Viking Cruises
Building an In-House Agency
Overview
Viking hired me as its first in-house creative to redesign the brand. Over ten years, the brand grew from Viking River Cruises to Viking, adding ocean and expedition cruising, and the creative work behind it grew with it. As Director of Creative, I built an in-house agency from the ground up to replace two outside agencies, then ran it as the creative engine for Viking's global marketing.
Role: Director of Creative · Brand: Viking Cruises
The Challenge
Viking's creative was split between a print and creative agency, a digital agency, and five in-house creatives working in silos. Agency fees ran about $100K a month. Turnaround was slow, and most projects went through four or five rounds of revisions. With a growing fleet and a marketing program that reached $354M by 2023, the company needed more creative, faster, without losing what made the brand work.
Systems that scale
Workflow changes and a new digital asset management system cut time-to-market 50%. Smartly and Google dynamic ads multiplied our ad output, and a paid social testing framework raised click-through rates 93%.
Approach
One Team
I brought the five in-house creatives together with 15 new hires across design, copy, digital, production design, social, and video editing, and organized the studio under three managers. Each manager ran their own discipline, and I held the standard across all of it.
One Operating Model
I set a single process for nine internal client teams: brand, onboard marketing, direct mail, digital marketing, social, email, trade, campaigns, and PR and events. Every project moved through the same steps, from intake and briefing to scoping, staffing, and production, so teams knew what to expect and work stopped coming back for revisions.
One Global Brand
I set creative direction worldwide, with the UK and Australia teams producing locally from the same system.
Results
3× creative output
~60% lower cost per campaign
4–5 → 2 revision rounds per project
$1.2M a year in agency fees brought in-house
50% faster time-to-market
93% lift in paid social click-through rate
The studio became the creative partner for all nine of Viking's marketing teams, producing more work, faster, at a lower cost per campaign.