Work History
Justin Prough, is a Creative Director with a strong suit in art direction, mentoring talent, winning business and shepherding brands. His teams benefit from his history of platform-agnostic advertising, applied technology and digital design, which has enhanced his ability to deliver compelling brand stories across a wide range of evolving media.
MXM - part of Accenture
Los Angeles, CA
Formerly a division of Meredith Publishing with seven offices and 600+ employees, MXM, “The only content-powered digital agency,” was one of the largest independent agencies in North America, and the little known digital content engine for many Fortune 50 companies.
Executive Creative Director
11|12 – 10|16
Executed a complete reboot of the ethos and the go-to-market personality of MXM. Re-forged the web-dev shop into a competitive full-service digital/social agency. Rebuilt, retrained and nurtured a team of 30+ Creative, UX and Content Producers to get it done.
40% of my time was devoted to shoring up client relationships, raising the creative bar and growing existing business. Another 20% was dedicated to talent acquisition, inspiration and development. the remaining 40% involved pitch work and repositioning the agency.
Hired as a change agent, I’m proud of the creative culture I foster, which directly impacted our ability to win. The last year and one-half of my tenure, we won 10 of 12 stand-up pitch presentations, adding seven new AOR clients to our roster: Benjamin Moore, Sun Maid, Wellmark, Bob Evans, Brother/P-touch, Chuck E. Cheese’s and Behr/Kilz.
New Client Wins
Digital Artist, Freelance Creative
Greater Los Angeles, CA
6|09 – present
Left Chiat\Day to scratch a creative itch, producing a body of surfing related digital-fine art and licensed design under the Justin Prough and Spareliver brands. These endeavors are ongoing.
Also, active as a creative hitman for several agencies/brands before joining MXM.
TBWA\Chiat\Day & Tequila
Los Angeles, CA
ADWEEK & AD AGE 2008, Global Agency of the Year - With 256 offices in 77 countries.
Creative Director
12|07 – 6|09
Orchestrated the creative excellence of all Nissan North America advertising. Directed a team of 20+ media agnostic creatives, responsible for all facets of Nissan’s national advertising across broadcast, interactive, OOH, print and emerging media.
Associate CD—Interactive
11|05 – 12|07
Responsible for Nissan and Infiniti interactive advertising and emerging media. Hired to elevate the creative, strengthen client relationships and up-sell innovative and emerging ideas. In under two years I grew the digital business enough to more than triple the creative staff.
In addition to leading Nissan, I was frequently asked to step in on other accounts and new business. For example, my campaign work helped win the P&G, Pur water account. Earning the honor to work directly with Lee Clow.
Ignited
El Segundo, CA
A privately held full-service advertising agency focused on marketing to the young and young at heart.
Associate CD—Interactive
3|02 – 11|05
Responsible for growing the interactive department from under 5% to over 20% of agency billings through digital advertising innovation and excellence across an expanding portfolio of clients. Reported directly to the Executive Creative Director and was responsible for digital creative resourcing, inspiration and direction.
CheckOut.com
Beverly Hills, CA
(no relation to the current Checkout.com)
Creative Director
6|00 – 6|01
Directed the creative vision and design of music, movie and game promotional mini-sites and display advertising. Additionally, led the UX and design of a proprietary content-management tool and a web based personal music server.
Art Director
1|00 – 6|00
Led the creative team responsible for the continued UX and design evolution of CheckOut.com, while also shepherding the Art Directors responsible for creating the ever-changing editorial and promotional content that populated it.
Senior Designer
1|99 - 1|00
Key designer responsible for the inaugural UX, design, iconography systems and flash components of CheckOut.com.
7th Level & Pulse Entertainment
Glendale & Santa Monica, CA
7th Level, video-game developer turned tech company, created the first webpage-embeddable avatars that could lip-sync from an audio file and gesture in reaction to HTML events around them.
Note:
(Hired from Pulse by 7th Level during the failing P7 merger.)
Pulse Entertainment, the video game developer behind Bad Mojo and Space Bunnies Must Die, which later developed web-based, interactive, 3D environments for B2C applications.
Lead Designer
8|97 – 11|98
Member of two-person creative team charged with developing proofs-of-concept for the companies’ suite of web-based technologies. Involved in all aspects of marketing, from custom created demos for clients like IBM and MetLife, to avatar prototypes and digital-press-kits to advertise our software products.
Haas Automation
Oxnard, CA
The largest Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) machine tool builder in the western world, which is probably more widely known for their F1 racing team.
Lead Designer
12|96 – 6|97
Responsible for setting the overarching tonality of the advertising, and supervising the work of junior designers as we developed the company’s first website.
Unified the corporate identity system while infusing it with a motorsport-inspired personality. I’m proud that the work I did 20 years ago is still in use today.
Designer
9|95 – 12|96
Visual creative lead, responsible for moving advertising in-house. Successfully reworked, redesigned and executed all advertising materials: print ads, brochures, posters, direct-mail and events.