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Ben Raemer

Creative Director. Designer. Strategist.

I help companies create stronger ideas, align teams, and deliver work that gets built.

I lead complex retail, experiential, and branded-environment initiatives from first pitch to real-world execution: protecting the idea, bridging strategy and production, and keeping the concept intact through every handoff.

Available for full-time, contract, and senior freelance creative leadership.

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New York Metro / Ridgewood, NJ

Available for full-time creative director roles, contract creative leadership, pitch support, experiential strategy, and concept-to-execution consulting.

Work is the same, results will speak for themselves.

Why clients hire me

Reasons to pick me over the next person

Works at every level

Strategy, design, and production are usually three different people. I do all three, so the idea does not get watered down as it moves between them.

Fast without sacrificing quality

I move quickly because I have done this for fifteen years and I work AI-native. Speed here does not mean cutting corners.

Trusted with complex work

Multi-stakeholder programs, regulated categories, six-figure builds. A 95% repeat-client rate is the short version of how that tends to go.

Easy to work with

I ask a lot of questions, I present clearly to anyone in the room, and I do not make the work about me. Teams keep inviting me back.

Buildable ideas

I design for what can actually be fabricated, shipped, and installed. You will not get a beautiful concept that falls apart in production.

The short, factual version

Trusted by Gucci, Nike, Samsung, Louis Vuitton, Microsoft, BAT, and Kering. 15+ years leading retail and experiential design. 100+ projects delivered. AI-native workflow. Hands-on fabrication experience.

experiential, retail, and branded-environment projects
repeat-client rate
vendor and fabrication contracts managed
luxury retail and visual merchandising programs
experience across activations, retail systems, hospitality, and branded environments

Selected Client Experience

Additional experience includes Balenciaga, MAC Cosmetics, Maybelline, Luxottica, Unilever, Target, Walmart, Vuse, VELO, Victoria's Secret, Alessi, and Discovery Channel.

Selected Work

Projects chosen for how they were led, scaled, and executed: complex briefs, multi-stakeholder programs, and experiences built as systems rather than one-off visuals.

Vuse / VELO × McLaren Activation Strategy, Sponsorship Activation Platform · Modular Experience System
BAT / RJR (Vuse + VELO) · McLaren Racing/Sponsorship Activation Platform · Modular Experience System

Vuse / VELO × McLaren Activation Strategy

BAT's McLaren Formula 1 sponsorship arrived as visibility without a use case. Led the strategy and translation that turned it into a five-job activation platform deployable across trackside, hospitality, retail, and festival footprints.

Role

Reframed the McLaren sponsorship as a usable, modular activation platform.

View case study
Vuse Festival Activation System, Experiential System · Festival Architecture
British American Tobacco/Experiential System · Festival Architecture

Vuse Festival Activation System

A touring, modular festival activation for a regulated adult category, built around a client-supplied shipping container. One architectural system that toured multiple festivals, adapted to changing footprints, and evolved from a Vype first generation into a refined Vuse second generation.

Role

Creative direction and concept for a touring, modular festival activation built around a client-supplied shipping container. I set the idea, the spatial logic, and the guest journey, and stayed close to fabrication and install.

View case study
Designing Presence in a Dark Market, Retail & Experiential Systems · Regulated Category
British American Tobacco, Vuse · Vype · VELO · FMC/Retail & Experiential Systems · Regulated Category

Designing Presence in a Dark Market

Seven years embedded with BAT Canada across four brands and eight retail, festival, and hospitality programs. Held creative continuity through regulatory change, brand pivots, and fabrication realities so every system shipped exactly as drawn.

Role

Seven-year design relationship with BAT across four brands and eight programs.

View case study
Morgenthal Frederics SoHo, Luxury Retail · Flagship Concept
Kering Eyewear · Morgenthal Frederics/Luxury Retail · Flagship Concept

Morgenthal Frederics SoHo

Kering's Morgenthal Frederics flagship needed to read as luxury fashion retail, not a clinical optical practice. Led the work from brief through buildable design, owning the strategy, spatial layout, merchandising logic, and digital integration concept end to end.

Role

Senior creative leadership from brief through buildable design for a luxury eyewear flagship.

View case study
Samsung Galaxy S9 Interactive Pop-Up, Interactive Pop-Up / Retail Activation
Samsung/Interactive Pop-Up / Retail Activation

Samsung Galaxy S9 Interactive Pop-Up

Samsung's Galaxy S9 launch needed a single pop-up that could install cleanly across mall footprints of very different sizes. Led the kit-of-parts system, demo sequencing, and rollout coordination so the same launch story shipped at every site.

Role

Creative and spatial leadership on a modular retail platform built to deploy across many mall footprints.

View case study
Microsoft Xbox Innovation Lab, Branded Environment / Showcase
Microsoft Xbox/Branded Environment / Showcase

Microsoft Xbox Innovation Lab

Xbox needed a permanent in-house showcase that served hands-on hardware demos and executive briefings in one footprint. Led the spatial system and engineering coordination so the architecture concealed the infrastructure load and outlasted multiple hardware generations.

Role

Creative leadership on a permanent demo environment built to host evolving hardware and stakeholder audiences.

View case study

Capabilities

What I actually help teams with

Where senior creative leadership tends to be most useful on retail, experiential, and branded-environment work.

  • 01Finding the through-line in a brief that is still forming
  • 02Turning strategy into executable creative direction
  • 03Concept development for retail, activations, and branded environments
  • 04Stakeholder alignment across clients, agencies, and internal teams
  • 05Modular experiential systems built to scale across markets
  • 06Retail storytelling and visual merchandising direction
  • 07Sponsorship and activation rollout logic
  • 08Cross-functional leadership across design, content, and production
  • 09Fabrication-aware creative direction and vendor coordination
  • 10Rapid visualization to move pitches and internal decisions forward
  • 11Preserving concept integrity through documentation and install
  • 12Embedding into lean teams as senior creative leadership on demand

How I think about the work

Most projects do not fail on the idea. They fail on the handoffs.

Teams lose alignment, production changes the design, and the original concept slowly disappears. My job is to stop that from happening, from first pitch through install. If you want the longer version, that is what the case studies are for.

Why hire me More about how I workDiscuss a role