Adam Kennedy

EXPERIENCE

Tally

Freelance Executive Creative Director

July 2020 - Present

Building and leading the internal brand and performance agency at Tally. Named Fobes' Next Billion Dollar Startup in 2020, Tally is the first fully automated debt manager to help people overcome credit card debt.

StubHub

Executive Creative Director

Oct 2019 - July 2020

My mission at StubHub is to build out the internal brand and performance agency at the world's largest ticket marketplace. Our goal is to continue to grow the business by differentiating ourselves in a growingly commoditized landscape. We did this by leaning into dynamic one-to-one marketing on the performance side and launching our first upper funnel campaign in 3 years on the brand side.

• Built our first internal ad agency by building an amazing group of performance and brand creatives to drive our business and brand forward.

• Led a rebrand of the company to modernize our look and feel, make the system more flexible across all of our touch-points and increase performance in paid channels. 

• Built out our first top of funnel brand campaign in 3 years.

• Helped led the transition of our performance program from one-off, static ads to fully dynamic, one-to-one templated systems using partners such as Smartly.

Health IQ

Executive Creative Director

Nov 2017 - Oct 2019

I have the pleasure of leading the design and marketing teams at Health IQ, helping us to become the fastest growing insurance company ever. Below are some of the things I am most proud of in our journey so far:

• Leading a complete rebrand of the company to better connect with our customer and pave the way for our continued growth.

• Leading our design team in a constant march to discover the new strategies, ads, messaging and corresponding landing pages needed to maintain our profitability as we scale.

• Leading our first expansion into TV, direct mail, partnerships and PR including handling all media, data, production and performance analytics in house.

• Bringing our first fully digital product to market along side our amazing engineering team.

• Leading complete overhaul of our client communication flow, optimizing not only the client experience but also overall conversion.

SALT

Executive Creative Director and Co-Founder

June 2016 - Nov 2017

After a fatal shooting of a young man just steps from my home in Chicago, myself, my wife and a product engineer from Honeywell started Salt, the world’s first non-lethal gun. We set out to disrupt the traditional firearm market by helping parents stop a home intruder without having to risk their child’s life in case of an accident.

• Led company conception, product strategy and positioning.

• Led product and packaging design from concept, prototyping and versioning to shippable final packaged product.

• Established the Salt brand, message, tone of voice and guidelines.

• Led hiring and management of all stakeholders, team and vendors.

• Design and implementation of Salt’s ecommerce store.

• Ongoing, data driven approach to Conversion Rate Optimization of the ecommerce funnel.

• Ongoing Search Engine Optimization through content creation and technical site design mapping.

• Without the ability to use key growth marketing channels (Google and Facebook paid ads), we launched Salt’s social influencer marketing program that has led to 51+ million film views on Facebook alone during 2016 with a budget of $15,000.

• Budget forecasting and cash flow management.

Uber

Head of Brand Marketing

September 2015 - June 2016

As the first Head of Brand at Uber, my role touched almost every team and project at the world’s fastest growing company.

• Worked with the strategy team to solidify global market fit and messaging.

• Developed consistent tone of voice, design and photography style for all marketing assets across Uber’s 579 global cities and teams.

• Built and managed a globally centralized asset library to improve brand consistency.

• Hired and managed teams across the organization’s diverse creative divisions including Brand Marketing, Growth Marketing, Strategy, Copy Writing, Photography and Social.

• Led the restructuring of the global design/marketing organization from a hyper local structure to a regional management structure to vastly improve brand consistency, mentorship and opportunity for individual employee growth. This restructure also decreased redundant marketing spending.

• Stakeholder presentations and management.

• Led Uber’s first national TV campaign and RFP.

• Worked cross functionally with Brand, Growth, Social and PR stakeholders to pitch, sale and implement Uber’s new driver focused message.

LEO BURNETT

Creative Director of Samsung

June 2012 - September 2015

As a founding partner of Leo Burnett's Los Angeles office, I had the great honor of leading Global Marketing and Creative Direction for Samsung Mobile. AKA - Building global adoption of the world's first huge phone (Note) and smart watch (Gear) through globally engaging and relevant stories.

• Located and designed our office in Santa Monica, CA.

• Sourced, hired and mentored the 20-person creative team for Samsung Mobile.

• Built a player-coach creative culture driven by innovation and culturally relevant story tellers.

• Managed the creative marketing for the global launch of the Note3, Note4, Note Tablet, Gear1, Gear2, AllShare and Ecobubble.

• Achieved the highest recorded Purchase Intent Score (our key KPI) of any Samsung launch to date with the Note4 Campaign.

• Managed creative consistency and versioning of assets across 75 global markets.

• Created all internal and external pitch materials to ensure stakeholder buy in of all global launches.

• Managed all global Leo Burnett and Samsung stakeholders (that is a lot of stakeholders FYI)

• Pitched and won the Marshalls account for Leo Burnett Chicago.

Ogilvy & Mather

Creative Director of Coca-Cola Global

March 2010 - February 2012

Helped grow global market share and cultural brand equity for Coke Zero by tapping into globally relevant social influencer networks that could cowrite authentic brand stories with us.

• Pitched and won Global Coke Zero account.

• Spent months alongside key stakeholders, pitching the need for Coca-Cola to move into the growing world of social marketing in order to stay relevant among younger audiences.

• Concepted, pitched and produced all aspects of Coke Zero’s social advertising campaign which included: social influencers, sharable social video content, web design, documentary scripting and execution, TV, print, digital ads, cross property promotion, sound design - even a music video.

• Authored the Global Coke Zero style and tone-of-voice guidelines along with multiple stakeholders at Coca-Cola Global.

TBWA

Sr Art Director

April 2006 - March 2010

To become a great Art Director, you need to learn from great Art Directors. And I was fortunate enough to move to Paris and learn from the very best in the world, Erik Vervroegen and the amazing creatives at TBWA. Over the next four years, I worked on amazing accounts like Playstation and Absolut Vodka and was able to lead my first product launch, the Nissan Juke.

MFP

Art Director

May 2005 - April 2006

I had the great opportunity to join a startup advertising agency right out of grad school where I was allowed to jump into the deep end of the pool on day one. It was in this first year that I learned to pitch my ideas, build decks that persuaded, do campaigns on the cheap and that while there is no substitute for hard work, a great team is the only way to succeed.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Companies Founded: 1 - Ad Agencies Founded: 3 - Pitches Won: Samsung, Coke Zero, Marshalls - Cities Lived In: 8 in the US + Paris - Awards: Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Webbys, Effies, London Internationals, Epica, Cristal, Paris Art Director Club

SOFTWARE

Pen & Paper, Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Excel, G Suite, Wrike, Jira

You can also read up on where I've been on Linkedin.