MARKETING | BRANDING | COMMUNICATIONS | EXPERIENCES

Hello! I’m Jim O’Brien and I specialize in innovating visual experiences for audiences. With over 24 years in both pre-sales and post-sales functions, I’ve produced work and led teams for just about any type of visual experience you can think of. Whether it’s marketing campaigns, interactive digital experiences, large events production, or nurturing customer relationships, my objective is always trying to win the hearts and minds of the audience.

As a highly-organized and calculated thinker with artist’s eye, I have a knack for bringing vision to fruition through methodical planning and execution. I am also passionate about being an exceptional leader who motivates people to be their “best selves” every day, and I take pride in fostering fun, healthy, and collaborative work environments.

Leadership

Communications

Visual Experiences

Creative Ideation

Video Production

Complex Orchestration

Scalable Growth

Systems Implementations

Instructional

Awards & Certifications

HubSpot Academy

EMail Marketing Certified

HubSpot-certified in Email Marketing for building email marketing strategies that perform and create trust through best practices in design and segmentation.

2022

Bentley Systems

2020 Founders’ award

Recognized for exceptional employee performance in 2020 for customer onboarding enhancements, exemplary leadership, team growth and performance, cross-company collaboration, and being a tireless advocate for customer perspective.

2021

Indigo Design Awards

2020 Bronze Award

Project role: Creative Director for the 2019 Infrastructure Yearbook, a 436 page collection of 570 innovative infrastructure projects from around the World.

2020

Indigo Design Awards

2019 Bronze Award

Project role: Creative Director for rebranding the 2018 Year In Infrastructure Conference, where innovators showcased their infrastructure projects from around the World.

2019

Bentley Systems

DDI CERTIFIED FACILITATOR

Certified by DDI to conduct employee and leadership training sessions, promoting good business ethics, compliance, and career advancement for the organization.

2014

Platforms / Skills

Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Dreamweaver
Premiere
Acrobat
XD
InCopy

PowerPoint
Word
Excel
SharePoint
Teams

Marketo
HubSpot
Figma
WordPress / Divi
HTML
Sitecore
Webdam / Bynder
Brightcove
Alchemer
Mailchimp
ON24

ClickUp
SharePoint
Teams
MURAL
Smartsheet
Success Factors
JIRA
Basecamp
Slack
GoodSync

SAP
SharePoint
SuccessFactors
Concur
Degreed
LinkedIn Learning
Pluralsight
DDI
Win + Mac OS

Get In Touch

Professional inquiry? Just want to say hello? Send me a note!

Site designed and © by Jim O’Brien

Leadership

Recruitment

With over 16 years experience recruiting talent for the business, I have a great track record for assessing candidates' skills and personalities to gauge the right fit for both the team and organization.

Motivation

I develop high-performing teams by promoting healthy competition, proactive team support, challenging collaborations, self-accountability, recognition for exemplary work, and highlighting valuable impact.

Advancement

My team members know they are my priority and that I support their career aspirations. I keep them industry-competitive with specific training objectives to address skill gaps and gain valuable experience.

Retention

Retaining great people requires leading by example. Being genuine, empathetic, flexible, and consistently involved goes a long way for building trust with people and fostering a desirable working environment.

Communications

Advertising & Marcomm

From production to leadership roles, I've helped comprehensive marketing campaigns succeed through high-impact visuals, proliferation of brand awareness, and consistency of tone across diverse market segments.

Newsletters

I've helped strategize, build, and launch newsletter offerings which innovated layout design for reader experience, overcame challenging logistics for scale, and set groundbreaking engagement performance.

Customer Relations

With the customer's perspective and sentiment in mind, I help formulate best-practice standards and workflows which improve the reach and effectiveness of important business-to-customer related information.

Presentations

When it comes to holding audience attention, a great presentation makes the difference. From PowerPoint and presentation guidelines to large event choreography, I've helped deliver some amazing experiences.

Visual Experiences

Websites

From hand-crafting small business sites to leading creative direction on large enterprise sites, I help ensure website experiences deliver the brand's energy through color, message tone, and thoughtful navigation.

Mobile Apps

I helped expand the skills and offerings of the creative team with acquisition and onboarding of an app design solution and directing development of interactive presentations optimized for mobile devices.

Responsive Design

Delivering communications in a device-agnostic format ensures the best chance of engaging a reader and achieving successful outcomes, and I blend a high-end aesthetic skill with responsive design-thinking.

UX/UI Improvements

Though I'm not a coder/developer myself, I've assisted UX/UI (and other) teams on numerous projects to help prototype interface design changes that will deliver on expectations and improve user experience.

Creative Ideation

Innovation

Whether it’s a new software tool, feature, style, workflow change, or something else… I encourage teams to brainstorm unique ideas and techniques for tackling creative challenges, growth, and sustainability.

Strategy

I partner with campaign stakeholders to interpret goals, scope production resources for support, and develop campaign themes with compelling value propositions and visual presentation for market consumption.

Development

The best creative happens when a team feels involved, heard, and supported. I foster working environments of collaborative spirit, open-mindedness, and trusted guidance to help deliver on deadlines.

Actualization

It’s important for teams to know how their creative work effectively contributed to success. I strive to gather data and feedback on a regular basis, to share back with the team and celebrate their achievements.

Video Production

Storyboarding

With a creative mind for envisioning scenes, I help brainstorm and build compelling storylines that deliver continuity across chronology while ensuring effective message delivery for audience attention spans.

Project Planning

Whether tapping into stock resources or mapping out real-world locations for B-roll using Street View, I cover all the angles and logistics to provide the best possible quality of supporting assets for the project.

Directing

From stakeholders to cast and staff, there's many personalities and roles involved in a video project and I'm socially-adaptive to working with everyone while keenly-aware of their needs to direct a fluid choreography.

Composition

I have a reputation for pinpointing miniscule adjustments in footage splice cuts, transition points, and soundtrack alignments to bring all the video production assets and elements together in emotional harmony.

Complex Orchestration

Large Scale Events

I have led both creative and video teams to create branded themes and deliver the visual experiences for large scale events, while also coordinating vendor arrangements, directional flow mapping, and live event production.

Business Operations

As the business grows and evolves, I’ve helped plan and manage productive changes which meet new goals, scale for sustainability, and avoid unnecessary disruption to system-critical functions.

Vendor Relations

With patience and trust, I help build healthy and successful business relationships with vendors by promoting collaboration and mutual respect that makes working together more enjoyable.

Project Management

Armed with a mind for comprehending granular details, I am able to quickly think through the logistics of complex executions and allocate the required skills, tools, and techniques to deliver actionable results.

Scalable Growth

Capacity Planning

With significant production experience, I am well-versed at load-balancing team capacity against demand, identifying supply chain bottlenecks, setting rational expectations, predictability, and mitigating risk.

Optimizing Resources

For +2 decades I’ve been maximizing production funnels at minimal costs. If there were ever a real-life MacGyver, you may have just found him! I’ve overcome so many challenges and thrived in changing environments.

Goal Setting

Using S.M.A.R.T. practices, genuine understanding, and trusted guidance, I help align people with business goals that provide them growth opportunities while functionally helping the business to move the needle.

Predictability

The only constant is change, and nothing is without risk. Predictability is impossible to master, but I try my best anyway. I love brainstorming all the nuances involved and connecting rationale which leads to outcomes.

Systems Implementations

Digital Asset Management

I’ve helped configure, onboard, and administer 2 Digital Asset Management platforms, including all metadata + keyword taxonomies, bulk asset migration, UI design, user workflows, and access permissions.

Video Streaming

I took a lead role in the research, acquisition, and implementation of a new video streaming platform which integrated into the company’s website (Sitecore) and improved the site experience for visitors.

Turnkey Transcription

I helped acquire and setup an integrated video transcription service, which drastically reduced turnaround times and allowed scaling of all website videos to have closed captions for ADA compliance.

Digital Publishing

When mobile apps were just taking off, I brought in Adobe’s digital publishing platform, which enabled the creative team to up-level their skillset and offer design services for mobile-friendly interactive experiences.

Instructional

Authoring

Recognized as an early pioneer for pushing Photoshop beyond its photo-editing niche, I was published in a short journal series, authoring artistic approaches to freehand digital illustrations in Photoshop.

Facilitation

I became certified in facilitating DDI (Development Dimensions International) training curriculum to help promote positive work culture through ethics, management, and advancement guidance for employees.

Navigation

Whether it's the need for step-by-step instructions, a journey path or flowchart, or illustrating an interactive prototype, I excel at blending high quality creative aesthetics with sensible functionality.

Documentation

Redundancy and repeatability are keys to scaling operations with efficiency and consistency. I help maintain high quality standards in team operations through ease of onboarding and cross-training for coverage.