Holler was a next-gen conversational media company focused on the creation and delivery of content powered by the company’s Suggestion AI Technology. Holler had a diverse team of technologists, animators, and media industry veterans, and serviced upwards of 1 Billion messages each day. From 2019-2023, we had an exclusive partnership with Venmo, meaning we were the team responsible for all the gifs you saw and miss dearly in the app.
Originally brought on as an individual contributor to help build out the content library for Holler's growing platform. Promoted 3x in 5.5 years up to Senior Art/ Animation Director. Helped grow the company from a small team to a full creative studio (a team of animators, illustrators, content strategists, producers, and a head of studio).
During my time here I: managed a very talented multidisciplanary creative team of 4, led the hiring process for 13 interns; art directed and contributed to 12-15 client partnerships and brand campaigns per year; wrote and designed (in html) a weekly recap newsletter sent to the full internal company + external partners; and more.
*watch with sound!*
As a representative of the studio, I wrote weekly recap emails that shared work progress, wins, and general studio updates for the company and outside partners, sent out every Friday evening. I also often presented at company wide XFNs and All-Hands meetings, and when the Studio started making gifs, I had the task of introducing the new work to everyone. Instead of explaining with words (boring), I made this video (not boring). Show, don’t tell! I had 2 days to come up with the idea and put the whole thing together, from concept to presenting to the entire company. I used photo assets pulled from the company Slack (the cats aren't low res, you are), and ran wild. No one cried (of sadness), and I even had an encore request.
In 5.5 years, I created hundreds of gifs and stickers, both Branded and Original. The content lived within all our partner apps that ranged from messaging apps to payment apps to influencer clothing collabs.