ross warren
SELECTED WORKS
Ross Warren is brand marketer and creative producer with 20+ years spanning global corporates, start-up incubators and scale ups…with a strong blend of strategy, creative and go-to-market expertise.
His career spanned a decade at Google and YouTube in London and California before returning to Australia in 2020. He’s since led marketing as CMO at two Australian scale-ups, and serves as an advisor to The Anti-Slavery Collective (since 2016).
GOOGLE CREATIVE LAB
The Google Creative Lab is an in-house team of designers, writers, programmers, and filmmakers who focus on reminding the world what to love about Google and inventing its future. It works on projects that communicate Google's innovations and ideals, often pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology,
As Creative Lead,I helped scale the EMEA operations (overseeing FTE’s and team of 85+ TVCs) and led major cross-disciplinary initiatives.
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We produced award-winning campaigns including:
WebLab - a year long live streamed Chrome experiment at the London Science Museum
YouTube Play - with the Guggenheim
YouTube Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House
Life in a Day (2011)- which premiered at Sundance Film Festival
The Summit Against Violent Extremism
YouTube SpaceLab
THE YOUTUBE MUSIC AWARDS (YTMAS)
The YouTube Music Awards (YTMA) was an awards show presented by YouTube in 2013 and 2015 to honor artists whose music had a major impact on the platform
2013: The inaugural live award show was held on November 3, 2013, in New York City, and was directed by Spike Jonze. Performances were held globally in cities including Seoul, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, and London, with artists like Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Arcade Fire participating. Winners were determined entirely by fan voting through social media shares, likes, and comments.
2015: The format shifted from a live show to a celebration where 50 winners, chosen based on "growth in views, subscribers, and engagement," were announced online on March 2, 2015. This announcement was accompanied by the release of exclusive new music videos from various artists on March 23, 2015.
YOUTUBE : PROJECT BEACON
In 2014, of three creators featured in YouTube's "Project Beacon", an advertising campaign launched around April 2014. The goal of the campaign was to: Promote YouTube as a powerful platform for content creators. Drive advertiser interest in Google Preferred, a program allowing advertisers to buy ad space on popular YouTube channels
YOUTUBE REBRAND
In August 2017, YouTube underwent its first major rebrand since its launch, which included a new logo, typeface, and a site redesign based on Google's Material Design language. The changes were designed to create a more unified, flexible, and consistent experience across all devices.
Key Aspects of the Rebrand
Logo Redesign: The most significant change was the logo. The word "Tube" was removed from inside a rounded red rectangle (symbolizing an old TV screen) and placed the standalone, iconic play button to the left of the full "YouTube" wordmark. This change emphasized the core function of the platform and improved scalability and legibility on smaller screens, such as mobile app icons.
New Typeface: YouTube introduced a new bespoke font, moving away from the previous one. The new font featured lighter, sleeker lines designed for better readability and a modern aesthetic.
Updated Color Palette: The color of the red rectangle changed to a pure, vibrant red (#FF0000), which designers explained represents the "RGB of video". The design team also implemented a red-to-magenta gradient to provide a sense of motion in elements like the video progress bar.
User Interface Overhaul: The desktop website and mobile apps were updated to align with Google's Material Design principles, resulting in a cleaner, less cluttered interface. The content was brought to the foreground, using fewer shadows and boxes.
New Features: The rebrand was part of a larger update that included new features rolling out across platforms, such as variable speed playback on mobile and an adaptive video player that adjusted automatically to vertical, horizontal, or square videos. A "dark mode" option for a light-on-dark color scheme was also first implemented and released in August 2017.
YOUTUBE ORIGINALS
YouTube launched its original content push, initially through the subscription service YouTube Red (later rebranded as YouTube Premium), in an effort to compete with platforms like Netflix and Hulu. The strategy involved funding content from major YouTube creators and traditional celebrities.
Key developments included:
Launch (2015): The initiative began with the launch of YouTube Red, offering ad-free viewing and exclusive content.
GOOGLE AREA 120
Co-founded DEMAND, a data-driven tool to improve live event planning and pricing, within Area 120.
Led strategy, UX design, product development, and marketing.
Launched 2 apps on Google Cloud Marketplace; acquired 4,000+ users in week one.
U GROUP: REBRAND
Helping people understand the “personal” in personal data.
The data industry has a problem. AI, bots, broken forms, fraud and theft have muddied the quality of consumer data, and built a culture of distrust around data itself. This has distanced brands from their most reliable source of data: people.
U Group is a data company that believes in something that shouldn’t be revolutionary (but certainly feels like it): giving people agency over their data. U Group creates direct, transparent exchanges between people and brands, resulting in high-quality, highly equitable data, straight from the source.
U GROUP: RECEIPT JAR
Helping people understand the “personal” in personal data.
The data industry has a problem. AI, bots, broken forms, fraud and theft have muddied the quality of consumer data, and built a culture of distrust around data itself. This has distanced brands from their most reliable source of data: people.
U Group is a data company that believes in something that shouldn’t be revolutionary (but certainly feels like it): giving people agency over their data. U Group creates direct, transparent exchanges between people and brands, resulting in high-quality, highly equitable data, straight from the source.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY COLLECTIVE
Branding. Website. Podcast