TinyRobot

Hire Charles

Fractional Creative Director

A creative director who has already checked it can be built.

Senior creative leadership for your experiential work, a day or two a week. Charles leads the idea, sits in the meetings that decide it, and stays with it all the way to the shop floor and opening day.

  • A day or two a week
  • Milwaukee, on site when it counts
  • Sprints from $5,200
  • Retainers from $11,000 a month

Book a callHow it starts

You need this when

The record

  • Ten Super Bowls
  • Four Olympic and Paralympic Games
  • A World Cup
  • Eleven years in the seat

Plus an NBA All-Star Game, SXSW, music festivals, mobile tours and product launches. Strategist, then creative technologist, then creative director. Usually the person in the room who knew what was possible, and often the one who built it.

What you get

  1. 01

    Concepts that can be built

    Ideas with the build already worked out underneath them. No beautiful rendering that dies in its first meeting with a fabricator.

    See it in Grip Tester

  2. 02

    A seat in the room

    Client meetings, reviews, the pitch. Charles presents the work, defends it, and knows which notes to take and which to push back on.

    See it in Oversized Foosball

  3. 03

    Direction your people can run with

    Clear briefs, decisions written down, and a format that lets designers, producers and fabricators judge an idea without him in the room.

  4. 04

    Through the build, not just the deck

    On calls with the shop, at the walkthrough, and on site when it goes in. The idea gets protected all the way to opening day.

    See it in The Fry House

  5. 05

    A builder's gut on every decision

    Budget, schedule, durability, and what the people running it all day will need. He has built enough of these to know where they break.

Why a creative director who builds

Most experiential ideas don't die in the pitch. They die a few weeks later, when someone finally asks how it gets made and what it costs. Every round of notes moves the idea half a step toward safe, until the thing that made it worth doing is gone.

Charles has been the creative director and the builder on the same job, many times. That means the hard questions get answered while the idea is still on paper, and the answers make the idea stronger instead of smaller.

How it starts

  1. Week 1

    Listen

    Meet your team, the client and the people who'll build it. Read everything. Ask the questions nobody has asked yet.

  2. Weeks 2 to 4

    First calls

    Decide what to keep, what to cut and what to push. Briefs and reviews start running on a rhythm.

  3. Day 30

    A written read

    Where the work stands, what's at risk, and what the next 60 days look like. Then you decide whether to keep going.

  4. After that

    In the room

    Weekly reviews, client meetings, and the shop floor when it's time to build.

Work Charles led

Our role: Creative director for the whole fry house. Built the button.

Our role: Creative director, from first concept to the last day of the festival

Our role: Creative director

Ways to work together

  • Start here

    A sprint

    One to two weeks on one problem: crack a pitch, rescue a stuck concept, or set the direction for a new program. The easiest way to find out if we work well together.

    Not included: Ongoing leadership, design production.

    From $5,200

  • Standing

    Two days a week, every week. Part of your team, in your meetings and your channels.

    Not included: Design production, project management, fabrication.

    From $11,000 a month

  • By the program

    One program, from the brief to the last day of the event.

    Not included: Fabrication and materials.

    Quoted per program

Build work, fabrication and materials are always quoted separately from creative fees, so the two never get tangled.

What it isn't

Questions people ask

Have you done this before?
Charles spent eleven years doing this job inside an experiential agency: the meetings, the reviews, the shop floor, opening day. Fractional is the same work, for teams that don't need it five days a week.
What happens after the first 30 days?
You decide. Keep going, change the shape, or stop. Either way, you keep the written read.
Do we have to use your shop to build it?
No. Charles directs work built by anyone: your fabricator, your production company, or the shop he brings. If you want TinyRobot to build part of it, that's quoted separately.
Can the work go out under our name?
Yes. Most of the time it does. That's the point of fractional.
Where are you based?
Milwaukee, working across the Midwest and wherever a program needs. On site when it matters, remote the rest of the week.

Tell me about the program.

I reply within a day. Then a 30-minute call: no deck, no pitch. If it's not a fit, I'll say so, and probably point you to someone who is.

Book a call