February, 2026.- In a market as saturated and mature as the United States, where scale can be both a competitive advantage and a barrier to relevance, insight-led planning becomes the critical differentiator between success and invisibility. Kyle Christie, with a robust track record at Omnicom Media Group leading accounts such as Anheuser-Busch, joins Croud as VP of Strategy & Planning to spearhead a new stage of expansion. His mission is clear: to elevate the strategic function of an independent network that already challenges traditional holding company models, integrating a multidisciplinary vision that connects SEO, paid social, and analytics under a common purpose.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Kyle breaks down how Croud is reinventing collaboration through its CroudOS operating system and the evolution toward “Agentic Croudies.” Christie explains why the future of strategy lies not in chasing trends, but in the ability to synthesize global data to make smart local decisions. From the use of AI trained with a decade of proprietary taxonomy to fostering “generalist” profiles that act as glue between disciplines, Kyle offers a masterclass on how independent agencies can be more agile and effective. Discover how his approach seeks to give brands not just quarterly results, but a long-term roadmap to build real brand value in the world’s most competitive market.
1. Strategic Vision for the US Market: Your appointment is framed as part of Croud’s continued expansion in the American market. From your perspective at Omnicom Media Group, what are the key strategic differences or unique challenges in leading insight-led planning for the US market versus other regions, and how will you adapt Croud’s approach?
The US is so unique because of its scale. There are an overwhelming number of advertisers trying to reach consumers; brands really need to plan intelligently to stand out. The good news is that the local market maturity also allows for tons of innovation. There are constant improvements to existing ad tech, fresh ideas from publishers, and measurement solutions that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago. This allows both agencies and brands to continuously push the envelope.
Croud as an agency group is well-positioned to take advantage of those innovations. Part of my remit is to explore a variety of new data sources and media solutions to build tools and processes that help Croud make smarter decisions for our clients. These build on top of existing differentiators, like our agency operating system, CroudOS. By planning for specific outcomes, we can efficiently drive tangible results and break through the US market clutter.
2. Elevating Insight-Led Planning: The core of your role is to “elevate insight-led planning.” Could you give a concrete example of how you’ve transformed a standard media plan into a truly insight-led strategy in the past? What specific tools, data sources, or processes were pivotal in that elevation?
I believe the role of strategy is to provide focus to a campaign, to the degree that it makes a real impact on a specific consumer. Applying that focus requires an extremely thorough understanding of the audience you’re trying to reach, their current perceptions of the brand and category, the activity of the competitors that are also trying to reach them, and the trends and currents of the marketplace. Strategy’s ability to inform media performance is only as good as the insights that are gathered. It’s only after steeping in that data that we can do our jobs.
In my previous role, while working on the Anheuser-Busch account, we focused on expanding the presence of relatively new-to-market brands. The non-beer options in the portfolio targeted a cohort distinct from the typical core audience of a Bud Light or Mich Ultra. Additionally, the media focus needed to mirror the more limited distribution of the products by focusing on the most developed DMAs, where the product was readily available.
I built planning tools that predicted media costs for specific DMAs, matched against the business opportunities, local sales and distribution, and cross-functional activity in market, like sampling or experiential events. This allowed us to evaluate every market in the country to find the most effective way of spending limited budgets. Insights garnered against a younger, more affluent audience helped drive added relevance for these brands, distinct from traditional beer messaging.
3. Cross-Functional Strategy in Practice: You’re tasked with fostering cross-functional strategy across accounts. In your experience, what is the most common barrier to effective collaboration between strategy, planning, and execution teams (like paid search, social, SEO), and what’s your proven method for breaking down those silos?
The most common barriers to collaboration I have found in my career are education and bandwidth. It’s very easy to ‘stay in your lane’ when up against quick timelines, and figuring out what others on your team are doing day-to-day can seem like a luxury that’s impossible to fit in. However, that integration is absolutely vital in ensuring that strategy pulls through to every part of the media plan, and that every specialist is working towards the same outcomes.
I believe in the importance of generalists at agencies. Planning teams can be the glue that brings teams together. That starts with a solid, working understanding of every discipline. Not to the level of detail of those specialists, but enough to speak a common language, understand the time it takes to accomplish what we are asking of them, and the ability to think through how strategy could be translated into media across multiple channels.
Following through on that promise of collaboration when timing gets tight requires clear, concise process and organizational tools. It means more check-in’s to ensure transparency at every step of the process (and looping in all disciplines early in the process, when there is time to affect change). Platforms like CroudOS streamline how we work across teams in the agency by providing a unified workflow from planning to activation to analytics. It helps establish a common language across campaigns, and organizes the touchpoints that keep us on track.
4. Integrating with Croud’s Model: Croud is known for its unique network model blending core teams with a global community of experts. How do you envision your strategy & planning function integrating with and leveraging this distributed model to deliver more effective and agile insights for clients?
The Croudie Network is one of the biggest differentiators I’ve seen at Croud. It allows us to stay highly flexible in our workflow by managing bandwidth according to specific timing of client needs. Even better for Strategy & Planning teams, we are able to tap the people with the right expertise for the job, anywhere in the world. That means the dedicated team in the US doesn’t need to be an expert on every local marketing trend to effectively plan for brands activating there. We have the ability to get the point of view of someone living and breathing media in 190+ countries across the globe, allowing us to spend our time synthesizing findings and applying them to strategy, rather than being bogged down with researching something outside of our area of expertise.
That flexibility is invaluable, but the real differentiator comes from the evolution to Agentic Croudies. Croud has a decade of history creating briefs for on-demand marketing specialists with consistent language, organization, outputs, and feedback. In a way, this wealth of information acts as a consistent taxonomy for our workflow. Today, we are better positioned to feed that into AI-driven systems that will be able to understand what an effective response looks like. Having access to well-organized historical data gives us a huge leg up over agencies that are trying to automate similar tasks, but are feeding in many formats, created by many people, for many different needs, with less clear feedback on the accuracy or success of those asks.
Our AI Croudies continue to learn with every task completed, improving reasoning, recommendations, and response to feedback creating compounding value over time and operating at the speed brands expect in the AI era. We’re set up as a business to allow human expertise to focus on strategy and creativity, while AI handles repeatable, high-volume tasks.
5. From Holding Company to Independent Network: Moving from Omnicom Media Group, a global holding company, to an independent, growing network like Croud is a significant shift. What opportunities does this move present for you personally in shaping strategy, and what aspects of the holding company structure were you eager to leave behind or reinvent?
The single most important factor that informed my move to Croud is how eager the team is to constantly improve. Change comes slowly at the holding companies I’ve worked at in the past. Although process gaps or client needs are easily identified, limited access to decision-makers often makes enacting change an uphill battle.
As I interviewed at Croud, the executive team made it crystal clear that they wanted me to tear up what was not working and apply what was needed to make smarter, more timely decisions for strategy. The team has been extremely supportive of overhauling existing processes or positioning of the Croud offering.
The other unique benefit of a position like this at Croud is the ability to see across the large variety of clients and apply learnings and best practices across the company. Cross-team knowledge sharing at holding companies is often too high-level to be useful for day-to-day application. I’ve already witnessed the S&P team efficiently cross-share specific learnings to inform future plans, an approach that drastically improves our speed and effectiveness in maximizing client outcomes.
6. Defining Success in the Role: What will be your primary KPIs or milestones in the first 12 months to demonstrate that you have successfully elevated the planning function? Are you looking to implement new frameworks, improve specific client outcomes, or drive new business growth?
The first milestone is to distill the S&P team’s existing knowledge into clear, concise planning principles and implement them across all clients. These principles will also enhance new business efforts by enabling us to rapidly diagnose strategic planning gaps in potential clients and offer targeted recommendations for improvement.
For clients, deepening the planning function will present as more clarity around strategy and long-term roadmaps for building brands, beyond just the briefs we receive quarter by quarter. Brands should be able to see how strategy is providing the insights required for their next best moves. This is especially important for clients that are currently performance-focused, but are in a position to grow their brand longer term with strategic, higher level activations.
