Mitchell K. Hagan

About

I build brands, creative teams and systems that help organizations communicate more clearly, move faster and grow.

For more than 10 years, I’ve led in-house creative teams inside global consulting, professional services, financial services, cybersecurity, SaaS and insurance companies, including Capgemini, Spencer Stuart, OneSpan, Northern Trust and Alera Group.

My work tends to begin at moments of change.

A company is growing. A brand no longer reflects the business. Creative has become a production queue instead of a strategic partner. Teams are working hard but the systems around them are making the work harder than it needs to be.

That’s where I do some of my best work.

I’ve led global and enterprise rebrands, built and rebuilt in-house creative organizations, developed brand systems, created scalable creative operations, partnered with executive leadership, and connected brand, creative, sales, marketing, digital, communications and compliance around a common story.

For me, creative leadership layers brand, storytelling, people and operations.

Great creative work requires all four.

Impact

Throughout my career, I’ve helped organizations turn creative into a measurable business capability.

At Alera Group, I led a corporate rebrand in 7 months against an original 14-month timeline, reaching 100% adoption across the organization within four months. I also rebuilt creative operations to support approximately 2,000 deliverables annually while increasing output by more than 400% and reducing publishing errors by 99%.

At Spencer Stuart, I led a global brand transformation that reached 100% adoption within six weeks and contributed to an approximately 300% increase in web traffic, while increasing marketing output by 80% and reducing external creative spend by more than $120,000 annually.

At Capgemini, I co-led a 20-person global creative organization supporting more than $2 billion in new-business pursuits with an 89% down-select rate.

I believe strongly that creative should make the business better.

Leadership

I’ve led creative teams for most of my career, from small specialized groups to globally distributed organizations of 20 people.

My job as a leader is not simply to approve creative.

It is to create an environment where talented people understand the problem, have the tools and context they need, know what success looks like, and have enough ownership to solve it.

I believe strongly in developing people rather than managing around them. I want designers, writers, producers and creative partners to understand the business behind the assignment and grow into people who can make increasingly strategic decisions on their own.

That means clear expectations, candid conversations, curiosity, trust, coaching and accountability.

And preferably a sense of humor.

Brand Transformation

I have repeatedly led organizations through brand change, from strategy and identity through rollout, governance and adoption.

I’m particularly interested in what happens after the agency presentation is over.

How does the brand actually work? Can employees understand it? Can marketers scale it? Can sales leverage it? Does it hold together across digital, video, social, events, presentations and thought leadership? Can hundreds or thousands of people use it without slowly destroying it?

A successful brand system has to survive contact with the organization.

Creative Operations

Creative organizations need enough structure to scale without becoming factories.

I’ve built intake systems, workflows, approval processes, quality-control systems and brand governance models using platforms including Monday.com, PageProof and Workfront.

I look for the friction.

Where is work getting stuck? Where are people doing something manually that could be systematized or be improved through AI? Where are unclear approvals creating rework? Where is process protecting quality, and where is process simply creating process?

Operations may not sound like the glamorous side of creative leadership, but good operations give creative people more time to actually be creative.

Storytelling

My background began in design, but my work has increasingly centered on storytelling.

Brand systems. Executive presentations. Digital experiences. Thought leadership. Sales pursuits. Video. Social content. Long-form and short-form storytelling.

I’ve spent much of my career translating complicated ideas into communications people can understand quickly and remember.

That remains one of the things I enjoy most about the work.

Creative Craft

I am still a practicing creative.

My background includes graphic design, information design, typography, presentation design, digital experiences, video production and editing.

I work across Adobe Creative Cloud, PowerPoint, digital and workflow platforms, and increasingly AI-assisted creative tools.

I also write, shoot, edit and produce my own digital content, which keeps me close to something senior creative leaders can sometimes drift away from: making things.

Strategic Partner

The best creative organizations are deeply connected to the business.

Throughout my career I’ve partnered with CEOs, CMOs, marketing and communications leaders, digital and social media, compliance officers, external agencies, freelancers and vendors.

I ask a lot of questions.

What problem are we actually solving? Who needs to care? What do we want them to understand? What do we want them to do? And is the thing we're making actually helping?

Sometimes the answer is a campaign. Sometimes it’s a new brand system. Sometimes it’s a video, presentation or digital experience. And sometimes the smartest creative decision is fixing the system behind all of it.

Education

My perspective on creative leadership is also informed by a Master of Science in Communication from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunications from Ball State University.

I’ve also taught graphic design at the university level, which reinforced something I already believed: Teaching creative people how to think is much more valuable than simply teaching them how to execute.

What are you trying to change?

I’m most interested in organizations where something meaningful is happening: growth, transformation, a changing brand, a creative organization that needs rebuilding, or a business trying to tell a better story.

Those are interesting problems.

And interesting problems are usually where I can help.

Contact me at: mitch.k.hagan@gmail.com