2–4+ weeks
Creative sprints
Open-ended vision and concept work: research, independent thinking, collaborative ideation, stakeholder alignment, and production of the selected direction.
Google / Media.Monks / 2021–2023
Creative Squad
A dedicated creative operating unit built to turn strategic direction into tangible, testable work.
At Media.Monks, I helped establish and operate a standing team for Google that combined the exploratory range of a pitch group with the repeatable rhythm of a production team.
- My role
- Program Manager
- Initial team
- 2-person governance layer + 6-person creative core
- Partner
- Google Brand Unit
- Output
- Strategic concepts, campaign thinking, and day-to-day creative
Retrospective adapted from the team’s March 2021 onboarding deck.
The model
A stable core team with more than one gear.
A bridge between broad strategy and finished creative.
The squad translated strategic directions, product features, and campaign questions into visual concepts that stakeholders could react to. It also handled smaller creative tasks without derailing the larger work.
I served as program manager in the two-person governance layer, partnered with a creative lead and Google brand leads. I managed the stream of work across intake, prioritization, scope, staffing, timing, task state, reviews, and delivery.
1–2 weeks
Ad hoc
Less complex asks that all or part of the squad could execute alongside a sprint, from visual refinements to templates and focused creative uplift.
1 day
Consulting
A quick written response or working session where one or two squad members supplied an informed opinion or a second set of eyes.
The process
Protected research, visible decisions, and a clear path to delivery.
A sprint had a repeatable spine.
The cadence could compress for a short sprint or extend across a month, but the underlying sequence stayed recognizable. Strategy entered as a question. The team turned it into options. Reviews narrowed those options into production.
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01 / Intake
Prioritize the right ask
Brand leads collected requests, aligned on priority, and named the stakeholder responsible for the brief and context.
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02 / Brief
Define the question
The squad aligned on the strategic problem, available research, prior campaign context, timeline, and required team shape.
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03 / Research
Protect independent thinking
Each team member had a full day to gather references, propose thought starters, and add a personal point of view.
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04 / Sprint
Create together
A 90- to 120-minute working session used focused 15-minute rounds, voting, and clustering to turn individual ideas into directions.
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05 / Make
Review, refine, deliver
Stakeholder workshops and a two-day check-in rhythm narrowed the work. The squad then produced and delivered the selected direction.
Working infrastructure
Ordinary tools, explicit jobs.
Jira
One visible task state, owner, due date, review handoff, and feedback trail.
Mural
A shared canvas for research, fast ideation rounds, voting, and concept clusters.
Drive
A predictable home for each sprint or ad hoc ask, organized by creative discipline.
Selected work
Seven early examples from February and March 2021.
Google TV Watchlist
- Challenge
- What would a campaign for Google TV Watchlists look like?
- Approach
- Show that watching Google TV is both personal and social by inspiring people to create and share their Watchlists.
- Result
- We explored curated Watchlists and a campaign built around sharing them as an expression of feeling, creativity, and personality.
Digital Event Best Practices
- Challenge
- What are innovative ways that Google can bring digital events to life?
- Approach
- Create a more human digital event where attendees could connect with one another and with what was happening on screen.
- Result
- Instead of recreating a physical event online, we used contemporary technology to rethink how a digital event could work on its own terms.
Google Play Event Playbook
- Challenge
- How could a detailed marketing playbook be adapted for an audience that is inherently averse to marketing?
- Approach
- Use specific knowledge of developer events to create a customized, adoptable system instead of off-brand one-offs.
- Result
- We created easy-to-use guidelines and templates designed specifically for developer marketing events.
Your world, opened. global campaign
- Challenge
- How could we raise awareness that Android is part of the Google brand?
- Approach
- Use recurring elements from across the mobile ecosystem to tell human stories and create cohesion across the brand.
- Result
- The initial thinking gave shape to early concepts that could continue developing across divisions as the campaign grew.
Android Spotlight Videos uplift
- Challenge
- How could we improve consistency and performance in an existing video series while helping future videos repeat that success?
- Approach
- Apply patterns from viewing-habit analysis to lower-lift edits that could improve existing creative.
- Result
- We created a functional video template that preserved creative freedom while providing a proven structure for consistent output.
Wear OS 3 Reveal
- Challenge
- How could we communicate the Google and Samsung relationship without compromising either brand?
- Approach
- Give each brand the right space and deference while making the shared ecosystem clear to consumers.
- Result
- We showed how the partnership could live across announcement creative and real-world formats while staying true to both brands.
Google Play Pass Quicksave
- Challenge
- How could we better organize a recurring showcase of apps available through Google Play Pass?
- Approach
- Adapt the existing header and structure to simplify the content, strengthen Play Pass recognition, and make the post more useful.
- Result
- We delivered an adaptable header template and reordered post structure designed to keep readers engaged and oriented.
The takeaway
The value was not just the output. It was making ambiguity workable.
A small team can cover surprising range when the operating model is explicit.
Creative Squad gave broad strategic prompts a dependable route from question to artifact. Research time was protected. Ideas became visible early. Stakeholders had clear moments to shape the work. Smaller asks had somewhere to go without consuming a full campaign process.
The lesson I carried forward is simple: creative range comes from the people, but repeatable range comes from the system around them.
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