July, 2026.- Don’t believe creative ambition and operational efficiency have to be at odds. Mary Anne Broccolo, recently promoted from Executive Creative Director to VP of Creative at MKG, knows that maintaining the right balance is an active, daily practice. To her, operational efficiencies are not hard-lined limitations—they are a set of dynamic levers that can be adjusted. These levers include team size, budgeted hours, staffing levels, location, and subject matter expertise.
Broccolo’s new role represents a shift from a creative leader responsible for a large portion of the creative department to an agency leader fully accountable for that work, with expanded scope across the entire agency. This includes talent acquisition and oversight for all creative disciplines up to the Creative Director level, as well as managing Resource Operations across all departments. For clients, the title change provides immediate clarity: they are getting leadership beyond a specific project—a partner with a macro-level view of the agency’s talent, resources, and long-term vision.
In this interview, Broccolo discusses the secret weapon of staffing for passion. Because every project that comes through MKG is entirely unique, there is no one-size-fits-all template. The agency looks at who on the team has the most natural ambition for a specific brand, category, or audience. When they align a team’s genuine excitement with the right project, efficiency follows naturally because the momentum is already there.
Broccolo also addresses how MKG is evolving beyond standalone experiential activations into broader brand and content engagements. The shift is in how the agency maps a narrative across channels, and how far they can push the campaign to maximize reach. When designing a broader content ecosystem, the hero experiential moment is a tangible manifestation of the larger strategy. Depending on the brand’s goals, that moment might serve as the explosive launchpad for a year-long narrative, a highly anticipated physical payoff of social build-up, or the campaign’s grand finale.
This is a conversation about structure, flexibility, and the art of resourcing as a creative discipline.
1. From ECD to VP, Creative: You’ve been promoted from Executive Creative Director to VP, Creative. What new responsibilities come with this role that you didn’t have as ECD, and how does the title change your relationship with clients and internal teams?
This new role represents a shift from a creative leader responsible for a large portion of the creative department to an agency leader who is fully accountable for that work, while also expanding that accountability across the department and agency.
Championing great work remains core to my role, but my elevated scope now includes the holistic structure and future-mapping of our creative department. This means driving talent acquisition and oversight for all creative disciplines up to the Creative Director level—across both full-time and freelance staff—as well as managing Resource Operations across all agency departments.
I have always partnered closely with our Resourcing Team but now that I am formally overseeing them, it’s been positive to form a more collaborative relationship. My partnership with the other Department Heads and our Finance Director has only become closer as well. For our clients, the title change provides immediate clarity. It shows that they are getting leadership beyond a specific project—a partner who has a macro-level view of the agency’s talent, resources, and long-term vision.
2. Creative Ambition vs. Operational Reality: Lauren Austin said you have a “unique ability to bring organization and structure to complex creative work without compromising the craft.” Where is the natural tension between creative ambition and operational efficiency, and how do you resolve it without killing the spark?
I don’t believe creative ambition and operational efficiency have to be at odds, but maintaining the right balance is an active, daily practice.
To me, operational efficiencies aren’t hard-lined limitations—they are a set of dynamic levers we can adjust. These levers include team size, budgeted hours, staffing levels, location, and, crucially, subject matter or client expertise.
Because every single project that comes through MKG is entirely unique, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all template for how we balance these levers. Instead, our secret weapon is staffing for passion. We look at who on our team—across all departments, not just creative—has the most natural ambition for a specific brand, category, or audience.
When we align a team’s genuine excitement with the right project, efficiency follows naturally because the momentum is already there. By treating our operational levers as flexible tools to support that momentum, we are able to deliver ground-breaking work that our clients and our team can be incredibly proud of, without sacrificing the health of our business.
3. Beyond Standalone Experiential: MKG is evolving beyond standalone experiential activations into broader brand and content engagements. How does a creative leader’s approach change when you’re designing a content ecosystem rather than a single event?
There is certainly a shift in creative approach when developing a single experiential moment (or series of them) versus a holistic campaign ecosystem, but starting with strategy is key for us in both scenarios.
We start by finding a truth that the audience is living, allowing us to then build an authentic and ownable brand narrative. The real difference in approach is in how we map that narrative across channels, and how far we can push the campaign to maximize reach. When designing a broader content ecosystem, the hero experiential moment is a tangible manifestation of that larger strategy.
Depending on the brand’s goals, that moment might serve as the explosive launchpad for a year-long narrative, a highly anticipated physical payoff of social build-up, or the campaign’s grand finale. By applying our strategic narrative to both the overarching ecosystem and the live experience simultaneously, the experiential moment becomes an even more supercharged driver of brand love.
4. Resourcing as a Creative Discipline: You’re taking on expanded responsibility for creative staffing and team structure. Why does the person who leads creative also need to own resourcing decisions? What does a pure operations leader miss?
Creative is incredibly nuanced. It’s five-plus distinct disciplines wrapped into one, each layered with varying levels of experience, individual styles, personal passions, and category expertise. There is a ton of thought that goes into the staffing and structure of a Production team or Account team, but Creative is a whole different beast—and it’s exactly where a purely numbers-driven operational approach falls short.
Staffing a project isn’t just about matching open hours to available headcount. It’s about balancing skills, experience levels, and subject knowledge with operational levers like budget, team size, and timeline. It’s one thing to identify a single creative individual that is the best fit for a certain role on a project, but it’s another to identify anywhere from three to ten creative individuals who make the best creative team for that project, while keeping that project healthy. We truly believe that resourcing is an art, not a science, which aligns perfectly with “resourcing as a creative discipline”.
Owning resourcing also allows me to align staffing with individual growth mapping. Because I have deep visibility into our creative team’s personal career goals, and partner closely with other department heads on their teams’ aspirations, I’m able to help our Resourcing Team assign projects that actively challenge our people and foster their growth. Taking a thoughtful, empathetic approach to casting keeps our team inspired, helps mitigate burnout, and keeps attrition low.
Beyond immediate project needs, in this role, I’m able to effectively connect the dots between our long-term agency vision and the talent we need to achieve it. I’m passionate about staffing for the work we want to win, in addition to successfully supporting all the great work we already have.
5. The Organizational Challenge: You’re responsible for “bringing organization and structure to complex creative work.” What’s the most common organizational breakdown you see in agencies that try to scale beyond standalone projects, and how are you fixing it at MKG?
Structure is a word that inherently sounds so rigid but what I have found is that we need our structure to act as a strong foundation for constant flexibility. As a boutique agency, it’s important that we build for both consistency—our standards for quality and service, our agency values, our voice and personality, our core processes—as well as adaptability. That means building bespoke teams for the work that we do, tailoring certain processes to fit the need, bringing in subject matter experts to push the work further, working in ways that are best for our clients and not just MKG. As we continue to grow our team and our services, we want to ensure that our foundation stays strong and true to us, while leveraging flexible components that allow us to meet the needs of each unique complex project or workflow. It can be easier to try to scale proportionately—doing the same thing but in a bigger way—but I see that as limiting, both for the agency and our clients. Rather than scaling the structure, we use it as a foundation for scaling with flexibility, which for us provides us more opportunities to grow through new and complex creative challenges.
6. The Evolution of Brand Experience: Clients are looking to create “impact far beyond the live moment.” What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in what clients expect from an experiential agency compared to five years ago, and what capability are they still not asking for but actually need?
Brands now expect experiential moments to have reach and extension online. A successful experiential moment can drive brand love better than any other marketing channel, but when the in-person experience is paired with a vicarious one on social, the impact is explosive.
However, many brands are still approaching experience and content separately, and this isolated approach can be a missed opportunity for higher ROI. When those two elements are developed in the same room by the same people, the creative is sharper and the impact is multiplied.
While clients often initially approach us for high caliber experiential campaigns, integrating content into the plan from day one is what truly extends that experience. The content is created with the live moment in mind and built to live beyond it. Some clients and brands are already catching on to this in a big way, but we’re looking forward to building this with others as they begin to see the immense value that this combination offers.
