Davis Ballard

Founder, Creative Director & Brand Strategist

A studio of one. I run strategy, creative direction, design, copy, web, and production for brands that want senior work without the agency layer. The studio runs on Abracadabra, a proprietary AI engine I built: 24 specialist agents, 5 million lines of code. One hire covers a strategist, a creative director, and a production team.

• The Walt Disney Company: Co-hosted the strategy workshop with 55-time Cannes Lion winner Julian Cole that set brand and comms strategy for 2020.
• 1000heads / Google: Creative lead on Google Workspace social. Campaign work across Google, NFL, NBA. Two dozen pieces, including the account's most engaged post in 18 months. $ open →
• Cheil Worldwide / Samsung: Brand, comms, creative, and naming strategies. NYE Times Square campaign.
• The Macallan: Creative for VIP events at The French Laundry, Post Ranch Inn, and Aman. Visual systems and brand assets.
• SET ACTIVE: Creative Director. 25 merch pieces, 2 brand campaigns, 3 photoshoots; merch preview response tripled order quantities. 6 RBI, 1 Grand Slam in the Annual Kickball Championship. $ open →
• Language Media: Won the Blink-182 pitch through design work. Music video treatment for A$AP Ferg "Jet Lag" (Dir. Jason Goldwatch). $ open →
• Virtue Worldwide / Vice: Pivoted Select Cannabis comms launch strategy through COVID.
• Vacation® freelance return: Email and digital ad creative after the full-time role.
• Sickbird Productions / Julie: Creative direction and TikTok for emergency contraceptive brand Julie, breaking taboos with Gen Z. Led creative for Scotch Porter IG. $ open →
• Dinari: Creative direction for an SEC-registered crypto company (Freenome/Crunchyroll founders): animation, video, social, web, CRM. Skunkworks for SolidViolet. $ open →

Co-Founder, Head of Creative & Strategy

The personal injury lead-generation company built on the premise that injured people deserve better advertising, and the attorneys who represent them deserve better leads.

• Lead strategy, creative, and product: consumer advertising campaigns built on the Disney, Google, Samsung, and NFL work, delivered exclusively to one attorney partner per market.

Co-Founder, Creative Director

A vinyl label with complete creative direction from name to logo to all nine releases. Distribution by Subwax BCN.

• Sold out all seven limited 300-copy pressings, the first in 48 hours; 280k+ views on a single A1 track.
• The only US label featured in Beatport's editorial on the rise of new minimal; stocked in shops from Japan to the UK, Germany, Spain, and Russia.

Creative & Ecomm Lead · First Full-Time Employee

Signed on six months before launch to work directly with the co-founders to build and launch a breakthrough beauty brand, helping take it from $0 to an eight-figure valuation in under 18 months. "Debatably the most exciting sunscreen to hit the market since Anthelios" – VOGUE.

• Creative lead on the brand launch, working one on one with co-founder Lach Hall; helped concept the six product launches that followed and set the roadmap for five more including Classic Whip, Orange Gelée, and Coconut Oil SPF: research, branding, advertising creative, copy, packaging, positioning, pricing, and product design.
• Built the fake job titles campaign: Lach's idea, my titles. I wrote the vocabulary and grammar in Tracery, ran every combination, and we spiderwebbed off what hit, down to roughly 1,500 (Lime Wedge Trigonometry Technician, Chief Jacuzzi Inspector, Head of Champagne Snorkeling), and I designed the card they printed on. 12,000+ claimed in the first 5 days and 29 million earned impressions, all organic, on zero ad spend.
• 14 beauty awards in the first year (GQ, Esquire, Vogue, Refinery29, Shape, PopSugar, Gear Patrol) and over 300 positive press mentions.
• The products I designed kept winning after I left: Allure Best of Beauty three times (Baby Oil 2023 and 2024, Orange Gelée 2025), Esquire's Best After-Sun 2023, Byrdie's Best Sunscreen 2023.
• Wrote the pricing strategy: price tables with CPG equivalents per SKU against Amazon, CVS, Sephora, and big retail.
• Created, sourced, and ran the brand's ambassador and influencer program.
• Creative directed the product launch events; the scratch-off cards and car air fresheners started as my ideas.
• Directed photoshoots, special projects, brand experiences, and easter eggs; grew the CRM to tens of thousands of "honorary employees."
• Architected the DTC site (IA, page concepting, competitive teardown, product page structure, checkout flow, copy) and managed it; designed and coded the wholesale site solo; wrote and shipped the transactional email and SMS program.
• Led all brand marketing from strategy through execution.

Freelance Strategy & Creative

Partnership with 55-time Cannes Lion winner Julian Cole. 7,500+ members from Google, Amazon, Netflix, Droga5, Spotify, The New York Times, and McCann.

• Coded, designed, and co-launched the academy; helped create 26 strategy decks; grew the newsletter from 9,000 to 20,000 subscribers in a year.
• Partnered with Julian Cole on four Fortune 500 strategy consulting projects (Disney, Samsung, and others; details on request).
• Produced the sold-out Strategy Super Sizer workshop in LA with Mark Pollard, featuring strategists from Spotify, BBH, Deutsch, 72andSunny, and Wieden+Kennedy.

Co-Founder, Head of Strategy

Co-founded from idea to full-service digital marketing agency serving major healthcare institutions and non-profits.

• Digital strategy for McLean Hospital, the USA's largest psychiatric hospital, bringing in an additional 6,660 organic visitors a month. Digital strategies for Harvard and Stanford.
• Six enterprise healthcare clients (Optum, McLean, Mass General, Scripps, Dana-Farber, Partners Healthcare); ran remote teams of up to 10 across paid and organic campaigns.

Associate Creative Director

• Technology incubator in Soho. Youngest on a team of veterans from Ogilvy, Edelman, MTV, and Time; created everything from graphics and content to iOS wireframes and brand identities.

Booking Agent, Digital Marketing

• Signed two artists at the boutique talent agency World War Trading Co.; built their blog and site and ran email campaigns reaching 100,000+ music industry professionals a week.

Resident DJ, Digital Marketing & Promotions

• Resident DJ at top Boston nightclubs; designed the flyers and ran the digital campaigns for the nights.

Founder

• Threw, promoted, branded, and DJ'd the parties open to close; grossed $60k in under four years.