Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Player.
Brett, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I own an advertising agency — one that thrives on great creative executions that moves the needle.
From an early age I was hooked on how great marketing strategy and design could solve business issues. Shows like Thirtysomething and iconic commercials for Coca-Cola and Budweiser pulled me into the world of advertising. Since I was a decent artist, I gravitated toward graphic design and eventually earned a Studio Art degree at Florida State University.
My first job was with the Florida Department of Agriculture, painting murals, making woodblock prints, and building interactive exhibits. It was a dream in many ways, playing pickup soccer in the afternoons and painting 8-foot landscapes, but I knew I’d eventually need a more permanent career. That’s when I moved back home to Atlanta and started as an exhibit designer.
While working on IBM’s Olympic graphics, I grew frustrated that I wasn’t allowed to change or design anything myself, just reformat. That frustration pushed me to graduate school at Portfolio Center, where I decided I wanted to be the one creating the graphics, not just moving them around.
After graduating, I moved to New York and worked at agencies like Landor, Desgrippes Gobé, and Publicis. Suddenly, I was designing major brand and digital campaigns for Cadillac, Capital One, Ford, Gatorade, and more.
Still, I missed Atlanta. I came back to help launch Play, a small agency owned by VTA, where we partnered with big brands headquartered here. One of my favorite memories from that time was working with Spanx during their meteoric rise, helping design branding, packaging, and marketing that reached millions.
From there, I went on to lead creative teams at Jackson Spalding and later The Home Depot through RRD, managing campaigns with budgets in the millions and teams as large as 60 people. Those years gave me a front-row seat to how strategy, creative, media, and execution all fit together.
Eventually, I circled back to what I loved most: running Play as my own shop. I built a team of specialists and reopened the agency about a decade ago. Today, while we still partner with household names, much of our work is with entrepreneurs, helping them build and grow their brands from the ground up. Watching those businesses come to life and knowing we had a hand in their success is what keeps me passionate about the work.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Like most careers, it’s been both smooth and bumpy, just like life.
On the smooth side, I’ve always known what I wanted to do. I love being an artist, and for me, design is simply another form of that expression. Strategy, collaboration, and seeing an idea become reality has always energized me.
The bumps mostly came during tough economic cycles. In the early 2000s, I was working at one of the top web design firms in the world when the dot-com bubble burst. We went from lavish parties to layoffs almost overnight. Then again in 2008, the housing crisis affected my clients and it took nearly two years for us to get back to the amount of assignments we had before the Great Recession. Those seasons were humbling, to say the least.
Another challenge in earlier years was development. Well over a decade ago, there were a few projects where delays on the tech side meant we were hemorrhaging money while keeping our promises to clients. Painful as those experiences were, each project was ultimately delivered, and I learned hard but valuable lessons about building the right team and managing risk.
Looking back, the tough stretches taught me as much as the good ones – persistence, transparency, and resilience. And those lessons continue to shape how I lead Play today.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Play ™?
Play is a full-service advertising agency. At the heart of what we do is helping brands grow through effective, creative marketing.
We believe brands build value over time by consistently delivering on what they do best. Our role is to uncover a unique voice for that organization, shape it into a clear visual and verbal language, and then put it into the world in a way that truly connects with their customer base. From there, we keep refining, measuring results, adjusting, and building campaigns that work harder and smarter over time.
What sets Play apart is that we don’t see ourselves as just a vendor. We act as a partner. Our North Star is our client’s success, whether that’s reflected in more sales, a stronger reputation, or new opportunities for growth.
Over the years, we’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible organizations. For global brands like Coca-Cola, Google, Home Depot, and CNN, we’ve created campaigns ranging from industry trade shows, to internal communications that reached thousands of employees, to huge, multi-national advertising. We’ve rebranded and built campaigns for institutions like Pace Academy, University of Miami, and Zoo Atlanta, helping them connect more deeply with their audiences. And closer to home, we’ve helped local entrepreneurs from Murphy’s Restaurant, to Naan Stop, to professional service firms and realtors. We use tools like branding, websites, digital campaigns, and more to grow an organization’s bottom line.
What I’m most proud of is that our work always ties back to impact. Whether it’s helping a nonprofit like the Imlay Foundation speak to their community, or supporting a fashion brand launching a new category, we’ve built a track record making a measurable difference. It’s not just about the campaigns that look great, it’s about creating results our clients can build on. That’s the part that drives us every day.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
The shifts are already happening. For years, agencies could develop a campaign, roll it out across a few channels, and let it run its course. Today, it’s a completely different landscape.
Brands and messaging live everywhere, all the time. That means content isn’t something you create once and walk away from it. It’s created, tested, and reworked constantly. Artificial intelligence is helping us adapt content in real time based on what’s resonating with people. At the same time, user-generated content has become just as important as brand-created content, and the two are blending together across platforms.
In short, the digital world has become a full ecosystem where a company’s message can be thought up, grow, interact with consumers and change perceptions. For brands to thrive, they can’t just show up occasionally, they have to thrive in that ecosystem, be part of the conversation, and stay flexible enough to evolve with it. I think the next decade will only accelerate this shift, and the agencies who succeed will be the ones who embrace it rather than resist it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.facebook.com/GoPlayDesignATL
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goplaydesign/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoPlayDesignATL
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettplayer/
