Meet Sean Klassen

Each week, we sit down with a marketing leader to learn more about their career, insights, and accomplishments. This week, that marketing leader is Sean Klassen, Head of Brand Design at Mercury. 

With roots in design agencies and startups, Sean brings a grounded, self-aware approach to creative leadership. Here are the need-to-knows about Sean:

• In his current role, he directed a brand refresh to position Mercury as the go-to banking platform for startups, contributing to 2x brand familiarity and a 20% increase in consideration. 

• As Creative Director at Instrument, he managed writers and designers on a 53-person team, and created the company’s first company-wide internship program. 

• He co-founded his own agency, which started off working with local businesses and grew to take on clients including Google, Toyota, and Diesel.

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DIY design 

Sean’s foray into design started with music. “I got very invested in the local punk rock world where I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I was putting on shows, booking tours, and doing artwork for albums. And then the Internet came along and I taught myself to make websites, which really opened up a new pathway.” 

This pathway was steadily leading Sean into a design career. “I didn’t realize at the time that it was a job. It was just fun and I loved connecting. So I spent more and more time doing that and then other bands started asking me for help. And then record labels.”

After graduating with a sociology degree, Sean launched into working at agencies. But after some time, he and some friends started an agency of their own.

Running an Agency

Many college friends talk about starting a business together but Sean and his friends actually took the leap and did it. Around 2008—right around the time of the financial crisis—they founded Legwork, setting out to cut out the middle-person and work directly with people. “There’s two things that were really great with the timing of that. One is we could be way cheaper than anyone around so we got business in that sense. 

Two was that the iPhone was just coming out and that was the first big wave of changing how computing and marketing worked. So we couldn’t compete with these million dollar productions but we could do stuff that was immersive, accessible, and more standards-based that worked on phones. We found a little niche there that worked way better than we ever expected.”

Sean and his team at Legwork started off working with local businesses and grew to working with agencies on national campaigns. “At the time, ad agencies didn’t really have any digital know-how so they would hire us to do the digital parts of campaigns. It brought us some really exciting opportunities with places like Wieden + Kennedy and Saatchi & Saatchi. Then we started to work with brands like Google and Nike. All the while, we stayed small. We scaled to about 15 people.”

Sean ended up leaving Legwork. But in hand, he had gained a ton of experience learning about business needs, responsibilities, and strategy. 

Letting the learnings roll

After being a leader at his own agency, Sean was ready to get back to being a designer. He debated whether to stay on the agency side or go in-house, and ended up finding a nice in-between at the digital agency Instrument. 

“It was probably the place where I learned more than I have in my entire career. I was just surrounded by people that were all at the top of their game.”

“There’s the things you know, there’s the things you know you don’t know. But all the things you don’t know that you don’t know? That’s what I learned at Instrument. Up until that point, I’d been very focused on being a designer and the craft of design but there I learned about business, strategy, and marketing in a new way.”

Sean was brought on to work on a team that specifically did work for Google, which meant adopting meticulous protocols in his process. “From the earliest kernels of a strategy, you have to be able to back everything up with research to the execution. It all has to be really dialed along the way and it’s a long journey. But I’ve always seen constraints as a good and helpful thing as opposed to limiting.” 

Throughout his tenure at Instrument, Sean went from Design Director to Creative Director. But after six years, he started to get the itch to try something new and realized he wouldn’t find anything better at another agency. And right around that time, Mercury happened to come knocking.

A standout campaign 

Sean made the leap to Mercury heading up Brand Design. He was drawn in by the abundance of opportunities of the high-growth company, the philosophical approach to brand, and the low ego environment. 

One of Sean’s proudest recent projects is a short video produced in tandem with Mercury’s latest funding round. 

“The point of it is to really show that we understand what being an entrepreneur is like and that we can help. But we didn’t just lead by saying ‘We’re a bank that’s not a bank.’ I think that showed a big step in the maturity of our marketing—that we didn’t just lead with the product. We actually had a concept.”

With the look, feel, and concept established, Sean and his team asked Mercury’s founder to do the voiceover and had an agency called Scholar produce the animation. Within just four weeks, the team had an engaging, high quality output that was brought together at hyperspeed. “Probably 50 people were involved in it over that short amount of time. Knowing all that went into it and how it came out, I’m definitely really proud of that one.

Advice and takeaways

1) Use listening as your loudest tool.

Great creative work doesn’t always come from the loudest voice. For Sean, the real magic often came from listening—to clients, to teammates, and to the problem itself. It’s in that pause, that openness, where the best creative instincts tend to emerge.

If you’re leading a creative team, consider how often you’re directing versus drawing out. Sometimes the clearest ideas come from quiet spaces. You don't need to dominate the room to make an impact, you just need to help others find the path forward.

2) Don’t just design for attention, design for alignment. 

Whether it’s a campaign about a website browser or a funding announcement video, Sean’s work reflects a deep commitment to alignment between brand and intent. When the execution mirrors the values, the story resonates deeper and lasts longer. It’s less about making a splash and more about making sense.

As you build your own marketing efforts, ask: Does the execution reflect the product’s values? Are we solving for clarity, not just noise? That discipline can be the difference between short-term hype and long-term trust.

3) Use your past to inform your present. 

Sean’s agency days might feel far from fintech, but they gave him the perspective to approach every project with purpose. Experience—especially nonlinear experience—can become your most valuable creative asset. It teaches you how to adapt, how to connect dots others might not see, and how to lead from context, not ego.

Even if your career path feels circuitous, that background becomes your advantage. Bring those instincts forward, no matter what room you’re in. The strongest marketers don’t run from their past—they build from it.

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