Ben Cruz is the founder and creative director of Gold Rhino, a Brooklyn studio he started in 2010 and has run full time since 2019. He has spent more than twenty years building brands, campaigns and products for Fortune 500 companies and startups around the world.
He has run large creative departments and built companies. The better he got at managing, the further he got from the problem-solving that drew him to the work in the first place. He also reached a practical conclusion: more than twelve people in a room never made the work better, just distanced him from the end result. The person who wins the work should be the person who does it.
As executive creative director on RPI Forward: A Campaign for Our Third Century, he led the campaign film, case for support, launch creative and donor communications for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's $1.5 billion bicentennial campaign. On the Skift.com rebrand he directed brand strategy and experience design across Skift Intelligence, Skift Daily and Skift Live, in partnership with Charming Robot.
Ben started out on concert merchandise for Nirvana, Public Enemy, New Kids on the Block, Paula Abdul and the Grateful Dead, then launched a graphic design firm serving Nike NYC, Price Waterhouse Coopers, CBS and Sony Music. Through the following decade, as an art director at New York shops, he worked on Mercedes-Benz, Weight Watchers, 7UP, Woodpecker Cider, Smirnoff, Sprint and MasterCard World Cup, where the strategic half of his practice took hold. As Chief Creative Officer at Fly Communications he launched the Kanye West Foundation and G.O.O.D. Music, built the launch campaigns for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Grocery, Stoli and the International Culinary Center, and led multi-platform work for Pernod Ricard. Co-founding A Different Kind of Animal, making international campaigns for BET, NBCUniversal, Discovery Networks, Cartier, Grand Marnier, Don Julio, the Paris Chamber of Commerce, Ducati, and the SEB Group brands KRUPS, Rowenta, Lagostina, T-fal and All-Clad.
Since coming back to Gold Rhino full time he has worked with PayPal, Citibank, Charlotte's Web, Greenwood Project, Sales.com, One Cannabis Group, Columbia Cleanroom and New West Knives.
Ben serves on the board of the Van Alen Institute. What this work has taught him is in the end, it is all about the people.Contact me: ben@goldrhino.agency