Magnanni is a Spain-based footwear and leather goods house with generations of handcraftsmanship behind it. Over eight years as Global Creative Director, the work was to translate that heritage into a modern global brand presence:

My work here was building the creative and marketing vision, along with the function, content systems, and brand experience that carried it across global markets. The mandate spanned campaign creation and deployment, video and photography production, marketing b2b/b2c, website, UX/UI, in-store implementation, the technical design and construction of an in-house studio facility, and the global e-commerce business.

The Creative Vision

Heritage brands face a specific risk: reverence for the craft becomes a reason not to evolve. The direction taken was to keep the handcraftsmanship at the center while presenting it in a visual language the modern luxury customer already lived in. Flagship campaigns were built to be cinematic and striking, engineered to stand out in a category that largely photographs product against white. Set design, lighting direction, and photography were led personally rather than briefed out, which kept the standard consistent and the production costs honest.

Building The Teams

The creative organization grew from one person to six, scaling to crews of twenty for flagship productions. Building capability in-house rather than renting it from agencies gave the brand faster turnarounds, tighter cost & quality control, and a visual language that stayed coherent across markets. Hires were made against a gap in the system rather than a title on an org chart, so the team could carry marketing functions, photography, video, design, and digital execution without handing the brand's voice to an outside party.

Working across language, culture, and time zones required building alignment continuously while holding a single creative standard through all of it. A working fluency in the technical limits of production, web, video, and print ensured the relationship with development teams were productive rather than adversarial, knowing when to compromise and when to hold the line on a creative decision. The result was a function that could produce at seasonal cadence, launch new product lines, and support wholesale partners simultaneously. It continues to operate on that structure after the tenure ended.

Marketing Strategy & Systems

The infrastructure & marketing engine built during this period still run the business today. The editorial and content calendar anchors the year with two flagship seasonal productions supported by five flexible campaigns, aligning creative output to wholesale seasonality and product launch cadence. The drop system, built around limited exclusive releases, made scarcity part of the brand experience and became a primary driver of newsletter growth, consumer retention and engagement.

Every campaign was planned from the outset for reuse across channels, so a single production served e-commerce, wholesale sales collateral, in-store promotional material, and paid media.

As department store business declined during covid the sales focus shifted toward independent clothiers and shoe retailers, that planning absorbed a significant increase in required material without a proportional increase in spend.

Heritage & Craftsmanship

A craft passed down through generations of shoemakers within the same family. Every pair still moves through the hands of artisans who shape, last, and finish the leather by methods refined across seven decades. Stewarding a brand like this means protecting that heritage in every decision, ensuring the values behind the craft are communicated in each campaign, each image, and each channel it reaches. The creative work must remember to carry that lineage forward, presenting handcraftsmanship built to endure and inspire an audience discovering it for the first time.

The Campaign Work

Year
01/01/0001

Concept: “Noir”

A single character split across the brand's two worlds, tailoring on one side and athleisure on the other, framed as a dialogue between the two sides of the brand.

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Year
01/01/0001

Concept: “Iconic”

A single character split across the brand's two worlds, tailoring on one side and athleisure on the other, framed as a dialogue between the two sides of the brand.:

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Season
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Brand Stewardship

Not all of the work was campaign work. Off-price product manufactured for outlet channels had split the brand's reputation, with some customers encountering Magnanni as a $500 shoe in premium leathers and others as a $200 shoe in Nordstrom Rack & Saks Off 5th. Making the case to the C-suite that this was actively damaging the brand led to the decision to stop manufacturing off-price product and concentrate on full-price direct sales.

Product selection for both direct and wholesale promotion was part of the same remit, steering campaign focus toward distinctive pieces such as the Ondara (double monkstrap), The Cruz (wholecut), and Astro (sneaker) that became some of the brand's signature shoes.

Results & Deployment

US e-commerce grew roughly 3.5x, moving online from 5% to 16.5% of total US revenue during this period. The same model was extended into Europe, where online revenue more than doubled. Brand recognition shifted alongside it: in 2015 web traffic came almost entirely from department store customers who already knew the name, while by 2020 more than a quarter arrived through brand recognition, marketing, sales relationships, influencer, PR, and advertising channels built during the tenure. Creative strategy ran across both owned and wholesale channels, supporting partnerships with Nordstrom, Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Level Shoes Dubai, and Le Bon Marché Paris, Boutiques in Mexico City, Ginza, to name a few.