Mark Ford

Background

About Mark Ford

As Lead Creative, I shape visual identities for brands and convert broad marketing ideas into actionable campaigns. My team brings advertising & marketing capabilities in-house which improves control, decreases time-to-market and reduces non-working dollars considerably. My strengths combine market research, creative thinking, and software skills into a passion for visual branding and storytelling. My initial “career” as an oil painter taught me to enjoy working from a blank canvas and ignited my passion for making the world a prettier place. This early experience in working from scratch influences how I set the direction for all creative processes. When creating concepts for national brands, I begin with a deep dive into their prior campaign performance, their heritage, and where the company envisions the brand going. After collecting all relevant data, the distillation process begins uncovering a brand’s common denominator that guides us in creating effective, consistent and engaging brand identities. CREATIVE – I lead the creative exploration and execution of campaigns done internally.(Examples of my work can be viewed online at markford.org.) I’ve earned 8 awards in may last two roles; Outstanding Creative Direction (2015,2016), Above & Beyond Award (2015), and Visual Branding (2014) just to name a few. TIME TO MARKET – What takes agencies a month, takes me a week. I save the company time and money and the brand managers gain a greater ability to refine their campaigns and marketing assets. After success with Wisk’s® Laundry Room Contest campaign in 2012, we expanded our in-house business, ‘all®, Snuggle®, Sunlight®, Purex®, Persil®, Dial®, Right Guard® and others soon selected us as their preferred creative resource. COLLABORATION – I learn from the experiences of others and listen well. This helps ensure all stakeholders weigh in before any initial creative directions are pitched. Partnering with different perspectives and varying seniority levels helps me understand what success looks like to brand and leads to a quicker, more direct path to creative approvals.