Creative leadership · New York
Bud Light Seltzer Sessions · Post Malone, NYE · Directed
STEVEN BEAL
Creative director who runs the AI production stack himself.
Twenty-five years leading creative and production, thirteen of them owning a P&L. Founded Bionic, grew it to $5M a year and 35 people, sold it to Company 3, then ran their 15-person New York editorial division to $1.4M in year one, $500K over target. Emmy, 2011. For the last two years that has gone into building the AI systems underneath the work, not buying them.
A Coca-Cola brand · Anitta
Latin America launch
The pipeline is the product.
A Coca-Cola brand needed a Latin America launch and the budget did not cover the volume the platforms wanted.
I built the shoot around an LED wall so it produced footage and finished frames at the same time, then ran it through a generative pipeline I designed: per-client agent workflows, brand-guardrail evaluation, and a human approval gate at every step.
BODYARMOR’s own 30 to 50 person creative organization adopted the workflow afterward. A pipeline nobody uses is a demo.
“In Bloom” · Kehlani + SZA
Pier 17, New York
The best idea only existed on the stream.
A product launch with Kehlani and SZA performing. One take, no retries.
We built a nature-inspired wonderland for the thousands of people in the room, and a second version of the event for everyone watching at home: AR elements visible only on the livestream, including CGI geese flying over the NYC skyline.
Two audiences, two different shows, one night, on purpose.
Fire Country · Nashville
Shot during the writers’ strike
We shot a network show during the writers’ strike.
The strike stopped production. CBS needed its hit show to stay top of mind with nothing new to air.
We produced intimate performances from the show’s country artists in the Nashville woods, shot entirely off-grid on custom power infrastructure, and cut it to drop into the YouTube premiere replays.
Strike-proof content. Zero production downtime.
x Jack Harlow
The TRACK · facility launch
Sport, music, and a building.
New Balance opened a multi-sport facility and wanted the launch to feel like a show, not a ribbon cutting.
We unveiled it through an exclusive Jack Harlow performance built as a hybrid live and streaming event: a runway stage cut through the room, LED along its length, so the audience on the floor and the audience at home each got a reason to be there.
PlayWorks Digital · SVP, Video Content Strategy & Production
The creator voice is the asset. The brand is the guest.
I signed and ran the roster, built the production organization from zero to eight inside a 75-person company across six countries, and set the creative standards all of it ran on. Seventy-five plus premium creators, a combined audience above 150M, shipped across 14 connected-TV platforms and 100+ streaming apps.
And
SSundee · Ninja Kidz TV · Airrack · DanTDM · Ali-A · Like Nastya · EYstreem · Milo and Chip · The Fun Squad · Firelight · Annoying Orange · GameToons · Muselk · Best of Minecraft · Treyten · BeckBroJack
PlayWorks Digital · Connected TV portfolio
Every creator was a P&L I owned.
Not a follower count. Revenue, per title, per platform, reviewed quarterly. I governed the portfolio on economics: a per-app daily revenue threshold decided what got invested in, maintained, or retired.
Top 12 by revenue, trailing six months
Source: play.works video team financial review
PlayWorks Digital · Roku portfolio
Nothing about the content changed. Only how it was described.
I introduced published metadata feeds and search-aligned naming across the app portfolio, renaming titles to match how audiences actually search: “Minecraft with BeckBroJack”, “GTA with Treyten”, “Fortnite with Ali-A”. Creator plus game, dual-branded, in the title itself.
Revenue in the 60 days after the feeds went live, against the 60 days before:
I also governed the portfolio on economics: a per-app daily revenue threshold decided what got invested in, maintained, or retired. Reviewed quarterly.
The production system
The same decisions, made four times.
Intake to shipped asset, with the judgment gates intact. Each stage names the company it was built at and what it produced. Nothing here is a proposal. All of it shipped.
- 01 · Intake + tier
Sort before you spend.
Tier 1 gets directed attention. Volume goes to the templated lane. The point is that the split is decided on the way in, not after someone is already working.
PlayWorks Digital - 02 · Two lanes
Templates carry the volume.
Brand-locked templates and a self-serve path let teams outside creative ship on their own. That is how eight people covered 14 connected-TV platforms on a fixed weekly schedule.
PlayWorks Digital - 03 · Generative pipeline
One shoot, every version.
Per-client agent workflows producing platform-versioned output from a single capture. The shoot was designed around an LED wall so it made footage and finished frames at the same time.
BODYARMOR · a Coca-Cola brand - 04 · Guardrail evaluation
Brand rules that actually run.
A versioned canon recording what each model is trusted to do and why, plus a living quality rubric with documented thresholds, running as a scoring and rewrite pass. Not a deck of guidelines.
Openly Gray - 05 · Human gate
Where judgment is mandatory.
Review points are named in advance and the reasoning behind each rule is written down, which is what makes the judgment auditable instead of personal.
Openly Gray · BODYARMOR - 06 · Measure, then cut
The loop that closes.
Per-title economics reviewed quarterly, with a daily revenue threshold deciding what got invested in, maintained or retired. The measurement is what makes it a system rather than a workflow.
PlayWorks Digital · CTV
‹ What the numbers say goes back into intake
None of these stages was invented for a deck. Each one was built because the previous way of working had stopped scaling, and each one outlasted the project that forced it.