Wendy’s doesn’t do slow. The brand moves fast, takes creative risks, and expects production to keep pace. I led national broadcast production for 50+ campaigns per year across General and Hispanic markets, managing a $40M budget. The challenge wasn’t one great campaign. My role: lead production for all national broadcast. 50+ campaigns a year. General and Hispanic markets. $40 million budget. Four years straight. 2017–2021.
My Role: Advertising Production Lead
Every inefficiency adds up. One delay cascades into several others. Misalignment turns into missed windows. Late decisions get expensive fast. The real tension wasn’t speed versus quality. It was protecting creative ambition while operating at relentless volume, without burning teams out or breaking budgets.
We treated production as infrastructure, not support. Instead of heroics, we built systems that removed friction and forced alignment early. My role was to coordinate the smartest people in the room, clear obstacles fast, and protect creative ambition without burning teams or blowing budgets.
When I came into the role, the problems were familiar ones. Briefs arriving late. Timelines slipping before a single frame was shot. The cascade effect of small delays compounding across a portfolio of 50+ campaigns. None of it was catastrophic in isolation, but at this volume, every inefficiency multiplied.
The fix wasn't complicated. It was disciplined. Earlier briefings. Tighter process at the front end. Vendor relationships built on trust rather than transaction. Timelines designed to absorb chaos rather than assume everything would go smoothly. Basic updates, applied consistently, across every campaign, for four years straight. That consistency is what turned a production system into a production machine..
Creative ambition met production reality before we went to camera.
Decisions happened early and often.
Schedules assumed revisions, feedback, and pivots.
Overages flagged in process, not after the fact.
Creative protected in real time.
Parallel creative, shared infrastructure.
Six moments from the machine: creative in motion, decisions in real time, and production built to scale.
Four years at this volume teaches you things a single campaign never can.
Scale requires systems, not heroics. The best creative teams don't want chaos. They want clarity. Clear briefs, realistic timelines, responsive partners. When systems remove friction, creative teams take bigger risks and do better work. Building that infrastructure was the job.
Leadership is clearing the path. My role wasn't to be the smartest person in the room. It was to coordinate the smartest people in every room and remove the obstacles between them and the work. That meant managing up, aligning laterally, and making sure every team had what they needed before they knew they needed it.
Relationships outlast any single production. Partners who understand the brand and trust the process will move mountains when timelines compress or challenges arise. Transactional relationships get transactional results. The ones built on trust get something better.
Sustained excellence is the hardest thing to build. Anyone can execute one great campaign. Delivering 50+ great campaigns every year, for four years, while maintaining creative quality and budget discipline. That's what builds a reputation and earns the right to keep raising the bar.
And then there's the thing that can't be systematized: trust, judgment, and being in the moment. Knowing when to hold the line and when to call it. Reading a set, a room, a relationship. That only comes from time, and from showing up, every time, with enough presence to make the right call when it matters.