A “manager” doesn’t necessarily have to manage people. They can manage projects as well, which you certainly seem to do.
Key point- My wife has had the title of “marketing manager” for her last two positions at large (big name) companies. In neither job did she have any people reporting to her.
I like Creative Director. It’s managerial sounding without actually saying flat out that you’re management, yet it’s inflationary enough to sound like it could still involve power suits and martini lunches.
Or you could just put “Whatever want me to be, baby.”
“Fixer”
For the sake of the people he’s interacting with and handing out those cards to.
A business card should capture, in a nutshell, who you are and what you do. Cutesy business cards with titles like “Chief Officer of Gettin’ Stuff Done” are good for a laugh, but they don’t project a particularly professional image in the long run.
Better to pick something like “Strategic Marketing Manager” or " Director - Creative and Marketing" instead. Better to have a five-person company where everyone is the Director of Something, so long as the titles look good on the cards and look good on resumes.
Totally off-topic, but I think my current title is awesome (I’m a Specialist, according to my paycheque). Too bad I don’t interact with enough outside people to require business cards. 
That’s a department, not a position. You need to be firm on this - when you apply for the next job and all you have down is “Marketing and Programming”, they’re going to ask you what that is, and whatever you tell them, they’re going to second-guess. Especially if you tell them you were in charge of creativity - how creative is putting down a department name as your position?
One thing to consider is that I’m not a “career” person. As most of you know, I’ve spent most of my working life in video stores, pet stores book stores, record stores. About half my adult life I’ve been a freelance designer, gardener, aquarium specialist, dog trainer, etc. The type of position that is likely to be relevant to Munch’s post, for example, is just not a position I’m ever likely to, um, put myself in a position to be interviewing for. If I ever do, it will be in a similarly creative, Arts-field type thing, where the significance of such considerations is usually less.
Not that this means I’m gonna put some bullshit cutesy title on there, but seriously, this small arts company does not have managers or VPs or directors. Maybe someday, if it continues to grow. In which case I’ll give myself a promotion and print new cards. But it’s premature to put that kind of thing on my card just yet; it would do me more harm than good in this context.
I’m with ShibbOleth. No title is what you have, and your cards need no title. If you’ve made an impression then the card will bring that back with the name of your firm and your name. If you haven’t, then they’ll never use your card anyway. The card isn’t going to make deals for you, no matter what title you come up with.
Enjoy,
Steven
Marketing & Creative Services
Marketing Development Director. Development is a better term for “creative”, which is bound to cause confusion on a business card and a resume. Plus it sounds like a real title, and succinctly describes your work (to a degree).
Edit: I just saw your post about wanting to avoid the word “director”. I disagree with the idea that the company can be too small to be a manager, because you are clearly performing management duties. So, Marketing Development Manager or just Marketing Development.
Well, you don’t need to over-inflate it. But you do need something with utility, otherwise why bother?
I just spend the second 14-hour day in a row wrangling my boss’s last-minute Sundance preparations. The same thing happened with our last major event. She is incapable of planning anything ahead, and only gets ideas when panic adrenaline sets it. So she tells me yesterday, at 3pm, that she needed for Sundance:
[ul]
[li]A 5ft x 4ft banner, vinyl with grommets[/li][li]An 18in x 8ft banner, vinyl with grommets[/li][li]4 standard movie-poster size banners, 2ea of 2 different designs, vinyl with grommets[/li][li]4,000 postcards, 1k ea of 4 different designs[/li][li]A round of new business cards for each of 12 employees[/li][li]New sections of the website; each of the postcards will send you to a different landing page[/li][li]Each section with forms, and membership sign-up capabilities[/li][li]3 new levels of membership, including 1 free[/li][li]New graphics on the homepage to lead to each of these new landing pages, with retard-level redundancies built in[/li][li]New copy for all of these new web pages[/li][li]New copy for a brief presentation she’s giving at Sundance[/li][li]Uh, a couple other things that escape me right now[/li][/ul]None of these items, except the basic layout of the business cards, had been designed yet, yet alone printed and delivered.
She comes to me with this Tuesday at 3pm. She’s getting on the plane Thursday at 9am. That’s a total of 10 standard business hours’ notice. Needless to say, I’ll be putting in more than those 10 standard hours. I’ve had a printing company bring in people off shift and put other jobs aside. And even with that, some of these things are going to have to be FedEx’ed to my boss at Sundance. Which news surprised and perturbed her. (No, I did not punch her in the cunt. But I will neither confirm nor deny that I thought about it.)
My point in sharing all this is that all this made up my mind for me: my title will Production Manager. And from now on, all upcoming events will begin with a production meeting one month out. I informed my boss of this, by fiat, after I showed her the extra charges she incurred with this last minute clusterfuck, not to mention the stress of a freaked out staff.
Please update soon. It looks like you are in your element–Good luck to you!!
Changed my mind after reading the preceding post.
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Well, I checked Amazon, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Classic Movies is already taken, so I guess the search continues…
Agreed. For example, most EHS Managers do not directly supervise anybody, but they give orders or instructions (which ones depends on company culture) to everybody.
Marketing Development Manager is a good one. You want to be able to have “Manager” or “Director” in there, to show you’re The Person In Charge of that subject and not The Coffee Peon for everybody who does the actual thinking.