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Jill Hotchkiss spent 20 years at Disney, most recently as vice president of content marketing at Disney Branded Television. In 2023, she departed the company and founded her own shop, Creative Waves Agency, working for herself after a long career at such major media companies as NBC, The WB and Warner Bros., and Disney.

Now Hotchkiss is taking the skills she learned while leading teams at Disney and applying them to the greater world of marketing – both of entertainment properties and beyond.

Hotchkiss joined Spotlight to discuss everything she learned over decades with major entertainment firms, what she’s up to now, and the advice she would offer young people just entering the workforce.

Spotlight: You left Disney as VP of content marketing. I feel like content marketing is a term we hear these days but no one knows exactly what it means. How do you define it?

Jill Hotchkiss, founder, Creative Waves Agency: The easiest way is that the shows are the gifts and we as marketers do all the gift-wrapping. The other way I look at it is that the marketing department is the kidney in a body of content. We take in all of the information from everywhere and we filter it and then disseminate it and it’s clean and understandable and succinct.

I tell show producers that I am the best babysitter they will ever have for their content because I have reverence for it. You can trust me. I treat every piece of content like it’s my own and I will give it back to you shiny and in the same condition in which you gave it to me.

People work on these shows for years and I take that extremely seriously. I think if they work so hard developing something and putting their blood, sweat and tears into it, I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure that I’m going to promote it in a way that they align with and that they are proud of.

Spotlight: This is a lot to sum up in one answer but after being at Disney for 20 years, what lessons do you think you learned on which you still rely today?

Hotchkiss: I did not go to grad school so that was my grad school. I really got a grasp on the business, creative, financial and production aspects of television, and all the different aspects of running a department. I learned through trial by fire. 

I'm a forever learner. I would reach out to people in departments that I never worked with and ask if I could take them for coffee so they could just tell me what they did. That led to great conversations and collaborations. I would say I earned an unofficial graduate degree and really learned how to become a bridge-builder.

Spotlight: I feel like when you are in marketing, you have the opportunity of seeing how all parts of the business work.

Hotchkiss: You do have to be that person who goes after it. That's what I would encourage when I was mentoring someone. Reach out to anyone and everyone. That's something that I absolutely took with me. I'm constantly having coffees or Zooms, and it's not always to get a client.

Spotlight: Have you found that doing that has helped you throughout your career?

Hotchkiss: Yes, 100% because it opens up opportunities to further what you're doing now. I might be working on a project, and get stuck on something, and then I’ll realize that I’ve met someone who might be able to help me out, or they’ll know someone who can help me. 

Spotlight: Two years ago you started your own agency. How did it feel to make that transition?

Hotchkiss: I had been at a place where things were pretty level and the boat never rocked too much. There were definitely waves from time to time, but I never felt like I was jumping on a boat and that there was a killer wave behind me.

That’s why I named my company Creative Waves. There are two things about the ocean – the first thing is that I feel like it’s completely unpredictable and I felt like I was jumping into a space that was completely unpredictable. But on the flip side, the place I go to creatively clear my mind is the ocean. That horizon is blank and there are times when I just need to go and stare at that horizon and paint a picture in my mind. No one can give me notes on it. No one can give me critique on it. I can just go there and imagine what I need to do to clear my mind.

Starting my own agency was challenging but it was also a move forward. If there’s a choice between fight or flight, I’m definitely a fight person.

Spotlight: What did you imagine Creative Waves to be and what kind of work were you wanting to do?

Hotchkiss: Marketing is storytelling. I come from the entertainment side but every brand should have a story. I worked for a tech company and they wanted to rebrand their company. I hadn’t worked in tech before but it was still storytelling. I interviewed the CEO and the marketing heads and asked them ‘what do you want your consumer to feel? What inherent joy should they get from using your product or aligning with it?’ Once they started talking about that, their brand story became clear.

‍Spotlight: I feel like many companies haven’t actually thought about what their brand story is. How often do you feel like clients hire you to do one thing and then you end up going in and helping them build their brand architecture from the ground up?

Hotchkiss: That’s absolutely part of what I do – I help clients figure out their brand constellation as well as their brand personality, promise and identity. You have to figure out all of those points of light, and then figure out what your brand storytelling themes are from there.

When I work with clients, they know their brand the best. It’s what I was saying earlier: I’m going to be the babysitter who takes care of their brand. I don’t want to change it. You’re the parent and I am the person you are paying to watch your child and I will respect that relationship.

Spotlight: What if there are times when you are like, ‘I see how your parenting is sending your child off the rails.’ Can you gently nudge them to go in a different direction?

Hotchkiss: Yes, there are those times. I have been lucky to work with people who I really like and I say to them, ‘I’m honest and I will tell you like it is. If I ever overstep, you just have to tell me.’ I feel like they are paying me for a service, and I don’t want them to feel like their money was wasted.

Spotlight: In this context, by taking their money without giving honest feedback, you mean ‘blowing smoke,’ correct?

Hotchkiss: Yes, exactly that. If it’s that, it’s not worth it. What’s worth it to me is working together to create something meaningful. It should always be a collaboration.

I think there are times when marketers don’t think about that. They think, ‘this is what I say and you should do it.’ That’s not how I work. I collaborate. And that’s very important to me because, again, it’s their baby, and even if they’re parenting in a way that I don’t agree with, there are ways to work with them within that system. Maybe I suggest, ‘have you thought about this?’ Or, ‘maybe you should try doing something a little different.” I want them to get honest feedback.

Spotlight: Has it been a hard adjustment to go from a big company like Disney, where you are really having to navigate a lot of different levels, to being a one-woman show?

Hotchkiss: It's beautiful. The layers were the challenge.

One of the last projects I worked on before I left was Percy Jackson. We were working on the trailer and I said to my boss at the time that I wanted to use a specific song – ‘Riptide’ by Vance Joy – for it. I knew my boss would hate it, but as a mom, I looked at the storytelling of the show’s first season, and it’s about a boy on a journey to find his mother. Yes, there are monsters and gods and all of that, but when you look closer, that journey is what the season is really about.

As a mom, that touched me. I felt like the trailer deserved to be more than just the typical action thriller trailer. So I picked the song, which also is an Easter egg for fans because Percy’s sword is named Riptide. 

I gave the song, which is a cover of the original, to the trailer company and we cut the piece. I really fought for it and I got a lot of pushback but I pushed. Luckily the executive producers loved it. The day it came out, my younger daughter called me and said ‘Mom, you broke the internet.’ That was the best compliment I could ever get. No award could ever beat that.

Spotlight: One of your big clients at Creative Waves is a company called Wind Sun Sky Entertainment, an animation company out of Vancouver. Can you talk about what you are doing for them?

Hotchkiss: I'm working as their fractional head of brand creative and strategy. They work in animation but also in live-action. One of the properties I work on is about battling climate anxiety in children. I oversee their short-form content, and their social and YouTube strategy. When I started, they had 6,000 YouTube subscribers, now it’s more than 260,000. Some of that was via paid marketing, which was a strategic move on our part. 

The thing that I find so interesting about this company is that they are working to get kids’ content to underserved communities internationally, in places like Pakistan and Cameroon. That aligns with my values as a content producer. I work with a team but it’s a smaller team than I had at Disney. It’s all hands on deck but I don’t mind getting dirty. I think that keeps your creative chops alive.

‍Spotlight: How do you market to kids in a way that is palatable to parents, that tells them, ‘I’m presenting you with content that your kids will like and is okay for them to watch?’” 

Hotchkiss: I think again it all comes back to storytelling. It's looking at the content and figuring out what’s the best story to tell. And in the back of my mind, I think I want to make sure that kids feel seen, heard, and that they have agency. So whether I’m producing or overseeing content for Disney Junior or Wind Sun Sky or even if it’s content for adults, it’s important that people feel seen and heard. You want to watch something because even if you don’t see yourself outright, there’s something in that show that you can align with. The marketing needs to reveal to you what that thing is. 

‍Spotlight: Where do you go to reach kids now that using your own air isn’t necessarily getting the job done? 

Hotchkiss: I think you have to go to every single place, and you have to do it in a way that's authentic to the platform. If you do a podcast, do a podcast that makes sense for grown-up listeners. Or if you are creating something on TikTok, it has to speak to that TikTok quick-hit audience and be funny and more irreverent. On YouTube, there’s long-form content – or horizontal videos that are sometimes harder to get views with – but you use your short-form content to drive your channel interest. 

It’s all a big map, or really, like I said, a constellation. It all comes together in that ecosystem. One platform I think people really leave on the table is LinkedIn. People will say that LinkedIn is about business-to-business connections and it’s not about their consumer. But it’s their future investor or their future client. You can build a business on LinkedIn if you use it properly but you have to feed it. 

You have to play and test and learn and be in as many places as you can. If you're going to be on four platforms, make sure it's a coordinated effort. Look at that map and see how you are best serving each platform.

And finally, if the content is really good, word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. That hasn't changed. 

‍Spotlight: As someone who has led creative teams, what are the things that you love to do the most?

Hotchkiss: I love mentoring. I really do. I love working with someone who has a lot of questions or doesn't have the experience that they want, and helping them to find that experience. There should be more weight and importance around strong leaders who really care about their teams and who encourage their teams to grow. I think growth is really important for teams. It creates longevity. 

Spotlight: What advice would you give to other creative leaders who are looking to get the most out of their teams?

Hotchkiss: I think you have to be very honest with your teams. Every leader should look at every person on their team, and think, ‘how am I going to set this person up for success and excellence?’ And if they can't, then there needs to be a conversation, and it needs to happen very quickly. I truly believe that if my team is successful, then I am successful.