Photographed by Marc Tousignant

Everyone in the business world, and especially those who helm and grow brands, know how challenging it is to remain sustainable and stand out in the extremely competitive business environment.  Where there are various alternatives available for a consumer to choose from, it’s important for every business to create a unique and diverse brand identity in order to develop and maintain a loyal following. The secret to the success of great organizations is the creativity they put into their branding and marketing, which creates a positive, reliable, and long-lasting impression on the minds of consumers.

The person responsible for creating a favorable brand image through different marketing initiatives is the creative brand marketing executive, whose impact can create massive global awareness of a product and service through unique marketing strategies and plans campaigns, direct marketing, digital and social media campaigns, and advertising. 

A Marketer who has become a prominent name in the industry is Scott Woodward, having had a successful and accomplished decades-long creative brand marketing career. During his expansive time in the industry, he has worked in-house as a senior marketing, advertising, and branding executive for iconic brands, such as Ray-Ban, Calvin Klein, and Movado as well as for Omnicom’s Arnell Group. It was there he met and collaborated with Peter Arnell on Ray-Ban and later the stable of Movado Group brands as Chief Marketing Officer creating memorable campaigns for the fashion accessory brands. 

Scott Woodward has been described by some in the industry as a marketing archetype, given he has successfully established a career that has now spanned three decades. The first half of his career was spent as a brand marketer for some of the most iconic brands in the world and the latter half as the founder of his own brand agency in New York, SEW Branded, working with over forty brands, emerging and established, as a quintessential brand design and marketing guru.

In the end, he ultimately pivoted to founding his own consultancy, SEW Branded (his initials sew, as a wordplay on “so or completely” branded). The nimble brand marketing and advertising consultancy serves an eclectic array of small and large clients alike in New York and has done work for Bausch & Lomb, Woolrich, Lands’ End, Black Halo, Robert Graham, Sotheby’s, The Plaza Hotel, and Target, to name a few.  

Woodward has always been inspired by the brand design greats in New York that have included Peter Arnell, Mike Toth, Fabien Baron, Sam Shahid, Doug Lloyd, Trey Laird, and David Lipman. He credits his time spent as a client of Arnell Group and having been mentored by the controversial branding guru, with his decision to pivot from in-house marketing roles and establishing his own client roster and to be able to work on multiple brands at once and in different areas, like packaging, digital brand design and campaign development. 

Woodward has evolved from his days as an in-house corporate marketing thought leader to collaborating with megastar celebrities with his firm and was the first to create a Kindness Campaign Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation after watching its launch at Harvard on Oprah. He enlisted then influencers Patrick Schwarzenegger (turned Actor and Investor-Entrepreneur) and the Ellen-discovered young musician Grayson Chance to help him create "kinder schools" with the goal to eradicate bullying with an inventive PSA featuring both and supported by Lady Gaga. He tells us of how he convinced his retail client, Office Depot to donate $1M to her newly launched initiative that would dovetail with their anti-bullying platform to introduce the big box back-to-school retailer to a younger demographic with a meaningful cause platform yielded by marketing insights. 

His follow up to the Lady Gaga initiative was an award-winning campaign with One Direction, to empower youth and discourage students from bullying peers in schools across America.  As part of the campaign with One Direction, Woodward interviewed each band member in Germany and got them to open up in one-on-one interviews to explain why they did the campaign amidst a world tour and how it affected them, their friends, and their families. The collaboration won the Clio Award for best film and integrated campaign and also raised $1M for the cause. 

Pivoting to become an entrepreneur after a successful in-house corporate career, his firm specializes in brand design within fashion, luxury, heritage, and aspirational segments for an eclectic client roster with categories spanning retail, fashion, accessories, real estate, music, wine, and spirits and sports. Their award-winning multidisciplinary collaborations for One Direction and the Born This Way Foundation, received the Clio, Summit International, IAC, and Emery Awards, which Woodard received for his efforts to curb bullying. 

Woodward is no stranger to creative brand marketing at a world-class level, as he began his career in the marketing training program at Chevron after he finished his BA/MBA combination in marketing and management in just under five years. He learned the ropes there amongst other talented young marketing MBAs and was also exposed to the energy giant’s first re-brand.

He went on to Ray-Ban and rise the product marketing ranks before soon becoming the brand’s first global head of brand image marketing and overseeing the strategies of  the 60-year-old brand during the time when Ray-Ban had a starring role in Men-in-Black, the 1997 blockbuster movie in which the main leads of the movie, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, were shown wearing Ray-Bans as part of their uniform, in an integrated global campaign led with a spot that served as a movie trailer and brand spot, that "simultaneously marketed the film and the brand, significantly growing market share and placing the brand in front of Oakley for the first time in a decade" Woodard explains. Part of the Ray-Ban reinvention also included its first flagship store as part of its Olympic sponsorship and working with the legendary producer Aaron Spelling, one of Woodward’s fondest memories, to integrate the brand into his iconic television series with the world’s hottest stars. 

After these successful times at Ray-Ban recognizing the importance of building a global brand image, and building world-class teams to execute 360-degreebrand assets flawlessly with best-in-class talent and agencies, he was recruited by Calvin Klein and appointed its first vice president of global retail marketing and public relations to build the then-strategy of expanding the CK bridge brand across Europe and Asia where he opened the first non-Collection store in Tel Aviv. He later pivoted to become the brand’s vice president of consumer insights, driving new categories and evaluating brand expansion in areas like children’s luxury and furniture. 

Woodward was then hired by the Movado Group as its first CMO to re-think its in-house agency and build a world-class global marketing team, responsible for crafting a new image for their portfolio of luxury watch brands, including Movado, Concord, ESQ, Piaget, Corum, Coach, and Tommy Hilfiger. As one of the groups first Chief Marketing Officers, he re-branded their luxury portfolio timepiece Concord in under a year with the campaign, Be Late. Time is a Luxury.  

He also amplified the brand portfolio amongst celebrities and influencers with Oscar and Independent Award-inspired sponsorships, which were among the first in the industry. 

With his in-house positions helping  brands and now as an agency founder and entrepreneur, Woodward has been mindful of cause-marketing from the onset (now referred to as purpose-driven marketing with Millennials, Gen-Z, and Alpha-generational cohorts) and the good that can be achieved when aligning a brand’s mission with the right cause. He was the first to align Concord’s luxury marketing efforts with AmfAR’s fight to cure aids, Bausch & Lomb’s Renu Solution with its all-important female demographic, and breast cancer awareness with Susan G. Komen. His notable work on anti-bullying with Office Depot with One Direction won Hetrick Martin’s prestigious Emery Award alongside first-daughter Chelsea Clinton and author David Mixner

As a philanthropist and humanitarian, Woodward occasionally teaches Marketing, PR & Branding at Parsons School of Design in New York City to aspiring marketing students enrolled in the strategic design and management BBA program. Most recently, he joined the Board of Advisors of Pneuma, a proprietary technology that engineers living, photosynthesizing fibers that can capture carbon emissions and restore our symbiotic relationship with the planet with applications in apparel, furniture & home design. In addition, his firm SEW Branded is working with a rising men’s luxury fashion label to create its fall 2023 digital 360-degree brand image, and where he will serve as a Creative Juror on the newly launched New York International Fashion Film Festivalthis fall during the fashion week. 

Woodward earned a BA in marketing and management from Saint Leo University, where he was the first president of its collegiate chapter of the American Marketing Association a completed an MBA at Loyola University while completing graduate coursework at Villanova University.