Festival of Creative Ops Recap
learning from peers no matter where we are
Almost a week later, I’m still thinking back to sessions from this year’s virtual Festival of Creative Ops. We started off with Kevin Brucato’s keynote welcoming us and Stephanie Nelson from Hilton discussing the Evolution of an In-House Creative Team. This talk reminded me of my years in a large telecom’s in-house creative services department and I agreed with Kathy’s labeling it the “creative heartbeat” of a company, glad to see Kim Bistromowitz did as well.
The value of top professionals who know your brand is irreplaceable. And in-house employees can save $, onboarding time and redone work. I see the value of bringing in extra agency help when needed, but agree having in-house designers, writers, and production is worth the salaries.
Next up we split into tracks, with the opportunity to also take part in Photo Studio Ops Forum and Design Ops Symposium as well. Sometimes up to 4 options!
I chose Jeremy Wintroub from Peacock TV’s talk on Building and Scaling Winning Teams - How to Ensure Your People Thrive. Thrive was the key word for me - we all want our teams to thrive and not just survive in their roles, especially with growing burnout and hybrid-at-best interaction.
As a Thoughtworks employee, when I see agile, I perk up. So next I chose Luke Perkins, Vacasa, and Amanda Sung, Frontify’s session How Vacasa Stays Creative and Agile While Scaling its Brand. The idea of moving from a printed brand book - with the carved in stone implications - to a set of sharable digital brand guidelines really resonated with me as we look to scale who is considered a brand ambassador. Ease of entry and knowing you have the latest guidelines are pretty compelling points, although I see the possibility of off-brand designs if the updates aren’t widely publicized.
Next up, I split my time between Jo Phillips of Hallmark’s session on variable creative costs and Lauren Stefaniak Smith, Victoria’s Secret, in the Photo Studio Forum session Is Time Money? How to Strike the Right Balance for your Ecomm Photo Studio. Both highlighted the conflicts of creativity & costs and gave great suggestions on real-world ways to balance them.
The final 2 sessions were hard to pick from as well, but I started with Scott Armstrong, Brainrider, on managing risk then the Success Stories panel featuring Scott Berchman, Exos; Natalie Brewster, The Body Shop; Brian Gavin, globaledit; and Eve Maidenberg, Mejuri with Lisa Hooper, BGB Group, moderating. Had been looking forward to this since I saw the preview from Lisa on LinkedIn.
Finally hopped over to Challenges, Shifts and Trends, with moderator Robin McLoughlin, White & Case; and panelists Fergus Ashe, Screendragon; Joel Caracci, JLL; Chelsea D’Angelo, Brandfolder; and Juan Pablo Kessler, DFL Digital Sports GmbH. Intrigued by the mood boards, too!
So glad we could watch sessions later, as work-work beckoned me away often.
Excited to connect with so many of the speakers from today to continue the conversation.
Themes: value of people, in-house production, AI, company culture, workflows, cost-cutting, creative process, dashboards/reports.
Tha is for the recap Kristin. It was a really great event.