Stephen E. Terrell

Hold&Push

Stephen E. Terrell

View the Work Creative Director · Brand Strategist

Creative Director · Brand Strategist · Fractional CMO

You Knowthe Name.I Built It.

Creative leadership for brands, launches, public figures, and campaigns that need taste, traction, and cultural heat.

View Signature Work

Los Angeles · Cleveland · Atlanta · NYC · Miami

Flip for it — bring Stephen into the room.

She trusted me with her name.

Betty White · The Lifeline Program · 10-Year Partnership · National Radio Spot

For a decade, Betty White put her face, her reputation, and her voice behind work I created — including a national radio spot we recorded together. That's not a client relationship. That's a covenant. You don't earn that with a pitch deck.

Before everyone caught up — before Reuters was writing about her, before the polls crowned her America's most trusted celebrity — I had already contracted her and won her trust. She didn't just work with anyone. She chose me. Reuters, January 2012

The full record — receipts included — is here: Building an Industry ↗

Betty White · The Lifeline Program

America dreamed of Jeannie. I put her to work.

Barbara Eden · WeBuy75.com · Mike Ruiz · National Campaign

For sixty years, America dreamed of Jeannie. I was the one who hired her. Barbara Eden — national campaign, photographed by Mike Ruiz. I wrote it, directed it, and got out of the way at exactly the right moment. Knowing when to step back is the whole job.

Barbara Eden · WeBuy75.com

III

Twenty-four years. Ten to one.

The Lifeline Program · CMO 24 Years · 10:1 ROI · Today Show · GMA · WSJ · NYT · Forbes

A 10:1 ROI sustained over a 24-year CMO tenure isn't a campaign result. It's a philosophy, executed without interruption. The work compounds the same way interest does — if you don't stop.

The Lifeline Program · Production

7× Platinum. 3× Gold. Telly. Digiday. The record speaks.

7× Platinum, MarCom Awards · 3× Gold, MarCom Awards · The Telly Awards · Digiday · 2× Communicator Awards

Award-winning creative direction, PR strategy, and B2B writing. Ten MarCom Awards. A Telly. A Digiday. Two Communicator Awards. The judges agreed.

Telly · MarCom · Communicator

I'm not done.

LifeExpectancyCalculator.com · Ocean Bridge Media Group · Los Angeles & Cleveland

Stephen E. Terrell is Editorial Director and Co-Founder of LifeExpectancyCalculator.com — now expanding as mylifelonger.com — and a Creative Director at Ocean Bridge Media Group in Los Angeles. His op-eds run in Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, because to him the brand strategy and the byline are the same craft: making an argument land. A 30-year brand and marketing veteran with a journalism degree from Kent State, he co-founded a multimillion-dollar life settlement company and built its public voice from nothing. That instinct runs through everything he touches — it’s why Life Expectancy Calculator doesn’t look or read like anything else in health. Across three decades, the throughline hasn’t changed: build brands that treat the audience like adults.

He volunteers in community outreach for Project Noelle and is a retired NPC competitive bodybuilder.

Stephen E. Terrell

Brand Ambassador · A Decade

“I’m Still Hot!”

— Betty White

Outcomes Over Aesthetics

Creative With Consequence

Beautiful work means nothing if it doesn’t move people, markets, or momentum.

10:1

Return on Investment

Lifeline campaign performance over 24 years through direct-response television, brand positioning, and national media strategy.

Employees Built From Zero

Helped scale a company from a two-person operation into a nationally recognized brand and sales organization.

National

Media Visibility

Campaigns and stories carried across national television, business press, and digital — from the morning shows to the front page.

Decades

Consumer Response Intelligence

Thirty years understanding what makes audiences trust, respond, call, convert, and remember.

Featured In

TodayGMAWSJNYTForbesUSA TodayABC News20/20BBCPhil DonahueNewsweek60 MinutesOut

Awards & Honors

MarCom PlatinumTelly AwardsDigiday Finalist

Creative is easy.Building trust at scale is harder.

Staying Ahead

AI didn’t replace creativity. It exposed who actually has vision.

I’ve spent my career building brands, shaping stories, creating campaigns, and understanding what truly moves people. AI has changed the speed of execution, but it hasn’t changed the importance of instinct, taste, strategy, and emotional connection.

Today, anyone can generate content. Very few can create meaning.

That’s where I’ve focused my time — mastering AI not as a gimmick, but as a creative advantage. I use it to move faster, think bigger, visualize ideas instantly, and push concepts further than traditional workflows ever allowed. But the technology is only part of it.

Direction still matters.Human insight still matters.Experience still matters.

The brands that will win next won’t just look beautiful online. They’ll create real emotional connection, unforgettable experiences, and trust in a world becoming increasingly artificial.

I’m not chasing trends.I’m staying ahead of what’s next.

Let's build the campaign people remember.

stephen_terrell@me.com

Stephen E. Terrell · Career Journey

The Authority Behind the Name

Some of the most recognized names in the life settlement industry are recognized because I made them that way. For 26 years I was the marketing force behind The Lifeline Program — I took a misunderstood financial product and made it mainstream, and I took the principal on the door and made him a published, sought-after industry voice.

That was the long game, and I played it on purpose.

I put him in print and engineered the path there, because a published author clears a room at a national insurance conference that a salesman never gets invited into. The press. The television. The book. The celebrity campaigns a financial category was never supposed to get — Betty White, Barbara Eden. I built the spotlight, aimed it, and handed it to the name on the door.

If you’re scaling something complicated and need someone who did this before the playbooks existed — let’s talk.