JUSTIN LUND
Creative Director & Brand Storyteller
Your Hometown Station | CBS 58 (2022)
Making a Local News Brand Feel More Like Home
Overview
COMPANY: CBS 58 WDJT-TV, Milwaukee
ROLE: Creative Manager
PROJECT TYPE: Station Brand Refresh, Creative Department Leadership, Broadcast Promotion
PRIMARY GOAL: Strengthen CBS 58’s local identity and audience connection
KEY WORK: Brand campaign production, daily news promotion, team management, script approval, special event marketing, franchise promotion, broadcast log scheduling
The Challenge
CBS 58 operated in a highly competitive Milwaukee news market and needed a clearer identity.
The station’s brand refresh centered on Your Hometown Station, a position built around a more neighborly, community-minded approach to local news. Viewer research showed that many people were tired of crime-heavy news coverage. The opportunity was not to ignore serious stories, but to create a broader brand promise: CBS 58 could still cover hard news while also giving more space to community, connection, useful information, and hometown pride.
The challenge was making that idea show up beyond a tagline. It needed to appear in campaigns, daily promos, special reports, community franchises, weather events, and the station’s on-air rhythm.
The Strategy
The strategy was to turn Your Hometown Station into a working creative system.
That meant building the brand into every layer of station promotion: image campaigns, daily news topicals, by-story promotion, special report campaigns, community programming, weather initiatives, and broadcast scheduling.
The creative direction focused on positioning CBS 58 as a news organization with a more human lens. The tone needed to feel credible, useful, and emotionally connected without becoming soft or unserious.
CBS 58 still had to cover the news. The difference was in how the station framed its value to viewers.
Key Campaigns
TEAM
VOICE
MORNING SHOW
LATE SHOW
Station Identity
The station image promos were designed to anchor and advance the Your Hometown Station refresh with a distinct new voice. One of the strongest examples was CBS 58 News Symphony, a campaign inspired by a beautifully shot local orchestra feature. The metaphor fit the brand: individual musicians coming together to create something larger mirrored the many moving parts of a newsroom working together to cover Southeast Wisconsin.
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By intercutting orchestral performances with newsroom coverage, talent, field work, and community moments, the campaign created a more human-centered station identity. It helped communicate that CBS 58 would still cover urgent and difficult news, but would not define itself only through fear or negativity. The campaign remained on-air for more than a year across multiple versions and formats.
NEWS FRANCHISES
58 HOMETOWNS
CRIME STOPPERS
BREWERS WEATHER DAY
Signature Franchises
58 Hometowns became one of the clearest micro-brand expressions of Your Hometown Station. Each week, the station selected local communities and built news coverage around those places, bringing attention to the people, businesses, history, and character that made each hometown distinct.
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My role was to move quickly from selection to promotion. Once towns were chosen live on-air, I researched the communities, wrote promotional scripts, recorded talent, edited spots, and helped get the campaign on-air within hours. I also produced larger franchise promos that positioned 58 Hometowns as a recurring station commitment to community storytelling across Southeast Wisconsin.
SPECIAL REPORTS
Special Report Promotion
Special report promos helped turn major investigations, serious interviews, and high-priority stories into appointment-viewing events. These were not just quick teases for a single broadcast. They were built to make viewers feel that a story mattered enough to seek out, remember, and watch live.
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The challenge was balancing journalism and marketing. The copy had to stay accurate, factual, and responsible while still creating urgency and emotional pull. Each spot also had to reinforce the broader Your Hometown Station identity by showing that CBS 58 did meaningful local storytelling every night, not just during major brand campaigns.
My Contribution
As Creative Manager, I led the station’s creative services department and helped shape the execution of the brand refresh.
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I wrote, shot, and edited Emmy-nominated brand campaigns that gave the station a clearer voice and direction. I also led by-story promotion for major investigations, special interviews, and high-priority reports, turning individual stories into viewing events while tying them back to the larger Your Hometown Station identity.
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A major part of the role was team leadership. I managed a five-person creative team, approved daily news topical scripts, reviewed promos, coached producers, and helped shape the department’s writing and editing standards. News topical writing required a careful balance: each script had to be factual and responsible as journalism, while still persuasive enough as marketing to make viewers want to watch.
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I also supported local sub-brands and community campaigns, including 58 Hometowns, and produced video packages for Weather Day at American Family Field, a large community event with the Milwaukee Brewers where thousands of students watched CBS 58 meteorologists perform educational weather experiments before a Brewers game.
Beyond campaigns and events, I managed daily broadcast logs for two stations, scheduling promos, commercials, PSAs, and station messaging across the 24-hour programming schedule.
What I Gained
This role strengthened my understanding of what brand stewardship looks like inside a daily media operation.
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A brand refresh only works if it shows up everywhere. For CBS 58, Your Hometown Station had to live beyond image spots. It needed to appear in daily news promotion, special reports, weather messaging, community events, franchise campaigns, and the rhythm of the broadcast schedule itself.
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This experience also sharpened me as a creative leader. I learned how to manage people, approve high-volume creative work, coach writers and producers, and keep the department moving under constant deadlines.
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Most importantly, it showed me that creative leadership is not just about making strong individual pieces. It is about building consistency, guiding people toward a shared voice, and making sure every piece of communication points in the same direction.
