About us
We're redesigning the entire veterinary experience from the ground up - making access to vet care seamless, joyful and everyday for pets and their parents. No more struggling to get an appointment, waiting around in drab clinics, seeing a different vet every time, or stressing over how much it might cost you. Instead: instant booking through our app, calming spaces, a long-term vet team who knows your pet, and transparent pricing - with plenty of treats for pets and people along the way.
We're also bringing the joy back to vet care for the professionals delivering it. Vet teams have felt overworked and undervalued for too long, and we're on a mission to change that - which is why Creature Comforts is run by vets, for vets. Our purpose is simple: healthier pets and happier vets.
Founded in 2022 by Russell (a vet with over 25 years' experience) and Dan, we've grown into a family of 14 clinics across London and St Albans, with many more on the way. We're proud to have earned over 2,000 five-star reviews, and our customer and team satisfaction scores (NPS) are both industry-leading.
We're building the vet group of the future. If you share our passion for doing things differently, we'd love to hear from you.
We’re looking for someone to join us as Marketing Director on an 18-month fixed term contract, with the possibility of this role being made permanent thereafter.
Job Requirements
Experience
- Significant experience in senior marketing leadership (Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or equivalent), including ownership of budget, resourcing and team performance.
- Proven track record leading multi-disciplinary marketing teams spanning brand, growth, CRM and creative, ideally within a fast-growing, multi-site consumer business (e.g. retail, hospitality, healthcare, membership or subscription models).
- Strong, hands-on experience in CRM strategy and lifecycle marketing - designing and delivering customer comms journeys that drive conversion, retention, LTV and customer education across channels such as email, SMS, push, and direct mail.
- Experience representing marketing and brand at Exec or Senior Leadership level, operating as a strategic partner to the business rather than a pure executor.
- Experience owning brand strategy and creative direction, including developing or evolving brand guidelines.
- Experience marketing new site or location openings, including local campaign execution (door drops, OOH, presale campaigns), would be desirable given our clinic opening programme.
- Experience stepping up into, or deputising for, a more senior role would also be desirable.
Knowledge
- Knowledge of CRM and lifecycle marketing best practice.
- Strong understanding of brand strategy, positioning and creative development.
- Broad knowledge of multi-channel marketing, including paid social, PPC, OOH, direct mail and field activity.
- Understanding of how brand and marketing connects and interacts with product, tech and operations.
- Working knowledge of acquisition and performance marketing metrics.
Skills & Abilities
- A strategic thinker who is equally comfortable executing hands-on - copywriting, editing, project management and more.
- Excellent stakeholder management, with the credibility to influence at Exec and Senior Leadership level.
- Strong people leadership - able to manage, coach and develop a team of senior functional leads, plus indirect lines across the business.
- Skilled at prioritising and managing resource across competing demands (BAU marketing, clinic openings, brand projects).
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with a sharp eye for brand consistency, detail, and creative quality.
- Comfortable working with data to monitor performance and inform decisions.
Personal Qualities
- Confident and credible - able to step into an Exec-level seat during maternity cover.
- Hands-on and detail-oriented, willing to get into the weeds when it matters.
- Adaptable and resilient, comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-growing business.
- A collaborative team player who builds strong relationships across functions.
- Genuine enthusiasm for pets and the Creature Comforts mission.
Job Responsibilities
After an initial period working alongside the Chief Marketing Officer, you will cover her responsibilities during her maternity leave.
These will include
- Representing brand, marketing and the customer voice in the Executive and Senior Leadership teams
- Taking ownership of the Marketing team's performance, priorities, budget and resourcing
- Line managing 4x direct reports
- Managing marketing around new clinic openings, as well as other campaigns and brand initiatives
- Acting as the senior decision-maker and spokesperson for brand and marketing within the business, collaborating with teams company-wide to support strong execution of our brand in action
- Delivering brand and marketing training for clinic teams and new starters across the company
- Acting as standards-bearer for our brand - maintaining and evolving our Brand Guidelines as we grow, and reviewing and approving all creative output against them
In addition, you will bring distinct expertise to the role. Of particular importance is strategic CRM and customer engagement experience: we’re building out and enhancing our customer journeys and are looking for someone to oversee and support our Head of CRM - while working closely with our Product, Tech and Experience teams - to bring these to life across a spectrum of comms channels.
Finally, as well as needing a strategic thinker, this role will involve a lot of hands-on doing! Copywriting, editing, project management - every senior person in the business still spends a good amount of their time executing and staying close to the detail.
Key Responsibilities During Maternity Cover
Leadership
- Sit on the Executive team during the mat cover period, bringing the brand, marketing and customer perspective to all leadership meetings.
Team management
- Direct reports: Head of CRM, Head of Growth, Head of Brand Design, Brand Marketing Manager.
- Manage the Marketing team's performance and priorities: hold weekly 1:1s with each direct report and regular team standups, set clear success measures for each role, and support/unblock as needed.
- Maintain the clinic marketing timeline and keep the wider company updated on key activity (e.g. customer offers, door drops).
Acquisition performance
- Ownership of acquisition performance from a marketing perspective across pre-opening and open clinics, supporting our Head of Growth to set the strategy and hit targets.
- Run presale campaigns for opening clinics: plotting the timeline of activity, overseeing weekly cross-functional campaign meetings, managing performance, and coordinating on-the-ground execution.
- Coordinate marketing campaigns for open clinics, including door drops, OOH advertising, special offers and competitions.
Customer experience & CRM
- Support our Head of CRM in building out strategic customer journeys that bring our brand to life and drive conversion, retention, education and lifetime value across a range of channels.
- Work closely with Product, Experience, Vet Operations and Clinic teams to deliver seamless, on-brand customer journeys.
- Own review platform strategy (Google Reviews, Trustpilot) - monitoring customer sentiment, running review drives, feeding insight into complaints resolution, and keeping scores high.
Brand ownership
- Hold ultimate ownership of consumer brand strategy, messaging strategy, creative direction, and in-clinic brand experience, working closely with our Head of Brand Design and Brand Marketing Manager.
- Act as standards-bearer for brand integrity and consistency; evolve the Brand Guidelines as the business grows and communicate changes across the company.
- Act as a key stakeholder in employer brand strategy and execution, in conjunction with the People team.
- Collaborate closely with our Sales Director and Membership team to ensure all activity is on-brand and working harmoniously with our wider Marketing output.
Creative and content
- Oversee creative output and contribute directly to copywriting across the website, paid social, PPC, clinic assets (signage, leaflets, screens), CRM communications, and beyond.
Training
- Deliver brand and marketing training across the business, including onboarding for new clinic teams and ongoing guidance to the wider team.
Why work with us?
- 25 days (210 hours) annual leave plus bank holidays, and your birthday off after one year’s service
- Salary sacrifice pension scheme (5% employee, 3% employer contribution)
- Genuine career progression as we grow across London and beyond
- A supportive, inclusive culture where your development is taken seriously
- Dog-friendly workplace
- Regular team and company social events
- The opportunity to be part of something genuinely different in veterinary care
