James Williamson Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Il, Us

Elk Grove Village, Il, Us

Creative Director over retail activation, helping promote our full line of premium, natural meats and cheese while transitioning/establishing a new brand-look nationally.

Chicago, Il, Us

Seasoned creative, problem solver, and manager. Experience in 360 shopper marketing, retail design & activation, promotions, and e-commerce. Key Achievements: • Heading the environmental graphics portion of a concept, prototype store for T.J. Maxx. The current standard format for the retailer. • Several concept hotel projects for Hilton and Marriott through FRCH Design Worldwide, helping redefine the modern, lobby experience.• Extensive work with Saatchi & Saatchi X on shopper marketing and packaging projects, including a reinvention of the gastrointestinal aisle for Prilosec OTC, a salty snack aisle redesign for Frito Lay, and several holiday-themed packaging projects for Millstone Coffee.• Co-led a comprehensive re-branding of Easy Spirit shoes for Nine West Group. The new brand personality was rolled out over a 12 month period including logo, complete redesign of all packaging, direct mail, display signage, merchandise branding, store design and other assorted collateral materials, helping bridge the more pragmatic brand to its stylish sister.• Created a brand of giftware & books from scratch using AI and on-demand printing as a learning exercise for an Etsy and Amazon store.

Modesto, California, Us

Creative Director working on E. & J. Gallo's activation and e-commerce initiatives. Was re-engaged from a previous full-time leadership role to help during pandemic transitions.Key Achievements:• Concepted several seasonal programs to help bolster ongoing relevancy of the DTC website. A grilling promotion, tying steak cuts to specific wine types, garnered the highest engagement to that date for the DTC website.• Creative directed ongoing e-mail/digital campaigns to educate shoppers about wine and the on-line ordering experience. • Creative directed and concepting of in-store promotions for Target and Whole Foods. The promotions tied numerous seasonal wine-forward campaigns to the retailers' existing marketing calendars across the entire purchasing cycle.• Concepted and creative directed a modular, cost-effective, display-at-shelf with updatable promotional graphics for independent liquor stores.

Chicago, Us

Creative director over the JM Smucker's Portfolio, Naturelo Vitamins, Airly, and Sara Lee accounts. My team was let go due to agency layoffs.

Miami, Florida, Us

Creative department lead, directing full-time internal and external designers working on international branding, CX, UX, UI, and brand-placemaking projects. Key achievements:• Helped improve, review and establish protocol and procedures for this rapidly growing firm, with offices in Toronto, Chicago, San Antonio, and Monterrey, Mexico.• Creative directed signage and retail communication for special initiatives within AT&T retail locations.• Creative directed placemaking projects for AT&T call centers across the country. Tied each location to the regional geography and culture. Projects included way finding, super-graphics, dimensional installations, immersive video walls, and digital content.• Transitioned the creative team from full-time in-office work, to a fully remote working model.

Modesto, California, Us

Founder and creative lead over Gallo Shopper 360, the internal shopper marketing agency serving the E. & J. Gallo portfolio of over 120 wine and spirits brands.Key achievements/responsibilities included:• Creation, Building, and creative leadership of Gallo's internal shopper marketing agency, supporting our national retail partners, on-premise, and digital-consumer business.• Ideation and implementation of omni-channel shopper marketing platforms/programs for brands including High Noon, Barefoot, Apothic, New Amsterdam, Camarena, etc.• Creative direction and concepting of Rosé Your Way, an omni-channel promotion of Gallo's Rosé portfolio. The program generated 20.9 million impressions and more than 180.5k interactions, it drove impressive sales results for our retailers; +124.6% in dollars sales vs. the previous year. In the first two months, the Rosé category within IRI grew +67%/ +66% in dollar sales and volume March-April, and Gallo's Rosé SKUs grew +83%/ +112% respectively in dollar sales and volume during that same time frame, resulting in Gallo brands outperforming the market by about 15% in dollar sales, and almost double in volume.• Design lead over several retail category reinventions, managing external architectural, retail, and design firms.• Planned and implemented several RFP explorations with outside agencies, manufacturers, and design-build firms.• Led brand voice, campaign creation, and refinement for several of our flagship brands.• Participated in the creation of Gallo's KUBE system of shopper/consumer/occasion-based segmentations, as well as how we present these findings, in digestible formats, both internally and to our distributors, retail partners, and sales teams.• Creative direction over Gallo's industrial design/structure team.

Oak Brook, Il, Us

Was responsible for the leadership and project management of the Creative Services team across multiple offices for TOMY toy brands including Chuggington, John Deere, Pokémon, Sonic, along with Disney properties Inside Out, Miles From Tomorrowland, The Good Dinosaur and Zootopia. Oversight included packaging (structure, branding, graphic design and copywriting), shopper marketing, trade marketing, digital, and collateral.Key projects included:• The management of a creative department made up of eleven packaging, POP, catalog and digital designers.• Acted as a packaging creative liaison with Disney Consumer Products to help Tomy’s working relationship as a licensee. • Created and Implemented best practices and procedures to dovetail with Disney’s production calendar and oversaw internal package design quality control.• Helped win the Zootopia license through innovative packaging and structure solutions for pitch meeting.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Creative lead for Nestlé Purina Shopper Marketing. Initially was responsible for pre-store, in-store and in-aisle initiatives for PetSmart, Kroger and HEB. Responsibilities were increased by Purina within six months to also include Target, Walmart and Sam's Club, helping triple the business for Ryan. Later, Meijer, Petco, Ahold and Dollar General were also added. Key projects included:• Several projects for multiple retailers pursuing departmental re-inventions and design on a category scale.• Implementation and art direction of a $500K, multi-location photo shoot for Purina, building an internal stock library for the client.• Helping secure a brand's permanent end-cap placement in a national pet specialty store through the invention of a pop-up tray shopping system.• Design and implementation of several high-profile product launches, including shopper marketing research and strategy to help optimize messaging for each of our key retailers.

Itasca, Il, Us

Responsibilities included the packaging and display needs for quarterly launches of over 2,000 SKU's from concept through production, spanning dozens of brands including several licensed properties including Disney, Gund, and National Geographic.Helped coordinated overseas specification, sourcing, engineering and pricing with Enesco's Asian offices and helped problem-solve shipping, regulatory and mass production challenges for this international giftware firm.

Advertising/design studio specializing in national brand development, real estate development, retail, shopping center and entertainment industries. Included a comprehensive re-branding of Easy Spirit shoes for Nine West Group. The new brand personality was rolled out over a 12 month period including logo, complete redesign of all packaging, direct mail, display signage, merchandise branding, store design and other assorted collateral materials, helping bridge the more pragmatic brand to its stylish sister.For 10 years KCD was the agency of record for Kenwood Towne Centre, a regional destination mall in Cincinnati, Ohio. The firm won numerous, national awards for work tying the center to local cultural institutions with a broadcast, promotions and print campaign. Within the first 3 years KCD helped double the sales-per-square-foot without any facility expansion or improvement. This kept Kenwood Towne Centre in the nation's top 10 performing shopping centers by sales-per-square-foot for 9 years. In the business to business arena, Madison Marquette, an international real estate development firm, engaged KCD to develop a new marketing campaign including a redesign of the graphic standards and approach for all advertising, print and digital communication. During the first year of the campaign, inquiries more than doubled for new business.Additional clients included the founding chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Scripps Howard Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Scripps Networks.http://mycreativesource.com

Advertising/design studio focusing on toy, apparel, food and other consumer branding and packaging projects. Included several multi-SKU projects for Kenner, ConAgra Foods and Totes, including brands such as Orville Redenbacher's, Thompson WaterSeal, Congo, Zots, and Swamp Thing.

Covington, Kentucky, Us

Established and built the packaging department from scratch, transforming a historically promotional firm to a packaging firm, resulting in a four-fold growth of business over two years.