March, 2026.- In a market that often prizes aesthetics over effectiveness, Courtney Tsitouris emerges as a leader who isn’t afraid to talk about conversion, ROI, and operational bottlenecks. As the first Chief Creative Officer in the 15-year history of Greatest Common Factory (GCF), Tsitouris steps into more than just a role; she steps into a legacy: the mandate to “make things better.” Under her leadership, the agency is repositioning itself as a “growth fuel company,” a firm where creativity isn’t an ornament but the fuel that powers a client’s growth engine. With a background that balances big-brand storytelling with 45% improvements in conversion rates, Courtney proposes a “non-agency” agency model: a lean team of veterans that prioritizes real impact over organizational scale.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Tsitouris breaks down how technology—through their proprietary GCF Brain platform—is used to strip away administrative distractions, allowing talent to focus on what AI cannot yet replicate: humanness. From the sensitivity required to honor the vision of late co-founder John Trahar to her “fall in love with the product” approach before writing a single line, Courtney offers a masterclass in modern creative leadership. Discover why, for GCF’s CCO, an insurance email can be just as “sexy” as a luxury resort campaign if it moves the commerce needle, and how her strategic and entrepreneurial mindset is carving a new path where success is measured by client receipts rather than just trophies on a shelf.
Redefining the Agency as a “Growth Fuel Company”: You’re repositioning Greatest Common Factory as a “growth fuel company.” What does that term mean operationally and philosophically? How does it change the agency’s relationship with clients, the type of work you pursue, and the metrics by which you measure success?
Growth fuel means output; it’s creative with receipts. Many clients have the marketing engine for growth, but not the right creative fuel, which determines how much power it generates. We’ve all been part of agencies where awards matter more than client results. That’s not the metric that matters, and not how I want to run an agency.
We ask clients for results, which many creative people don’t do because they’ve already moved on to the next thing. We need to see how commercials, social, CRM, and conversion ignite, so we can lean in or pivot.
But what’s shifting our conversations about growth the most is this notion of a System Check. We start by isolating the bottlenecks that are prohibiting growth. When we can define a brand truth that everyone’s missed right under their noses, we create the main ingredient for measurable growth. For example, we’re opening a new market for a spice company by focusing on advertising the protein, not just the spice. People think about the chicken before they think about how to spice it, so a chicken breast wrapped in messaging that begs for something other than salt is going to generate more growth than the other way around.
The GCF Brain & Human AI: You’re creating a proprietary “human AI approach” called GCF Brain, employing custom versions of more than a dozen tools. How do you ensure this AI stack amplifies human creativity and strategic instinct rather than replacing it? What specific creative or strategic problems are you building it to solve that off-the-shelf tools cannot?
Creating for clients gets more dynamic all the time. There’s so much in motion, it requires more intense focus than ever. I want to remove the things that distract and drain us, and that’s where AI tools come in. We’re customizing an AI model to replace tasks we don’t need to spend our time on, like figuring out proposals and costs. It’ll cross-communicate so we can do admin tasks faster and put all our focus on the creative and strategy we’re supposed to be doing. We need to be free to invest the time to fall in love with all the details that matter.
We’ve tried AI for creative, but it’s just not good enough. It’s great for admin, research, and even insight development because it can speed things up and take you to threads you never knew existed, which I love. But when it comes to coming up with the line or the thing or applying any type of humanness, which is what we’re doing here is appealing to humans, it is just going to fall short. If there were a magic silver bullet, we’d see it by now. It’s not happening.
Stepping Into a Legacy: You’re the first Chief Creative Officer in the agency’s 15-year history, taking over following the passing of co-founder John Trahar. How do you honor the legacy and creative foundation he built while simultaneously putting your own stamp on the agency and leading it in a new direction?
I have been through John’s underwear drawer. I’ve read almost everything he’s written. I’ve been in all of his decks, seen all his notes, browsed his computer. You know, it’s just an incredibly intimate way to get to know somebody.
And because I was in the process of rebranding GCF, I interviewed everyone at the company about John to understand who we really were. Then I went to his funeral. I stood there and listened to people talk and eulogize John’s phrase, “make things better,” which is our agency mantra.
And I realized that the dumbest thing you can do is walk in and try to change the culture of a company that’s succeeded for 13 years. So that’s not my job. My job is to try to use my own sensibilities in service of John’s vision. This is how I think of it. I’ll have differences, of course, but, like, Make Things Better will always be our LLC. We’ll continue to make company swag about that. And we’ll continue to work hard and strive for the highest standards, as he did.
John created our GCF logo and it’s basically a Venn diagram. He was expressing this concept of overlap – of many things coming together to create meaningful work. This concept has always been super important to me. It feels very synergistic and lucky in many ways. Melisa, our CFO, who’s been here from the beginning, keeps telling me how much I remind her of John. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a real compliment.
The Entrepreneurial Creative Leader: You’ve founded a food and wine classic, run a publishing company, and served as an interim CEO. How does that entrepreneurial mindset shape your approach to leading creative at an agency? Do you run the creative department like a startup founder would, and if so, what does that look like day-to-day?
No, I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s that I bring a marketer’s mindset to all those other things. My dad owned an agency in the 80s and 90s. I only ever wanted to be one thing my whole life: a Creative Director. Whenever I’ve done anything else, when I co-ran the Food and Wine Festival, when I published cookbooks, I did it like a marketer.
I thrive when I understand the context around the problem. I find out what the locals are saying. I research reviews. I entrench myself in the culture until I know outside the brief.
David Ogilvy believed that if you don’t fall in love with the product you’re selling, you won’t do a good job advertising it. And I believe that, too. And so whatever I’m doing, I work until I fall in love with the product and until it shows in my creative.
From Conversion to Storytelling: Your background spans CRM programs driving up to 45% conversion improvements alongside highly creative brand work for Secret and Gillette. How do you, as a CCO, ensure that the agency’s creative storytelling is equally obsessed with measurable business outcomes? Where do those two forces converge in your process?
Well, I think everything is sexy. Everything from a headline to a big idea to an insurance email. I really can get excited about an insurance email. I really can. So when I’m talking about how to flip a subject line or what the CTA should say, or I’m talking about a big idea for The Venetian Resort, it is always about conversion.
I never, ever, ever start just with ideas. I do an incredible amount of research until I’m dreaming in customer. Until then, I’m not gonna start ideating.
On weekly calls with clients, I want to know how we did last week. I don’t care that it was just a little sale email. I want to know because I’m going to learn from it and we’re going to keep optimizing. At the end of the day, they’ll invite me back because we nailed the conversion. I don’t care how cool the idea sounded. Commerce is what’s really cool.
The Lean Team Advantage: You lead a “lean team of veterans built for speed, scale, and substance.” How do you structure workflows and client relationships to compete with much larger agencies, and what creative advantages does a lean, senior-heavy model offer that a traditional agency hierarchy cannot match?
Before COVID you didn’t want to be called a freelancer. Like, it wasn’t like a respected term because all the best people went to the agencies. And then after Covid, many of the best people became freelancers.
So we’re able to keep a core team of six and expand and contract as the business needs, but we get to tap into this amazing workforce. It’s an expansive approach to resourcing. We can compete effectively with much larger agency organizations because we’re not stuck.
We’re focused on growing an agency, not building an organization. So we’re kind of the non-agency agency. We come in to help you grow, and we resist the temptation to weigh ourselves down with structure. The measure of our success isn’t size; it’s impact, what we’re achieving with clients.
