Russell Baker and the value of changing the brief

Russell Baker entered Coca-Cola through the accounts. He returned through the brands. Between those two entrances lay a decision to change careers, an MBA, and the discovery that understanding a business could lead somewhere beyond checking its figures. Years later, he would make another change, leaving Atlanta for Jacksonville and joining a creative agency whose name belonged to somebody else.

There is a pleasing complication in that route. The CEO of a marketing and communications firm began with a degree in accounting. He has worked with products sold across the country; now a substantial part of his working life concerns a particular place. At Wingard, Baker’s title still includes brand strategist. The questions about customers did not disappear when he took responsibility for the company. They remain part of the job, alongside the decisions that keep an agency running.

His career invites a closer look at what happens when someone changes the brief. A professional background can become useful in an unexpected setting. Baker’s story runs through an audit department, consumer brands, retail channels, and an agency. Today, it also runs through Jacksonville’s tourism, cultural life, and nonprofit institutions. The connections are practical, and they have accumulated over time.

The useful detour through the numbers

Baker grew up in South Georgia, with Valdosta as his hometown. He studied accounting at the University of Georgia and began his career at Deloitte in Atlanta. Internal audit at Coca-Cola followed. Working inside the company introduced him to other possibilities, and he decided to pursue marketing. Kellogg provided the bridge: he studied there from 2003 to 2005 before returning to Coca-Cola.

Baker was an F.C. Austin Scholar at Kellogg. He also held a CPA certification issued in 1999, with an expiry in 2004. The dates capture a transition neatly. Accounting was a serious first profession; business school accompanied a deliberate change of direction. The auditor had reason to learn a new vocabulary.

At Coca-Cola, his work included Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Brand management was followed by responsibilities in retail channel strategy, sales capabilities, and shopper marketing. Those roles moved the focus along the route between a company and its customer. By 2018, Baker was serving on the first-round jury for the Shopper Marketing Effie Awards, a professional assignment concerned with marketing effectiveness.

In 2011, his commercial work included convenience retail channel planning and development. Discussing bottled water, Baker pointed to smartwater’s performance in that channel during 2010. The subject was a specific product, a specific channel, and a specific period. It is a useful counterweight to the romance of brand building. Somewhere after the campaign comes a refrigerated case and a shopper making a choice.

A new city, an existing company

After roughly two decades in Atlanta, Baker and his family chose Jacksonville. He joined Wingard in 2016. The agency already had its own history: David Wingard had started it as a one-person design studio in 2008. Baker entered a business with a founder, a creative identity, and colleagues who had been developing its capabilities before his arrival.

His appointment as CEO took effect on March 25, 2019. Christopher Ball, the outgoing CEO, remained an adviser and equity partner. Baker had previously served as chief strategy officer. The transition put him in charge of a company while preserving the brand strategy work that brought him into the agency.

The distinction between founder and CEO matters here. David Wingard remains founder, chief creative officer, and partner. Baker’s role combines executive responsibility with strategy. A creative agency needs both room for ideas and decisions about how the business operates. In this leadership arrangement, those responsibilities have named people attached to them.

By 2022, Baker had been named among the Jacksonville Business Journal’s Ultimate CEOs. The recognition came three years after his appointment. His public description of Wingard’s purpose was concise: growth for the community and growth for clients. That pairing would become increasingly visible in the agency’s work.

“It’s helping our community grow and helping our clients grow.”

Russell Baker · 2022

Culture, with something to do on Monday

A CEO award supplies a photograph and an occasion. Keeping a team together requires a less ceremonial sort of attention. In September 2022, Baker discussed employee retention in terms of regular feedback and incremental changes. His emphasis was progress over perfection, with an acknowledgement that some changes take longer than others.

There is a workable idea in that approach. Asking for feedback makes room for people to describe their experience. Acting on it gives the conversation a consequence. The scale of the improvement can be modest; the important question is whether anything follows the discussion. An agency’s culture lives in those repeated exchanges as much as in the words chosen to describe it.

Wingard’s contribution to local nonprofits gives another concrete measure of its priorities. In 2022, the agency donated more than $80,000 in creative, public relations, website, and marketing strategy services. That figure belongs to the company and its team. It represents professional work given to organizations that could put those skills to use.

The event photograph is an appropriate image for this chapter: Baker stands among colleagues, helping hold a company recognition. The people around him are part of the explanation. An agency sells work made by a team, and its ability to keep doing that work depends on the people who choose to remain.

When home becomes the assignment

In January 2023, Visit Jacksonville selected Wingard as its partner for brand and advertising creative after a request for proposal process. Madden Media took a separate set of responsibilities, including media buying and placement, meetings and group marketing, and public relations. The initial contracts ran for three years, with options for extensions.

For Baker, the assignment connected his profession with his adopted home. The agency would help introduce Jacksonville to visitors while working from inside the city itself. The client’s ambition extended to state, regional, national, and international markets. The geography of the audience was broad; the subject of the work was close at hand.

Destination marketing makes the relationship between promise and place unusually tangible. People can book the trip, arrive, and look around. A restaurant, a museum, or a street becomes part of their answer to the advertising. Baker’s corporate experience involved reaching consumers through brands and channels. This assignment placed a city, with its many separate institutions and experiences, at the center of the brief.

Wingard’s work for the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville offers a related example. As the organization approached its fiftieth year, the agency refreshed its identity. Concentric C shapes expressed the council’s name and the wider effects of arts and culture. The messaging broadened its attention to people, places, and business.

That was the agency team’s project. It belongs in Baker’s story as an example of the work his company undertakes, with credit kept where it belongs. Its premise also makes the connection to his civic interests visible: cultural activity has an audience beyond the people attending a particular performance or exhibition.

Recognizing what other people build

In 2024, Natalie DeYoung became an equity partner at Wingard. She had joined in 2013 to establish its public relations and communications department. By the time of the announcement, that department accounted for more than a fifth of the agency’s employees and roughly a third of its annual revenue.

Baker praised her leadership and her ability to turn complex details into a clear narrative. The appointment acknowledged a contribution extending into business development, client relationships, operations, and company culture. For a CEO, recognizing that work is part of leading the business. For readers, it is a reminder to look beyond the person at the top of the organizational chart.

DeYoung’s appointment also supplies a more specific account of agency growth than a claim about ambition would. A colleague created a department, developed its work, and became a partner. The company changed as people added capabilities. Baker’s leadership operates within that shared history.

A place to belong, and to contribute

Baker’s Jacksonville life includes responsibilities outside Wingard. He belongs to Leadership Jacksonville’s class of 2023. The JAX Chamber trustee directory records his membership since 2019. Feeding Northeast Florida lists him as vice chair, a role also recorded in its 2024 annual report. These are distinct relationships, bringing his professional experience into local networks and nonprofit governance.

In November 2025, Wingard renewed its corporate partnership with the Florida Theatre, which it had supported in that capacity since 2023. Baker connected arts and culture to Jacksonville’s future and spoke about helping the Theatre raise funds and continue its work. The ambition to support a city becomes easier to understand when it has an institution and a continuing commitment attached.

There is also life away from the assignments. Baker’s interests include boating, paddle boarding, cycling, time with family and friends, and a meal with a good bottle of wine. His enthusiasm for Georgia football survived the move to Florida. His enthusiasm comes with an exuberant rallying cry: GO DAWGS!

The career began with figures and acquired brands, colleagues, and civic responsibilities. Jacksonville gave the later chapters a common setting. Baker can help a client describe its business, lead the agency doing the work, and contribute to organizations beyond it. The brief has changed more than once. It now includes the place where he goes home.