Get to know our new executive creative director Austin Scott as he talks about his creative process and landscape, inspiration and more.

Austin Scott | Executive Creative Director | Union

Take 10: with Austin Scott, Executive Creative Director

If you have the chance to work with Austin, you’re likely to hear some variation of: “This is great. Now, let’s make it better.” That goes for campaign pitches, final audio scripts and everything in between. As the new executive creative director at Union, Austin continually pushes the creative team to crank out ideas in every direction until the best idea sticks. 
“Instead of letting great ideas sit on a post-it note, we bring them to our clients,” he said. “The most exciting work of my career has come from proactive thinking and asking: what if?”
That angle of thinking led him from getting his MFA in advertising at the Savannah College of Art and Design, to working for Leo Burnett, Havas and BBDO in Chicago, to working for Laughlin Constable in Milwaukee, to landing at Union in Charlotte. Soon enough, he’ll leave the snow behind to relocate with his wife (a public relations guru), their two sons and their dog.
At the moment, Austin and his team are focused on a broadcast campaign for an insurance client, refreshing a 360 health and wellness campaign, working with a top NBA star for a soda brand, launching a digital campaign for a major energy provider and helping plan a year of activations to create positive change in communities across the South for a Fortune 100 brand.
We’re keeping Austin busy at Union so far – but he did have a moment to share some of his creative insight, from connecting with younger audiences to digging up campaign inspiration. Take a look.
What’s your favorite part about the creative process and why?
Every new project starts with the collision of a unique business challenge and limitless possibility. That’s what I love about this business – the inherent tension between the goals we strive to achieve for our clients and at times infinite paths to get there.
What do you want clients to get out of creative pitch presentations?
I’ve had the opportunity to work with 100-year-old heritage brands to start-ups. But each brand has its own unique story to tell. Whatever their product or service, if we can help them find a fresh way to tell their story, that connects with people in a way they might not have expected, that’s when exciting things start to happen.
You like to incorporate “plus one” ideas into your pitches. Why?
It’s an extra idea, often just outside the ask. As we get to know our clients’ business and goals, it’s inevitable that the teams start to ask: what if? What if we approach this challenge from a completely different direction? Or what if we leverage a new technology to tell their story? We’re lucky enough to work in an industry where we’re actually paid for our opinions. So we bring them to our clients.

Get to know Austin as he answers our 10 questions between creative pitches

As Union’s new executive creative director, what do you hope to add to the creative process?
My job as a creative leader is simple – to uncover great ideas. Union is an agency filled with smart, talented people. It’s not an overstatement to say a million ideas pass through our agency each day. Helping focus that creativity, nurture great ideas and ultimately bring them to execution is thrilling.
You’re always sending out weekly emails to the creative team loaded with inspiration. What drives that?
For me, creativity is a process of the subconscious. The more we learn, try, fail, see, hear and experience, the more potential creative solutions our brains tend to make. I think it’s important to look at the best creative work in the world to set the bar, but also to look outside marketing as well.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to clients when they’re deciding between a creative campaign that’s consistent with their previous work, and one that takes an entirely fresh direction?
While decade-long campaigns are no longer the norm, no client has to make a wholesale change in direction without insight. It’s why I encourage clients to always be placing small bets, trying new things and collecting data. So when they choose or the market chooses for them to move in a new direction, they’re armed with data and insights to make smart, bold decisions.
What’s the biggest mistake brands make with social media creative when they’re trying to connect to a younger audience?
Showing up to talk about yourself as a brand. Remember: You’re joining their party.
How has the pandemic changed the creative landscape most so far?
As high-end productions came to a halt, we remembered that the idea is more important than the execution. The world was instantly ok with seeing Zoom-call quality in TV commercials. Ideas that embrace the moment and the context of the world we’re currently living in are more important than massive sets and special effects.
What’s your brand?
One mantra that I’ve always connected with is "do is greater than say." Whether it’s learning something new or launching a new campaign, there’s power in showing versus telling.
When you’re not working, what are you usually up to?
I enjoy building furniture and DIY projects. I actually just finished a full reno on our home in Milwaukee. We spend most of our time these days staring at a screen, so it’s nice to have a creative outlet that's a bit more hands-on.

Valtech + Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.

About Valtech + Union

Austin Scott, Executive Creative Director at Union