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Build Tomorrow’s Creative Team Today
December 15, 2022 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Creative Mentorship Design Leadership Strategy
Guest Speaker

Bridget Esposito

VP, Group Creative Director, Prudential

As head of the creative and presentation teams, Bridget Esposito leads all internal and external branding and visual messaging for Prudential and its U.S. businesses. Under her leadership, Prudential has earned more than 44 awards for creative, design, and communication excellence, from organizations including PIMA, APEX, and the Ad Club. Bridget has been named “30 under 30” for marketing excellence and “40 under 40” in advertising. Prior to joining Prudential, she worked at various agencies where she was responsible for some of the most recognized brands in the world, including Samsung, BMW, and Verizon. Bridget has also been an adjunct professor for the past 18 years teaching marketing, business, public relations, and journalism students how to use the language of design to communicate with purpose.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

We all know that creatives need their cave time, but accomplishing good work takes group effort. The challenge for creative leaders, then, is to establish a team where your people want to be and bring their best game with them. In other words, leaders need to nurture team members now for success to happen in the future.

Join Bridget Esposito, VP, Group Creative Director, Prudential, for her tips and tricks behind building effective teams that last. This special episode of Real Creative Leadership was recorded on the floor of the exhibition hall at the Adobe MAX 2022 conference, where Bridget was a session speaker.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • How to cultivate your team for future success
  • What questions help you nurture a team
  • Why it matters to know yourself as a leader outside of work
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mentioned in this show:
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Adam Morgan
Creative Leader and RCL Host
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The Stoke Group
Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency
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RCL Episode Season 3, Episode 13
Build Tomorrow’s Creative Team Today — with Bridget Esposito
VP, Group Creative Director, Prudential

 

Transcript

Adam Morgan: 

Hello. Hello. We are here again on the show floor at MAX 2022. So excited to be with you. We have a wonderful topic that we’re about to dig into here and I, first let me introduce our guest and then we’ll get into the topic. 

Bridget Esposito:

Great. 

Adam Morgan:

This is Bridget Esposito. She is the VP of Creative at Prudential. 

Bridget Esposito:

That’s right.

Adam Morgan:

Maybe before we get a little further, tell us a little bit about you, your background, and so that people can get to know you a little bit more.

Bridget Esposito:

Great. Yes, vice President of Creative at Prudential. I’m also a mother to two amazing children and play a lot of softball. I’m also a professor, teaching design to non-designers, kind of helping everybody understand the importance of design and what it plays into the culture, into their business and things like that. Yeah, that wraps it up.

Adam Morgan:

Excellent.

Bridget Esposito:

And I like to have a good time. That’s it.

Adam Morgan:

Okay. We’re going to get back in, because I have a question for you on the baseball thing that-

Bridget Esposito:

Oh, great.

Adam Morgan:

… lead us into another part of the story.

Bridget Esposito:

I love talking about sports.

Adam Morgan:

But, so the topic for today is we’re going to talk about how you build a team today for the future, for tomorrow. Because there’s a lot of talk of how technology and diseases and things have just shaken our world. Now, we’re really looking at what we do? How do we help that team? What’s the culture? What are the rules? What are the things that we do to help our creative get better and better and better? There’s a lot behind all that, that we want to dig into. 

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely. There is a lot to that.

Adam Morgan:

Yes. Well let’s start with-

Bridget Esposito:

How long do we have?

Adam Morgan:

The clock says 23 minutes.

Bridget Esposito:

Oh, perfect. Just enough time. 

Adam Morgan:

Just enough. All right. Well let’s start first to talk about how your team functions now, how things have changed. What are some of the new ways that you’re learning to bring creativity into your work?

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah, absolutely. The team was all over the country, originally, pre-COVID, but the majority of us were together in our home base in Newark, New Jersey. During COVID, we had to switch all that, right? Everybody was home. It actually helped us out because it became an equal playing field for everyone.

Then from that point, we really had to figure out how are we brainstorming together? How are we using the digital resources we have? Putting even more effort into connecting with one another and making sure that we’re all on the same page, or that we’re talking about fun things and creative things outside of just our work, and really developing a more digital space of how we live.

Now that we’re back from that and we’re in this hybrid mode, there’s still people all over the country, which is lovely, because I feel like we come and get together when we need to, and that’s okay. I think a lot of people are like, “We’re back. Now, we’ve all got to be back together.” But that’s not the case, because we’ve learned to operate so well together.

Prudential was extremely productive during COVID. I think that’s a really good sign that we can work in the way that people like to work, help them balance their life and their culture and still up the level of creativity. I think being home even and being outside places or traveling to another country and staying there where they work has really helped up the level of creativity that comes in the shop. 

Adam Morgan:

Oh, that’s true, because they get new fodder, they get new experiences.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

All that kind of stuff. It’s funny, you said we did, we got really productive.

Bridget Esposito:

Yes.

Adam Morgan:

When we’re all locked into our creative caves, right? Really productive.

Bridget Esposito:

Locked in, yeah.

Adam Morgan:

Now, I feel like there’s just this inefficiency that we’re trying to put back into the system. Right?

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely. 

Adam Morgan:

We don’t have to be productive 100% of the time. How do you build culture? How do you create moments when people come together? How do you make it so that there is, because you have new people, I’m sure, right?

Bridget Esposito:

Oh, absolutely.

Adam Morgan:

That started since this all began.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah. Yeah. 

Adam Morgan:

What are you doing with them?

Bridget Esposito:

What’s interesting is that people are trying to force it in and they’ll say, “Well, I can’t go into the office. I can’t. I’m going to lose so much time, because I’m going to lose time commuting and I’m going to lose time for this.”

What I try to explain is that what you’re gaining is you’re gaining the connectivity of being in person with someone and the laughs that are going to happen or the random conversations that are going to occur or exploring together, so that it’s okay that you’re not constantly making things from the moment you wake up to the way because that other stuff is so important. 

Then, for the new people, it’s great because we’re finally getting together. I don’t know about you, but seeing someone in a box to then seeing someone in real person, sometimes you do a double take. Like, “Oh, wow.”

Adam Morgan:

How tall are you? 

Bridget Esposito:

I know, that’s always the thing, like, “You’re shorter than I thought.” It’s great.

Adam Morgan:

Yes, I am.

Bridget Esposito:

No, I said that to me, not to you.

Adam Morgan:

I’m just teasing.

Bridget Esposito:

But it’s kind of like taking someone in holistically. It takes a little second there, but it’s good. We’re getting people in, we’re pulling people together, we’re doing full team sessions where we’re flying everyone in and really taking that time to spend together, because it’s more important than ever.

We don’t have to be together all the time, but there are those key moments where you get a couple days together, you spend that time and it’s making a world of difference.

Adam Morgan:

Well, tell me more about culture. Tell me how you’re building those unwritten rules in this new hybrid world. 

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah, I will say that there are many people that have their own ideas of what it should look like. I work in a financial company, so there is a lot of jobs in that sector that need to be in person for legal reasons and what have you. There’s a harder push of we don’t need to be in person, we just need these moments and someone has to be the voice of that. 

Being a champion for your team and saying, “This is what’s best for my team.” Then having the conversations, because everybody’s different. Some people are like, “I’m coming in every day, because I just miss being there. I can’t take my dog anymore,” or what have you.

I think listening to your team, understanding what their needs are and then finding that right balance and being the champion for what it is, is so important all the way up the chain. Because people will make assumptions of what is necessary based on another person’s role and that’s never going to benefit anybody.

Adam Morgan:

I remember you talking about how you had a new person, you had to teach them about networking, because the world of networking has totally changed. Let’s hear about that.

Bridget Esposito:

Yes. Yeah. It was interesting because going through, “What do you need from me? How can I help you?” The person said, “You know, I don’t know how to network.” I said, “Network? You mean talk and hang out.” I said, yeah, but if I don’t know someone, what do I do?

I’ve never been taught that I’m going to this internal work function and there’s going to be senior-level people that I’m really interested in talking to. I’m so nervous about how I approach them. What do I say? So, it was such an interesting conversation where I said, “Listen, you’ve got to do your own research.” 

Find the people that you want to meet. Know a little bit about them. I was so excited to meet Adam. I nerded out the first time I met him, by the way, at a conference. It was a little embarrassing. I think it has bounced back since then, but I had already done my research of questions of knowing what I wanted to talk to Adam about.

It was good to have that conversation with the person, so they understood, do your research, figure out what questions you have, have them ready and then have an elevator speech ready for yourself. But it was interesting, because it took me back, that they were younger and just said, “I don’t know how to network.”

Adam Morgan:

Yeah, this is all new to a lot of people. 

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah, absolutely. Because they finished college during COVID and now they’re in the working world and it’s all new to them. So…

Adam Morgan:

Well another thing I want to talk about is just like now that there’s a lot of people on teams that are spread out all over and it really has changed the dynamic of both hiring and growing and finding the people and talent. It’s like now the talent pool is everywhere, right?

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely.

Adam Morgan:

How is that affecting your creative team or affecting, even you mentioned people going to another country.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

That’s giving them good skills and lessons that’ll come back and make them more valuable as an employee too. There’s just such a new mix with all of that. 

Bridget Esposito:

It is a new mix and I love it. I think the idea that the person needs to work an hour away from where you are really did hold back from things. Opening up and being able to find, I mean diversity is so important in your team, so getting someone that has experience and that lives in a different area is just, it’s making the team better. We’ve been able to hire a lot of talent all over the country in different spaces that have different backgrounds. 

Or, “Oh, they’re Southern California grad. Awesome, great. Bring us some of those experiences.” Everything from location to gender, and to preferences, and things like that. All that diversity really plays a part in building a better team. It’s exciting, it’s really cool. Does it make it more competitive for everyone? 

Adam Morgan:

Oh, yeah.

Bridget Esposito:

Sure does.

Adam Morgan:

That could be scary for a lot of people, but yeah, I think it’s not, you’re no longer competing for just one or two roles. It’s now all of the roles and there’s more opportunity everywhere. 

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely. I think that’s exciting, because you’ll find the right place for you. Because it might not be that our company is the right place for someone and vice versa. You’re going to find the right one, because you’ve got all these options now. I think having the level of competitiveness is so important to you in your career and knowing what that is, because you figure out how hard I want to fight?

What do I need to do to get better? It is a learning process as you go through that. I think it’s a good thing to have that competition. I think as creatives, sometimes we shy away from competition or it’s the other way where they’re like, “I’m working with someone and it’s either their idea or mine.” But at the end of the day, it’s healthy.

But when the person next to you comes up with this genius idea and it’s amazing and it’s going to benefit the outcome, you should be celebrating that person and saying, “High five, that is so good. I’m so glad yours won.” Then, go back and figure out how to make yourself better or work on that next idea that might be the winner.

Adam Morgan:

Oh, that’s awesome.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah. 

Adam Morgan:

All right. As we’re talking more about and building this team right now, of now, for the future, so let’s talk a little bit more beyond just the interpersonal skills and how they’re learning, but how is the work changing? What are you doing differently now than you were a few years ago? Or where do you see things moving in a new direction? 

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah, absolutely. Several years ago, I would describe us as really scrappy, doing what we could to get things done with little resources. We had, because the volume of projects wasn’t as large, we could do that. Then COVID hit, everything changed from a lot of that print or those larger campaigns to fast hitting pieces, whether it was social and digital, whatever, and so the volume increased tremendously.

I think we had to figure out what that would look like. The volume increased, our team increased and it became this different dynamic for us that we’re still working through and we’re learning to work through that. But we had to figure out, okay, so how are we going to improve our processes so that they’re doing less of that grunt work, less of the admin work that they don’t want to do, and then they get faster and more time for creation and evolution.

How are we prioritizing, how are we going through stuff? The whole process improvement has been a journey that we’re still on, but that makes a huge difference in how we’re all working. The team also becomes really important in that factor, because they’re also improving the process. I need them to say, “Hey, this isn’t working, but I have an idea of how to work that’s going to work better.

Can we try it?” Getting the team involved and improving that whole thing has massively made us better in that past year and I think becoming a better creative that way as well. We can’t just do the work. We’ve got a holistic look at data and all these other items and the way that we create our process and improving it all together to make you a more holistic creative. 

Adam Morgan:

That’s a big role of being a creative leader is you’re not just guiding the new creative work, but it’s the whole system. It’s the whole machine. It’s how you build it all together and how you’re going to find those efficiencies, so you can focus on the right things rather than always worrying about all those things.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah, it’s so funny because it’s like if you looked at an outside person and they’re like, “What do you do?” Then you kind of describe it, you realize that you absolutely did not describe everything that you do in a day as a creative leader. There’s balancing budgets, and head counts, and talking about-

Adam Morgan:

Operations and all that, yeah.

Bridget Esposito:

Operations and what’s the value that we’re getting back. All of those things. Then managing people, because every person is different. It’s definitely, when you look at everything we do, it’s like, man, we are so badass. Aren’t we? High five. We’re so cool. 

Adam Morgan:

Woohoo.

Bridget Esposito:

I love it. 

Adam Morgan:

Okay, so let’s go back a little bit. You mentioned content velocity where there’s just so much more content, so many channels and things you have to do. A big thing that we’re wrestling with right now is democratization of creativity. I’m not sure if you’re dealing with the same thing where it’s like, “Okay, we can’t possibly, your team grew.”

Bridget Esposito:

Yes.

Adam Morgan:

And that’s not exponential. You can’t still support all that and you can’t just keep adding and adding more people to fix the problem. 

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

How are we creating systems or ways of self-service or ways that marketers and others can help contribute to the creativity and have creativity for all in a bigger way? 

Bridget Esposito:

That becomes a really big part of all of it, because even, and I teach this in my design for non-designers course to business students, publications, data scientists, is that how can they embrace the brand, understand the brand, pull it through, what could they do, not do? How do they speak the language?

But then from a process standpoint, we absolutely can’t take on all of it. We’ve created libraries with Creative Cloud Library, which has been a lifesaver. We create all these libraries, we bring them into XD, we also utilize them in Adobe Express. Then we teach some of our strategists or social media to use Express properly, so that our brand cohesion stays through there. 

Man, that is a big uplift off of your team, when they don’t have another email header or another banner, “Oh my gosh, Bob in accounting really needs this for his sales meeting. Can you make it right this moment?” When we started using the tools, it was a big uplift off the team and that helped with morale too. Because they’re like, “Yes, I do not have to do that banner. That is amazing. Someone else is going to do it.” That’s been great. Then, even creation, content creation, having the library set up, whether it’s our email headers or our social or being able to just grab that, pop it in and start ideating and not having to worry about the stuff around it in order for approval has been wonderful.

Adam Morgan:

It is true. Technology is keeping up with us and helping us with a lot of stuff. Even when you talk about Adobe Express, that’s like a year or two ago. No one will even know about it. It didn’t even exist back then. Now, ways to lock down your brand so that people can have templates and things without monkey with the brand, that’s a huge game changer.

Bridget Esposito:

I just need everybody to know that I was a Spark adopter from the start. I love Spark. Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

Noted. That’s noted.

Bridget Esposito:

Noted, noted. I’m an OG. I’m an OG Spark person. Yeah, but it has made a huge difference. Then also, it makes a huge difference for those who are going into marketing, like the students that are so excited about business marketing and data analytics and things like that. Giving them the tools and educating them that space and getting them excited to use Express and then make things to help bring their messages out and cut through. 

That is such an amazing learning for them that students always come back and say, I made a difference, because I was able to communicate my message in the right way and I use these tools to help me get there. That’s democratization right there. It’s amazing. 

Adam Morgan:

No, that is true. I’m glad you brought up students and education, because I want to come back now to your story about softball or baseball.

Bridget Esposito:

Yeah.

Adam Morgan:

Let me set a little stage here. Normally a part of this is not just building the team, but it’s building yourself, building your own career.

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely.

Adam Morgan:

Right?

Bridget Esposito:

Yep.

Adam Morgan:

As creative leaders, you’ve got to really find the right path to help you learn the right skills so that you can get up to that next level. Most of us think that, oh, I just jump in and I just go through the same path. I start out as a designer and then I go to senior designer, and then I’m an ACD, and a creative director, and so on and so forth. But tell us about your journey, because I think it’s fascinating and I think there’s a gem to learn from it as far as how you get to that higher strategic level. 

Bridget Esposito:

I love that you’re calling it a gem, because I think in the moment people were like, “What are you doing?”

Adam Morgan:

What are you doing with your life?

Bridget Esposito:

“Are you throwing advertising out the window?” Right?

Adam Morgan:

Yeah.

Bridget Esposito:

It was one of those things. But come 2008, as a lot of us working in the agency space knew, the first thing when it hit was…

Adam Morgan:

Cuts.

Bridget Esposito:

Cuts. They’re like, we don’t know all these design people, right? I love that there’s much more appreciation for what we do now than back then. In 2008, I decided I’m going to go back to school. I’m going to get my master’s in fine arts, going to work in that space. I had played college softball, played at Seton Hall University, woo-woo, go Pirates, and played college ball there, and so I went back to coach.

The opportunity to coach in a division one space is a lot of pressure. But in that, I learned so much about accountability, team dynamics, culture, how to work through adversity, wins and losses and all of those really intense leadership skills that really shaped who I was. Understanding that I truly believed that I’m only going to be as successful as the person to the right or left of me, so I better improve them and bring them along with me was one of the factors that really pushed me forward in my career.

After coaching division one softball for five years, finishing my terminal degree and the economy’s getting back, I went right back into working and those skills just helped me jump, jump, jump, jump. They were propelling me forward, because I had all this in the space. It was totally a different space to go into. 

But I think those experiences are really valuable and I appreciate them now more than ever, because I truly believe who I am, what I believe in, the leadership skills was all from, it started as an athlete at a young age, but then really as a coach, just really formulated and curated into who I want to be.

Adam Morgan:

No, I love it. I think that’s fantastic, because yeah, so often people think that it’s just a linear cycle.

Bridget Esposito:

Right.

Adam Morgan:

But learning and leadership is so different from the craft of creativity where we’re working on all the craft. Getting those skills of understanding how to deal with people, and how to manage, and how to inspire, and how to get them going, so critical, so critical.

Bridget Esposito:

I used to think that it just magically happened. Someone was just that leader or that person. We always say, “Be a leader.” But what we forget is that they need to learn how to be a leader. You need to learn and have those experiences and be taught what’s the right thing to do? What’s the right move to make here? That happens a lot at work. I love my creative team and I’m super proud of them, because at any point, if I’m not in that room, they will absolutely step into that room for me and be the voice. 

 

So the team, I feel like I’m very proud of them. They’ve learned over the years that if they go into a room and I am not there, and there’s a situation where they feel like they’re not getting the right information, or they need to defend some work, or they need to explain some work, they have the chops to and the empowerment to say, “Okay, this is not right. This is how I feel.” They know how to stand up, they know how to voice who we are as creatives. I’m so proud of them for that. I honestly do not fear when someone’s like, “Oh, you’re going to vacation. What are you going to do?” Going on vacation. I’m like, “And the team will be there and they’re going to be amazing, and if they need me, they will let me know.”

But I think it’s so important to round out your entire team and educate them on, “Here’s the right moves to make. Here’s how you are a leader. This is what you can do in these situations when they happen, what did we learn?”

They’re going to fail a lot. I fail a lot, but we learn from it. Then, the next time they’re going to be better leaders. Everybody on my team, some of them are sitting out there, I know that they’re going to be amazing creative leaders as they grow up. 

Adam Morgan:

Well, there we have it. That was such a good ending. We brought it full circle. It’s like if you want to have a creative team for the future, you start now first by investing in your team and-

Bridget Esposito:

Absolutely.

Adam Morgan:

… understanding what they are, helping them learn. Then, we get into technology and we get into new trends and ways that we’re building content and how we’re democratizing around the world. Then, it comes right back to, and you got to build yourself and you got to build your career and make sure you’re right there so that you can therefore lead your team. I love that, perfect story.

Bridget Esposito:

This was such a great conversation. I mean, I could talk all day about this, so thank you so much.

Adam Morgan:

Well, thank you so much for being with us. This was awesome. Hopefully, everyone else out there got a little bit out of it and they can use that for their own team as they’re helping them grow.

Bridget Esposito:

Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. 

Adam Morgan:

Thank you for being with me. Next. Now I want to talk about how people can learn more about you. How can they follow you? Where do we follow Bridget?

Bridget Esposito:

Wow, yeah. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I would love to tell you that I am super good at social and take the time in putting everything up there. I’m not, but follow me. But I do answer my LinkedIns on the regulars, so please find me on there. Message me. I love talking about leadership. No matter where you are, who you are, what level you are, it doesn’t matter. I love talking about it, so come find me.

Adam Morgan:

Well, awesome. Thank you so much.

Bridget Esposito:

Great.

Adam Morgan:

All right. Well thank you for being here. This has been a wonderful conversation and we’ll see you next time.