Kim McNeil-Downs

About Kim McNeil-Downs

I love challenging myself, and the organizations I support, to find new, smart ways to get marketing done. Like that iconic BASF ad slogan, I don’t create the marketing, I help talent deliver marketing better. To do that I embrace my calling as a change agent leader by intensely focusing on super-charging the efficiencies, effectiveness, and impact of brand, marketing, communications, and creative teams. My goal is to mobilize insight-led, data-driven and innovative talent focused on teaming smartly, with creativity and joy, to drive great omnichannel work that works best at delivering business-building outcomes. Much of my work experience has been in organizations with in-house marketing and creative services. These In-house teams are on the rise because they are singularly focused on making sure what they do best is best for their brand. In that spirit, I have: • Sponsored Agile implementation sparking marketing-wide adoption of agile ways of working through the deployment of small, dedicated, self-directed teams focusing on continuous improvement. Results include time-to-market reductions, significant resource hours saved, increased teaming satisfaction, and consistently high quality and effective deliverables in market. • Expanded In-housing of marketing services (ex: strategy, creative, production, PR, media) versus dependence on external providers producing significant cost avoidance annually. This included building out capabilities focused on brand strategy development, marketing insights mining, omnichannel experience strategy, content strategy, and marketing effectiveness measurement. This spurred commitment to always lead with strategy: elevating brief effectiveness, shortening the time it takes to get at the heart of business needs, and propelling great creative work that connects with clients in the channels where they are. • Spearheaded technology implementations that have delivered streamlined processes and improved access to shared assets and artifacts - shortening cycle times and freeing up capacity to do more. • Designed labor pool analytics that provided stakeholders with planned assignment and utilization views needed to staff effectively. • Governed programs that consolidated contracted agency relationships across enterprises. The results helped provide the foundation that established the in-house team as the agency of record and brand steward. Also simplified and shortened the vendor engagement and onboarding cycles – making it easier to bring in the right talent at the right time to solve the business need.

Experience

1. Brand, Marketing and Communications Leader

   Deloitte

   May 2025 — Present

Education

• Rhode Island School of Design

  BFA

  1980 — 1984

Skills

• Creative Operations
• Workfront
• Cost Reduction Implementation
• Planning Budgeting & Forecasting
• Resource Planning and Variable Staffing Strategies
• Oracle Project Accounting
• Vendor Management