Executive Spotlight - Todd Mcilhenny Delivering Really Smart Creative Work—With an Optimist Mindset

When Todd McIlhenny looks at business today, he sees a lot of parallels to the dot-com craze, which was at its height when he began his career nearly three decades ago. As a fresh college grad, he knew right away that the internet was the future of business and the industry he wanted to focus his attention on. It was challenging, constantly evolving, and surrounded by excitement and uncertainty—not unlike AI in the current market.

“When you’re in the industry long enough, you see the patterns,” he said. “The future of work was in the technology and the web and the developments in the cloud, and we didn’t know what that was going to mean. With AI, it’s much the same—to be in this kind of industry, you have to be open to change and completely open to any kind of thunderstruck idea that comes in. It’s about embracing our own willingness to change and adapt.”

McIlhenny is the business director at Opus Creative, a Portland-based product marketing, marketing support, and branding agency that partners with brands to distill their mission into relatable product marketing programs. A micro agency deeply embedded with Fortune 500 companies, Opus Creative is brought to the table for very specific work and very specific messaging—much of which, in the current market, relates to AI and sustainability.

“AI is everything and nothing right now, and we are trying to help our clients ground themselves in not only what they are doing with AI to improve their products and companies but also what their future vision of AI and AI integrations are,” McIlhenny said. “And realistically, everyone is on board with sustainability now. As humans, we need to be sustainable, so let’s keep pushing our clients and helping our clients push themselves and their customers to be more sustainable.”

Opus Creative, which was founded in 1995, has a reputation for teams that roll up their sleeves to create communication methods for global audiences and deliver really smart creative work—much of which involves big, fairly complex ideas.

“What makes us special is our approach to both the work and our relationships with our clients,” McIlhenny said. “We bring an optimistic viewpoint to almost everything we do.  In our optimism, we work to identify how our clients are working for the betterment of their customers. How does this product help you today? How is it going to make your work life a little bit better, your home life a little bit better?

“It’s nice to live in a world where most of our work is figuring out how to identify what is going to drive the industry forward, drive our clients’ work forward, and just drive the world forward. It’s fun to dive into that and focus on that every day. We like it when we can get aligned and we're all pushing in the same direction—that’s when the amazing stuff happens.”

Thank you to A.wordsmith for interviewing, Todd McIlhenny, Business Director at Opus Creative.

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