Degreed: Creative Rebuild
(SERVICES)
Creative Director
Creative Strategy
Branding
(YEAR)
2022
The facility before the facility
Degreed had a meaningful story at the center of its brand: learning as movement, growth as a system, and skills as a way people and companies adapt.
But the creative function was under pressure. The company had gone through restructuring. Capacity had changed. Requests were coming from every direction. The brand was trying to serve enterprise buyers, learning leaders, individual learners, internal teams, external partners, and a market that expected faster, more active, more contextual storytelling.
The work was not only to make the brand look better. It was to help the brand move better.
The Tension
Degreed’s story had not lost its relevance. The system carrying that story had become too strained.
The brand was still leaning on a more static creative model in a digital landscape shaped by motion, sequence, repetition, and channel behavior. Social needed more than a graphic. Web needed more than a page. Campaigns needed more than one-time asset drops. Events needed presence. Product storytelling needed clarity. Thought leadership needed a stronger visual frame.
Internally, the creative operation also needed repair. The team needed clearer intake, better approvals, stronger file discipline, more sustainable production rhythms, and a way to manage demand without letting quality fragment.
The challenge was twofold: modernize how the brand showed up and rebuild the system that allowed creative work to move.
The Idea
The creative response was to shift Degreed from one-off production into deliberate content ecosystems.
Each channel needed its own kind of story. Social needed pace. Web needed depth. Video needed voice. Motion needed rhythm. Campaigns needed repetition. Events needed presence. Sales materials needed usefulness. Product storytelling needed clarity.
That meant rebuilding the work and the way the work moved. I helped reshape the creative function around storytelling, not just output. I created a clearer intake model, helped establish review paths, coordinated contractors and agencies, supported budget planning, and worked across marketing, product, web, IT, growth, social, HR, and sales to make the creative system more useful to the business.
The workflow rebuild was not separate from the brand rebuild. It made better creative possible.
The System
The system changed the behavior of the brand across multiple fronts.
Social became more active, more motion-led, and more aware of how people actually stop, watch, share, and engage. Web became a deeper path from awareness into understanding. Campaigns became phased systems rather than isolated launches. Video, podcasts, webinars, interviews, and executive content gave the brand more voice and cadence. Events and sales materials were brought into a clearer rhythm so the story felt connected across the buyer journey.
Behind that output, the creative operation became more accountable. The Asana intake system gave requests a clearer path. Approval flows reduced confusion. File discipline made handoffs easier. Templates and production expectations helped internal teams and outside partners work from the same foundation.
The result was not simply more content. It was a more coherent creative engine.
The Outcome
The rebuild helped Degreed become more useful, more active, and more measurable across digital channels. One campaign moved average LinkedIn engagement from roughly 35 interactions per post to more than 3,500, contributing to a 1,609% engagement lift. The broader system helped drive 433% social growth, 24% web engagement growth, and a 50% reduction in asset production time.
The numbers mattered because they reflected a deeper change: clarity created momentum. When the story, the workflow, and the channel behavior began to align, the brand moved with more purpose.
