Marketing leader
I find the gap, build the system, and run it until it runs without me.
Most marketing problems are communication problems. I find what we're actually trying to say, then build the system and the team that says it consistently, in every market, on every channel. Building digital, creative, and marketing systems since 2008, across financial services, franchise, and agency work.
4 promotions in 7 years · 30 markets run across 23 states · Systems still live 5+ years after handoff
By the numbers
How I lead
I lead the system, not just the campaigns.
Led a six-person hybrid team across web, lifecycle email, video, social, paid media, and customer success. I set the workflows, review standards, and operating cadence that let specialists run more autonomously and kept multi-market campaigns moving, then engineered myself out of the daily work.
Integrated marketing leadership
Directed campaign delivery across web, lifecycle email, paid media, video, social, and customer success for 30 full-service franchise markets.
Teams and operating systems
Led a six-person hybrid team and built the workflows, approval gates, and shared standards that kept work visible and moving.
Scalable digital operations
Ran recurring web operations across roughly 100 properties and designed lifecycle workflows replicated across 18 Mailchimp accounts.
Creative direction at scale
Built and directed localized paid-video systems across 40+ markets, driving 2.5M YouTube views and 3.19M social video views.
Selected work
Case studies
Programs I built from scratch and ran end to end. More get added here as new work wraps.
Email marketing programs
A segmented lifecycle system for a 130,000-subscriber credit union program and a 3.2M-email engine for a national franchise, with automated unsold-lead recovery across 18 markets. Both built to run without me.
Generator Supercenter video program
Built from nothing to 100+ assets localized across 40+ markets, driving 2.5M YouTube views and 3.19M social video views across three years of paid campaigns.
FCCU website redesign
Content architecture, behavioral personalization, and the company's first landing page infrastructure across five business lines. Still live five years later.
Storm response & rapid mobilization
Replaced a multi-week launch cycle with a same-day playbook. Proven under a live storm event, scaling daily spend 120% inside the demand window.
Leadership: systems and people built to run without me
Joined a three-person shop and built the marketing function for an 80-location, 23-state network from near-zero, then rebuilt its operating system to ship 814 deliverables across seven accounts and developed five specialists into owners who ran it without me.
Portfolio
Visual proof of the work
Finished videos, web and design samples, email and print pieces. The receipts behind the case studies above.
VIDEO PRODUCTION
Generator Supercenter Power Up Christmas Emails
Campaign emails for Power Up Christmas Campaign. Four touchpoints to ensure campaign is effective and hitting the desired audience multiple times.
EMAIL CAMPAIGN
Perfect Palapas Marketing Materials
Print Collateral for Home Service Brand.
PRINT COLLATERAL
The pattern, every time
Eighteen years, one repeatable playbook.
Scout
Every team has a gap nobody's covering: leads going cold, channels sitting empty. Most people work around it. I go stand in it.
Build
I don't pitch an idea and wait for a budget. I build the first version myself, run it small, and let the results make the case.
Scale
Once it works, I make it work everywhere: approvals, brand standards, local customization, at whatever scale the network needs.
Run
Then I engineer myself out of the daily work. Clear process, automated logic, a team that owns it. Built to run, not to babysit.
Leadership & systems
How the work actually runs.
The proof isn't a title. It's an operating system with a real prioritization discipline, approval gates, and shared standards, plus the people I coached until the work no longer needed me in the room.
Systems and people built to run without me
Joined a three-person shop and built the marketing function for an 80-location, 23-state network from near-zero. Rebuilt its operating cadence around a real prioritization discipline that shipped 814 deliverables across 951 tracked tasks and seven accounts, then developed five specialists across two organizations into autonomous owners.
What the people I led say
“He never considered himself too senior to be in the work with you. In high-pressure moments, Oscar was the calm in the room. Not passive, just steady.”
Irving BoykinMarketing Manager, reported to Oscar directly
“The kind of leader who genuinely invests in the people around him. His guidance has had a lasting impact on my career.”
Skyler HamiltonE-Commerce & Lifecycle Marketing Manager, reported to Oscar directly
About
Oscar Lara
I'm a Houston-based marketing leader and player-coach who's been building digital, creative, and marketing systems since 2008. Most recently I led a six-person hybrid team across web, lifecycle email, video, social, paid media, and customer success, running end-to-end marketing for 30 full-service franchise markets inside an 80-location, 23-state network, plus recurring web operations across roughly 100 properties. Before that, seven years and four promotions at a 150,000-member credit union, from web developer to AVP of Marketing, which is where the enterprise web, lifecycle, reporting, and regulated-industry experience comes from. What I care about is the machine: finding the gap, building the system that fills it, coaching the team that runs it, and engineering it so well it doesn't need me.
Eagle Scout. University of Houston-Downtown, B.B.A. in Marketing.
Contact
Have a gap that needs a system?
I'm looking for my next full-time marketing leadership role: director level, in-house, with a function to build and own. If that sounds like the seat you're hiring for, I'd like to hear about it. I also take on a limited number of consulting engagements.