Target Holiday Harmony

Creative Direction & End-to-End Digital Design for a Scalable Seasonal Campaign

Building a modular system for performance marketing and storytelling across paid, social, and site—driving consistency, clarity, and conversion throughout the holiday season.

Challenge

With multiple message tiers (Black Friday, gift cards, daily deals, brand tie-ins), Target needed a digital strategy that could flex across platforms and partners without sacrificing creative integrity. Production timelines were tight. Messaging shifted weekly. And every asset needed to feel unified—no matter where it showed up.

Context

Target’s “Holiday Harmony” campaign extended the brand’s beloved “Mother” holiday platform into digital environments. But adapting a high-concept campaign across paid media, social, and dynamic placements—week after week, in multiple languages—required more than great design. It required a system.

Strategy

I led the creation of a flexible digital design system rooted in the Dynamic Creative Framework (DCO). The goal: maintain creative cohesion while enabling platform-specific customization and rapid production. Alongside that, I developed custom formats and creative playbooks for media partners, ensuring alignment across every touchpoint—from Yieldmo units to co-branded holiday promotions.

Execution

This campaign required more than great visuals—it needed a cross-functional system. I architected and led the entire creative operation from the inside out.

  • Designed a scalable layout system grounded in the Dynamic Creative Framework (DCO), enabling consistent yet customizable messaging across paid platforms, partnerships, and languages

  • Developed campaign-specific DCO matrixs to account for evolving promotions, audience segmentation, and ad tech constraints—mapping strategy to execution at a granular level

  • Collaborated with developers, QA leads, and media teams to ensure HTML5 and dynamic assets not only met specs but delivered performance across all screen types and load environments

  • Built and tested Yieldmo-specific units—carousel, mega shopper, pinhole—customizing creative for media nuances while maintaining brand consistency

  • Directed creative for brand integrations, including Starbucks and Ulta, managing promotional flights that included daily deal rotations, gift card awareness, and price match messaging

  • Managed cross-functional creative and dev teams across the U.S. and India, aligning workflows, enforcing standards, and solving technical blockers in real time

  • Created living playbooks and templates for message tiers (e.g., gifting, Black Friday, value-driving) to ensure teams could rapidly produce high-quality assets week after week

  • Oversaw full QA and launch process, validating that every asset not only functioned, but felt intentional and on-brand

Results

  • Built a DCO-driven design system supporting multiple messaging tiers

  • Created high-engagement assets across platforms like Yieldmo, Vox, Bustle, and Target-owned channels

  • Enabled week-over-week asset production with fast-turn timelines and global coordination

  • Optimized CTA usability and message clarity across ad formats

  • Delivered multimillion-dollar performance impact and exceeded holiday campaign goals

  • Maintained brand cohesion while scaling customization for partners and regions

Target’s holiday campaign needed to do more than look festive—it needed to move fast, flex by platform, and deliver results. By building a scalable creative system and managing cross-functional production end to end, I helped turn complexity into cohesion.

Services

Creative Strategy –– Campaign System Design –– DCO Matrix Development –– HTML5 & Responsive Ad Leadership –– Full Creative Lifecycle Oversight –– Motion + Static Asset Production –– QA & Launch Coordination –– Stakeholder Alignment –– Creative Operations & Workflow Optimization