinctive visual languages that break category conventions, using colour, typography, composition, and art direction in ways that feel contemporary and undefined by beauty norms. Work should feel at-home in i-D or Hypebeast as much as in commercial channels.
• Own the editing and typographic approach with a fresh perspective—leverage AI tools, push unconventional typography, develop novel colour treatment and retouching methodologies. The goal is visual language that feels ahead of category, not bound by it.
• Direct photography and visual talent with the eye of an editorial director. Brief with precision about mood, light, composition, and cultural energy. The aesthetic should feel shot with intention, not produced with category defaults.

Concept & Strategy

• Ideate, craft, and execute original creative concepts in response to client briefs, objectives, and cultural moments
• Develop ideas that meet client and business objectives while maintaining creative excellence
• Lead and participate in brainstorming sessions, bringing market insight and cultural perspective

Collaboration & Delivery

• Own projects from concept through completion, coordinating with in-house and third-party resources (photographers, retouchers, production partners)
• Present creative work with clarity and conviction, defending your choices and the cultural logic behind them
• Collaborate across creative, account management, and planning teams to develop disruptive, culturally relevant work

Qualifications

• 6–10 years of experience with a portfolio proving you can execute at scale—FMCG, beauty, skincare, haircare, personal care, fashion, or similar categories. Your work has moved the needle commercially and creatively. Your book is brave, not just correct.
• But here is the difference: you have also worked in or deeply studied adjacent creative worlds where culture and design intersect—magazine editorial, fashion brands, pop culture-first platforms. You understand how a luxury skincare brand thinks about storytelling, how fashion collaborations work, and that cultural relevance is structural, not decorative.

Beauty Market Fluency & Global Trendsetters

• You understand how trends originate and spread. You know how C-beauty and K-beauty shape the global conversation as trendsetters—markets like Shanghai and Seoul often define what other regions adopt in 18–24 months. You translate this understanding for our brands across APAC.
• You have real experience or genuine familiarity with Southeast Asian, China, Indian, or Australian markets. You understand why a visual that works in one city does not land in another, and how to brief concepts that actually work across cultural contexts.

Social-First Thinking & Omnichannel Craft

Social-first is where your thinking starts. You can hold an idea and see it across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, out-of-home, retail, and packaging simultaneously. You know which surface tells the story best and execute each with equal craft rigour.

Core Competencies

• A keen student of life—open, curious, always willing to learn
• Mastery of design software (Figma, Adobe CC, Blender, or equivalent)
• Familiarity with AI tools as creative augmentation, you view AI as a tool to push aesthetic boundaries, not replace craft
• Strong grasp of social media platforms and content performance
• Ability to work under pressure, manage multiple projects, and coordinate with vendors (photographers, retouchers, production partners)
• Naturally well-organised and unfazed by tight deadlines
• Willingness to travel to shoots and post sessions
• Ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines and seniority levels

Additional information

A creative team driving briefs across major brands in beauty and FMCG. Strategy partners focused on market insight and cultural truth. Leadership invested in holding craft and commerce in equal tension.

We’re looking for work that goes beyond what is adequate for FMCG. We want our brands to matter culturally, feel alive, and compete aesthetically with the most sophisticated creative work happening globally. We’re looking for someone who understands where trends originate and how to get ahead and someone who holds beauty craft and executional excellence to the highest standard.