Awards/Press
• OMMA Awards, Best In Show, Website Excellence Category
• OMMA Awards, Website Excellence - Sports Category
• Webbys Award Winner
• Webbys People's Voice Winner
Role
Senior Creative Director (Agency-side)
Agency
Razorfish
Highlights
• Agency creative lead for overall ESPN website redesign
• Led hybrid team of agency and client-side creatives
The Story
Leading the Creative Teams for the redesign of ESPN's website was an honor. I'm a huge fan of the brand, and being at the forefront of such a high-profile project was a thrill.
From the onset, this project carried a very unique creative challenge that, if played wrong, could've been disastrous. I had to unify our agency's creative team with a very talented client-side creative team that was also assigned to the project. The agency folks, including me, were based in California. ESPN's team was based at the company's Bristol, CT headquarters. None of us knew each other. And we had one of the most important properties of the brand – and its tens of millions of unique monthly visitors – in our hands.
Instead of a problem, I saw the alignment of our two teams as an opportunity to build a unified all-star team. We staffed our best, as did they. We brought strong UX, Design, and Strategy. They brought brand passion and immense knowledge. We just had to make it click. My plan involved each team traveling to work with the other, and cross-team partnerships to facilitate collaboration on a 1:1 basis. I got the teams rolling, and did the first few initial concept presentations to the Editor-In-Chief, ESPN's Head of Digital, and others, then handed it off to ESPN's Creative Director once things were rolling along. Egos were nowhere to be found, as we all pulled together. We weren't the Agency team and the Client team. We were all simply: The Team.
The net result was a partnership that delivered a truly class-leading website, winning a OMMA Best In Show for Website Excellence, a Webby for their Sports category, and another Webby as the People's Voice Winner. The site we created was live until mid-2015.
Ask Me About:
My "This Is Sportscenter" campaign-like experience, involving me, a SportsCenter anchor, and a temperamental vending machine.