The logo for Elle Harrigan, a creative strategist, with stylized white text on a black background and red text on a white banner.

I turn ideas into interactive ad experiences that ship, sell, and win awards — for Fortune 500 brands, across CTV, OLV, mobile, and beyond.

Collection of logos for Amazon, Bank of America, Hulu, Hyundai, Intel, Toyota, and Hyatt.

65

campaigns across 43 brands and 18 verticals in 2025 alone

$31.7M

across 92 campaigns and 56 brands over 2025–26

Creative Strategy ·

Interactive Advertising ·

CTV & OLV ·

AI-Native Workflows ·

New Business & RFP ·

Creative Strategy · Interactive Advertising · CTV & OLV · AI-Native Workflows · New Business & RFP ·

About Me

I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago in a gigantic Irish Catholic family, whom I love very dearly — especially when they drive me completely crazy.

My early passion for justice, human behavior, and persuasion led me into a decade-long career in digital political communications, capped with a Master's in Gender, Policy, and Inequalities from the London School of Economics. If there's one thing ten years in politics will teach you, it's how to capture — and hold — people's attention when the stakes are incredibly high.

In 2022, I brought that skill to the ad tech world, joining Infillion as a Creative Strategist, and later Senior Creative Strategist. Over four years there, I built award-winning interactive ad products across dozens of brands and verticals — everyone from Fortune 500 giants to local bathroom remodeling businesses.

Whether I conceptualize a simple static banner or a multi-screen CTV and AR experience, the goal is always the same: to build digital touchpoints people actually want to interact with — and that brands actually see real results from.

Illustration of Elle Harrigan, a person with long hair sitting at a desk, looking at a computer monitor, in a minimalist style with shades of red, dark brown, and black. Her faithful dog sits next to her.
  • Platform Strategy

    Platform Strategy

    CTV, online video, and mobile experiences, engineered against real client KPIs

  • Creative & Brand Strategy

    Scripts, cultural insight and experiential campaigns for entertainment and consumer brands

  • Icon of a microphone, indicating a karaoke or singing activity, on a red circular background.

    New Business Strategy

    Pitch strategy, RFP response and live activations sold off the deck

  • Political Strategy

    Political Strategy

    Field organizing, digital fundraising and messaging research for campaigns and advocacy

How I Lead

Icon of a microphone on a red circular background.

The same instinct that makes me good at creative strategy — looking at a stuck problem sideways until a different answer shows up — is what I bring to leading people.

At Infillion, I co-founded an internal MasterClass program reaching hundreds of colleagues, ran twice-weekly company-wide Slack engagement questions, co-founded the internal podcast "Infilli-ON AIR," and sat on the company's Employee Advisory Council.

Before that, I managed a direct report at Clarify Agency and led teams of dozens of interns and hundreds of volunteers on political campaigns.

A favorite line from organizer Paul Wellstone — "We all do better when we all do better" — sums up how I try to lead.

How I Direct

Icon of a pencil writing on a piece of paper with a red background

Every project starts with a frame-by-frame creative direction doc I write myself — the copy, layout and interaction for each frame, plus the reasoning behind every call, so the design and build teams never have to guess at intent.

That same instinct scaled up when I co-designed and directed the UX experience of Infillion's company-wide operating platform, live to 500+ employees — directing 10+ engineering build-list iterations and an 11-tour onboarding framework from spec to ship.

I was also the Innovation Lead on Mock Generator, an AI tool the team built to generate client-facing mocks at scale.

How I Analyze

Icon of a presentation board with a line graph and abstract shapes representing data points and trends.

 I wanted a real, grounded answer to "what's the best strategy for a summer auto launch, based on historical evidence?" — but live MCP connectors kept returning unreliable data. So I built the source of truth first: directed Claude to pull the data, show its reasoning, and cite where every number came from.

That build spanned 5,000+ creative builds, normalized to more than 950 campaigns across 260+ brands, source-verifiable in four clicks. A later audit found roughly 60% of the original claims had failed or gone unverifiable — so I republished a corrected version with an explicit verified/failed/unverifiable status on every finding.

It's the kind of work that got me nicknamed the team's "analysis machine" by the VP of Creative Strategy.

Industry Accolades

  • IAC Awards

    • Winner, Best Family Online Ad — Mattel Fisher-Price

    • Winner, Best Shopping Online Ad — Mattel Fisher-Price

    • Winner, Best B2B Online Ad — Intel

    • Winner, Best Computer Ad — Intel

    • Winner, Best Software Online Ad — Intel

  • IAC Awards

    • Winner, Best of Show Online Ad — Amazon Holiday

    • Winner, Best Shopping Online Ad — Amazon Holiday

    • Winner, Best Technology Online Ad — Amazon Holiday

    • Winner, Best Computer: Hardware Online Ad — Intel Campaign

    • Winner, Best Consumer Good Online Ad — Intel Campaign

    • Winner, Best Electronics Online Ad — Intel Campaign

    • Winner, Best B2B Online Ad — BASF Revytek

    • Winner, Best Biotechnology Ad — BASF Revytek

    • Winner, Best Bank Online Ad — Northwest Bank

    • Winner, Best Fashion or Beauty Online Ad — Levi’s 501s 150th Anniversary

    • Winner, Best Retail Online Ad — Levi’s 501s 150th Anniversary

    • Winner, Best Education Online Ad — Rider University

    • Winner, Best University Online Ad — Rider University

  • IAC Awards

    • Winner, Best Beverage Integrated Ad Campaign — Liquid I.V. Indulge in Hydration

    • Winner, Best Travel Online Ad — Explore Asheville

    • Winner, Best Computer: Hardware Online Ad — Intel Campaign

    • Winner, Best B2B Online Ad — Qualcomm

    • Winner, Best Family Online Ad — Great Wolf Lodge

    • Winner, Best Military Online Ad — US Air Force

    OMMA Awards

    • Finalist, Digital Out of Home Campaign — Liquid I.V. Campaign

    • Finalist, Interactive Campaign or Single Execution — Liquid I.V. Campaign

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Thought Leadership

The Political Text Message Apocalypse Is Here

How can political advertisers navigate a landscape without reach via text? A new world is here.

Read on Infillion.com
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How “Easter Eggs” Can Infuse Your Ads with Year-Round Delight

Hidden messages may hold the secret to success in a world of highly-visible campaigns.

Read on Infillion.com
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The New Face of Award Season Ad Campaigns

Hollywood awards campaigns aren’t new — but they’re reaching new heights in today’s digital landscape.

Read on Infillion.com
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In 2024's Political Ad Climate, CTV Is the Platform to Watch

As more Americans find PVOD solutions, CTV ad space becomes all the more valuable for political campaigns.

Read on Infillion.com