JOHNNY "PAINTERPANTS" RUTLEDGE

The challenge was to take a brand that plants itself fashion adjacent and talk finance. 

In 2021 Cadillac Financial was in the works to launch in eight months. Our internal marketing team was tasked with creating content that met the expectations of the Cadillac luxury brand identity. Through discovery meetings with Cadillac’s team at Leo Burnett, and research with our Cadillac customers, we adapted the ID into a finance story. As the Creative Director I was responsible for photography and video assets guiding our team as we expanded the visual vocabulary of Cadillac to include the customer experience while complimenting Cadillac’s focus on product. Phrases from finance stakeholders like “Experience Concierge Service” and requests for how to videos were dialed into a focus on brand recognition with elevated phrases like “Cadillac Empowered Resolutions.“ Six months and three shoots later we had the base imagery and footage at launch.

As an artist, I know the importance of guardrails on our limitless imaginations. 

I’ve been managing creatives in video marketing and sets for years. But I'm most proud of my work with the non-profit Artstillery, a group of theater professionals, community leaders, and artists tasked with turning marginalized oral histories into immersive experiences. Taking what I had learned from my professional career I used debriefs, documentation, and check ups to codified Artstillery’s process and mission. This helped us focus creatively, communicate with partners more effectively and more easily apply for grants. 

If you force the story, you’ll miss the opportunity.

GM Financial had only been acquired by General Motors two years prior, I was hired to crack the b-to-b relationship GM Financial was building with dealers. The project failed to gain traction in its first two iterations. Luckily I had a great dealer marketing team to collaborate with. The more we turned away from the stated agenda and listened to the dealers and our reps in the field we could paint the picture of the relationship as it really was. We just as we had focused the cameras on the dealers we did the same with the questions and conversations we had in the interviews. GM Financial became secondary, one of many tools they used to run their business. We leaned into our curiosity and the marketing moved from products and programs to positioning the brand as a thought leader and champion of entrepreneurship. The video content made its way into meetings with General Motors CEO Mary Barra, and to power points by EVP’s to close hundred million dollar financing deals. 

I don’t have a passion for narrative, I have a passion for what narrative can achieve. 

The craft of story is very important but what I want from a narrative is results. It can often lead to complex places of balancing story moments with the overall goal.  For a screenplay this might mean removing dialogue in favor of action, for marketing it could be telling the story of the feelings of a product not the features, for a video game it may be sacrificing a cutscene for player choice. The ability to step back and challenge a team as to what an audience will get out of a story is the trick. I’ve learned that with clients or teams you have to do this with grace and openness because ultimately you have to have trust. I’ve learned it in pitch meetings, in writer’s rooms, and over time having to repair trust from my many many small mistakes with individuals on my projects of the years.