Damien Cortese is a marketing leader and brand strategist with a proven track record of driving growth, cultural relevance, and measurable business impact for Fortune 500 companies and entertainment studios.

Currently, he serves as Executive Vice President of Strategy & Growth at RQ (an independent creative marketing agency), where he helps brand partners join the cultural conversation, strategically leveraging social, influencer, content, and experiences.

How many years have you been a judge?

This is my first year!

What excited you about judging for the Telly Awards?

Passion for Entertainment, and have been working with HBO, FX, Hulu, and Showtime for years to help them drive brand awareness and tune-in to their original programming.

What was your first job in the industry? What did it teach you?

I worked agency-side in New York and wore many hats. We were a branded content shop, so it helped me understand and appreciate that brands could entertain and not be so product-driven—satisfying the audience and their business needs.

What project are you most proud to have worked on?

As an elder Millennial, I’m very proud of the experiential consumer pop-up we built for the 25th anniversary of Sex and the City and season launch of And Just Like That. Not in the entertainment world but on the branded content side of things, more recently I’m proud of work we have done with Abbott (health tech) for their CGM product (continuous glucose monitor) in a series we did called Spike Sessions featuring Serena Williams.

What’s the most challenging part about your job and/or the industry?

Tighter budgets and still high expectations. Seems these days you have to do everything fast, cheap and of high quality.

What do you look for to determine excellence in video?

Storytelling, emotional resonance, and engagement.

What are your current roles and responsibilities and what do you love most about your job?

Help our client partners set and drive their strategic approach to putting their brand in culture. I love that we are audience-first and get to understand the many different interests of our consumers. Working with entertainment brands to navigate an ever-shifting and noisy landscape.

What initiatives or projects are you working on now that excite you?

We are working with HBO on some exciting upcoming shows that I can’t say right now!

Do you have any specific practices you lean on to spark creativity?

As the kids would say, get off your phone and touch grass. Communing with nature—whether hikes with my family or surfing on the beach—reconnects me. I also get inspired by people, so despite a hectic work-life and children, I still make an effort to meet people and get out there. Cooking also inspires my creativity.

What inspired you to pursue your career path?

Collaboration, creativity, and having fun. I was a litigation attorney (yes, I passed the bar in New York in my past life), but before I got the golden handcuffs, I had the sense enough as a young man to realize I didn’t want to be my boss. The combative nature of the law wasn’t aligned with my whole self—I love that we are pitching ideas, working with creative teams, and just having fun in our day-to-day.

In your experience, what is a significant change you are seeing happen in the video, television, and/or film industry, and what insight can you share about how to navigate it?

Living in LA, this isn’t a hot take, but it’s true and sad—there are just so many fewer projects in the industry. We need to bring back more productions to LA and just make more content with real humans. Originality and storytelling are still going to win the day; we just need to invest in it again.