● DAVIS BALLARD SUB_DIVE_LOG // BB-180524

Davis Ballard — Head of Brand, Creative Director. Los Angeles, 18 years. Diving for pearls.

SPECIMEN DAVIS BALLARD ID: DB-731-001 CLASS: CREATIVE HEAD OF BRAND CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRAND STRATEGIST LOCATION LOS ANGELES EXPERIENCE 18 YEARS ABALONE PEARL RARITY EXTREME 1 IN A MILLION DAVIS BALLARD DIVING FOR PEARLS
SPECIMENDAVIS BALLARDID: DB-731-001 · CLASS: CREATIVE
ROLEHEAD OF BRANDCREATIVE DIRECTOR · BRAND STRATEGIST
LOCATIONLOS ANGELESEXPERIENCE: 18 YEARS
ABALONE PEARLRARITY EXTREME1 IN A MILLION
SELECT CLIENTS20 ENTRIES // 2007-2025
THE STORYLOG // 18 YEARS
PORTFOLIO.APPDECK ORDER
VACATION :: SLIDE 0601/06
FEED 02
FEED 03
DOC // STORY.TXT18 YEARS LOGGED
THE STORY.

Eighteen years. Every seat in the building. First full-time hire at Vacation®, six months before launch, when the company was still a pitch deck: 29 million impressions launch week, 14 beauty awards first year, zero toward eight figures. Then I left, and the products I designed kept winning: Allure Best of Beauty three times, and $70M from VMG Partners at a $210M valuation. Before and since: brand and comms strategy for Disney and four Fortune 500s beside 55-time Cannes Lion winner Julian Cole. Creative lead on Google Workspace, where I made its most-engaged post in eighteen months. Samsung, New Year's Eve, Times Square. A sold-out vinyl label I named, designed, and co-founded.

Strategy, creative, code, craft. One head. Somewhere in there I stopped handing work off. I learned to write it, design it, direct it and build it, which is why the strategy and the thing that finally ships still say the same thing. That is why one person can cover a job that usually takes four.

$ ./creative-portfolio
DOC // APPROACH.TXTDIVE PROTOCOL
THE APPROACH.

Every job is a dive. I go in with the idea, bring in the room, and push it forward, sideways, deeper. Not until it's good. Good is where everyone else stops. Until it gives me the chills.

Almost every shell comes up empty. Shine is not the pearl, and if you can't tell the difference you're hoping for luck or settling for mediocrity. I keep diving until we surface the real thing. Then I'm the one who says: that's it.

Then the pressure test, against what actually sells. The unglamorous science of how brands grow. Then it gets built, by the same head that wrote it, so nothing gets lost in translation.

Amazing work gets you somewhere better than you could have imagined. That is what the dive is for.

$ ./contact
SHELLS SCANNED000
BEARING PEARL00
PEARL DETECTED
SHELL OPENED
Opened abalone shell holding a baroque pearl
A diver descending a deep trench toward an opened shell holding a pearl
THE HIRE
RATED FULL DEPTH

FULL-TIME / CONTRACT / FRACTIONAL

$ ./resume$ ./contact$ ./linkedin

$ cat ./roles.txt
>HEAD OF BRAND
>HEAD OF MARKETING
>CREATIVE DIRECTOR
>CREATIVE STRATEGIST
>CREATIVE LEAD
>SENIOR ART DIRECTOR
A periscope breaking the night ocean surface
UP PERISCOPE

$ ./contact