On-set with the OffAbbot team and my favorite zebra, Heidi.
Inside marketing organizations today you hear the statement “everybody is creative” again and again.
Inside the venture and investment world, you hear the statement “creative is the ultimate differentiator” again and again.
To be an inspirational/effective creative leader today, one must figure out how those two statements can co-exist in the real world.
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As an independent, C-Level Creative Director, I’ve spent the last decade working directly with CEO’s and CMO’s to address this paradox … ten years marshaling the right talent and resources/integrating internal and external teams/providing the creative + brand vision needed to:
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lead a two-year strategic project to concept and prototype an original + branded content platform that unites all four divisions of the Kohler Company under a single, audience-centric content premise.
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concept and produce Super Bowl campaigns from 2015 to 2017 that helped Wix.com burst into the US market, and grow from a niche web-design platform into a global, category-dominant brand with over 150 million users.
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reposition and inject new life into a languishing, iconic beauty brand that ignited Elizabeth Arden’s return to consistent year-on-year growth from 2012-15, and set the stage for an $870 million sale to cosmetics giant Revlon in 2016.
As a business Founder and Head of Brand & Content for Ring City USA, I concepted/led fund-raising/launched a live-sports boxing platform on NBC and Twitch that fundamentally repositioned the sport, and peaked at 2.4 million viewers during our 2021 pilot season.
Time and time again, being “creative” meant listening to stakeholders, getting to know category visionaries, seeing the world through the audience’s eyes, finding the narrative/premise/insight no one else in the category has identified … the narrative that turns category distinction into cultural significance.
It’s a process directly attributable to the lessons learned, the mentors made, and the talent discovered during a 20-year career inside some of the most respected agencies in the world (Goodby, Deutsch, McCann, Ogilvy), working on some of the most iconic brands in the world (Microsoft, Nike, Budweiser, Ikea, Tylenol).
Lessons that all reduce down to a single, simple maxim: If you find that you’re the most creative person in the room, you need to find another room.
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