Building a Creative Department from the Ground Up
THE CHALLENGE
When the agencies began scaling, there was no creative director role and no unified creative department. Video, design, and web operated as independent silos reporting to the COO with no shared structure, no standardized processes, and no creative leadership layer. The impact was visible: in just three years, the design team cycled through eight different designers. Creatives were being overwhelmed by unfiltered requests with no guardrails around turnaround times, deliverable scope, or brief quality. The intake process ran on disconnected Google Forms and Typeforms with no centralized tracking. There was no system protecting the team from unsustainable workloads, and the retention numbers reflected it.
THE APPROACH
After three years observing these challenges as Director of Production, took over as Creative Director in 2021 and built the operational infrastructure the department had never had. Centralized every creative brief and request into Asana, replacing the scattered Google Forms and Typeform intake process with a single system of record. Established clear delivery windows and briefed the full team on expectations regularly so both creative staff and account teams operated from the same standards. Built automations that trigger a brief review if a request falls outside of spec; flagging briefs with unrealistic turnaround times, excessive deliverable counts, or mismatched asset types before they reach a designer or editor. Created a specific automation that sends an alert whenever a request is tagged as “other”, a category that had previously been a major source of scope creep and burnout. Beyond the systems, restructured the team itself. Merged the creative operations of Go Big Media and Think Big into unified workflows, one process for design, one for video, one for web — navigating the complexity of different client timelines and deliverable cadences across the two agencies. Integrated designers and video editors across both teams rather than keeping them siloed by agency.
Promoted new heads of production and design from within the team, and created the Associate Creative Director role, a first for the company, specifically to support continued growth and provide a leadership development path for senior creatives. Built out the web design function as a dedicated discipline with an Art Director and designer focused almost exclusively on web, a capability that didn’t exist a few years prior. Continued adding automations to streamline the handoff between account teams and creative, reducing friction and accelerating delivery cycles.
5,400+
Individual pieces of creative delivered by the political team in a single year
8 → 1
Team members lost in 3 years before systems vs. 1 voluntary departure since taking over as CD
3 Roles
Created and promoted from within: ACDs, Head of Production, Head of Design