Cross-Platform Activation (XPA) — Retail Media Creative Leadership
Executive Summary
As Senior Design Director, I helped launch and scale a new Cross-Platform Activation (XPA) initiative focused on retail media creative across Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, and Costco. From 2023–2025, I led all creative execution for the initiative while helping establish creative guardrails, templates, documentation, pricing structure support, and workflow standards that allowed the business to scale rapidly across multiple clients, retailers, and campaign types.
While brands could work directly with retailers or platforms like The Trade Desk for media buying, many lacked strong hands-on creative support tailored specifically for retail media environments. XPA helped fill that gap by providing clients with high-touch creative partnership and platform-specific execution designed to support ROAS and retail sales performance.
Acting as both a creative lead and hands-on contributor, I oversaw campaign execution across display, interactive, rich media, and video while working closely with internal media, account, and production teams as well as direct client partners.
The Challenge
As retail media investment rapidly expanded across Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, and Costco, brands had multiple options for buying media — including working directly with retailers or through platforms like The Trade Desk. What many clients lacked, however, was strong creative support built specifically for retail media environments.
The opportunity for XPA was not simply media placement, but providing high-quality creative partnership as a value-add service that helped campaigns feel cohesive, retailer-appropriate, visually polished, and performance-focused across fragmented retail ecosystems.
At the same time, the initiative was scaling rapidly across multiple retailers, campaign formats, and industries. The challenge became maintaining consistency, speed, and creative quality across increasingly high-volume deliverables while supporting the evolving needs of both clients and internal teams.
My Role: Senior Design Director
Responsibilities
Led all creative execution across the XPA initiative
Helped establish pricing support, templates, guardrails, and workflow documentation
Oversaw creative quality across multiple retail media platforms
Directed and contributed to hands-on design execution
Partnered closely with media, account, and production teams
Worked directly with clients and brand teams
Led the majority of Walmart Connect and Kroger Precision Marketing creative campaigns
Cross-Platform Creative Execution
A major focus of the initiative was leading creative execution across a wide range of retail media formats while ensuring campaigns remained visually cohesive across platforms, retailers, and placements.
Campaigns included:
Display banners
Interactive banners
Rich media
Video
Creative was designed to support both brand storytelling and retail performance goals, helping drive ROAS and shopper conversion across retailer ecosystems.
Because campaigns spanned multiple industries — including alcohol, CPG, food & beverage, wellness, household products, and pharma — each execution required adapting creative to different audiences, retailer specifications, compliance considerations, and platform requirements while maintaining strong visual consistency.
As the initiative expanded, I also helped develop templates, documentation, guardrails, and workflow standards that supported scalable creative production across the growing business.
Results & Impact
Business Growth
From 2024–2025, XPA revenue grew 150% year-over-year, expanding from $4.5M to over $12M as creative became a major value-add component of the retail media offering and touched nearly all revenue generated through Walmart Connect and Kroger Precision Marketing campaigns.
Creative Leadership
Helped launch and scale an entirely new business initiative
Creative became a major value-add service within the retail media offering
Helped establish scalable creative standards and workflows
Client Portfolio
Supported campaigns for nationally recognized brands including:
Cupcake Vineyards, UV Vodka, Nestlé Essentia, DiGiorno, Robert Mondavi, Evan Williams, Franzia, Woodbridge, Equate, Mionetto, Korbel, Elijah Craig, Colgate, Josh Cellars, Simply Organic, Ste. Michelle Wines, The Honey Pot, Nestlé Nido, and Yellow Tail.
Industries included:
Alcohol & beverage
Consumer packaged goods
Food & beverage
Wellness
Household products
Pharma
Key Takeaway
This work reflects my ability to help build and scale emerging creative business initiatives while remaining deeply involved in the craft itself. By combining hands-on creative leadership with retail media expertise, workflow development, and cross-functional collaboration, I helped transform XPA from a new offering into a major revenue-driving business initiative supporting a broad portfolio of national brands across multiple retailer ecosystems.
