Jarrod Ballou#001 · Holo
Illustrated portrait of Jarrod Ballou
Head of Brand Creative
Brand leader · SurveyMonkey · San Francisco
20Years in brand
2×Aided awareness
+35%Enterprise pipeline
Builds brands that show up in the numbers.JB
About

Making familiar brands feel new again.

I’m Head of Brand Creative at SurveyMonkey, where I lead a multidisciplinary team across design, motion, video, copy, and brand ops. Over twenty years I’ve led brand through three big company shifts: Meraki’s integration into Cisco, SurveyMonkey’s post-IPO move upmarket, and its return to SurveyMonkey under private equity.

My strongest instinct is holding brand and business performance at the same table: brand health data next to ad performance, building the case for both.

Experience

2021 — Now

Head of Brand Creative (Senior Director)

SurveyMonkey

Led the repositioning to a B2B insights platform (+35% YoY enterprise pipeline). Sponsorship and talent creative with F1, the Warriors, NBCU, Spotify, Giancarlo Esposito, and Trevor Noah (2× aided awareness). Unified siloed production into one in-house studio managing $1M+ in spend.

2016 — 2021

Global Creative Director, Brand & Web

Cisco Meraki

Led brand for a $3B business outrunning its hardware identity. Launched Meraki Go, the first sub-brand, with identity, packaging, and photography built in-house. Redesigned the corporate site and CMS. Supported 12 straight quarters of YoY pipeline growth.

2012 — 2016

Creative Director

True North Agency

Creative strategy and execution for Disney, Visa, ABC Television, ASPCA, Make-A-Wish, and Doctors Without Borders — including MSF’s first major US awareness campaign and Disneyland’s $1.1B Carsland launch.

Principles

01

Clarity over reactivity

Be consistent about what success looks like. A few big goals, smaller ones laddering up, held steady when the daily noise is loud.

02

Stubborn on vision, flexible on details

The think/feel/do outcome is the vision. The asset, format, and channel are the details.

03

Report the mix

Now, next, later — roughly 70/20/10. If you can’t say the split, you don’t have a strategy. You have a backlog.

04

Creativity is a state, not a trait

Craft is learnable. Accountability is a skill. Constraints are what make the game worth playing.

05

Hire close to the craft

Attitude and culture matter, but they don’t substitute for skill. Listen to the warning signs early.

06

Have fun winning together

Fun and rigor aren’t opposites. How you win matters as much as whether you do.

Agency clients
Disney
Visa
Chase
ABC Television
ASPCA
Make-A-Wish
Doctors Without Borders
Partners & talent
Formula 1
Golden State Warriors
NBCUniversal
Spotify
Giancarlo Esposito
Trevor Noah
Alex Albon
Tiny Chef
Speaking
Brand Innovators Sports Marketing Summit
Speaker & moderator · 2026
CuriosityCon
Session host · SurveyMonkey