Jan C. Portz
Jan C. Portz is a German Executive Creative Director and Creative AI Consultant based in Liederbach am Taunus near Frankfurt am Main.
Jan C. Portz refuses the average. As Executive Creative Director and Creative AI Consultant, he makes agencies, brands and builders unmistakable in a time when AI makes everyone look the same.
Between Datenschleuder and the first websites, he started his first company in 1998, designing & building sites long before digital was a department. In 2003 he founded his own agency. What followed was a career inside the world’s big networks: McCANN Worldgroup and MRM Germany, TWT Group holding and Reply, to name a few. In total, 28 years in creative and digital communication, more than 20 of them in creative leadership, for global, ambitious brands that could not afford to be forgettable.
Along the way: ADC Germany and Europe membership, jury seats, and a few awards for work that didn’t play it safe, among them Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Clio Awards and Red Dot.
Jan has been working with AI since it was still a toy. He led a Europe-wide AI Community of Practice and built AI-powered content production formats long before most teams had a prompt policy. Today he works where brand and AI meet: Brand first, AI powered. Under the name wiredmonkey he creates AI art on Midjourney, Magnific and Higgsfield. His conviction is simple. When everyone can build, being unmistakable is the one advantage nobody can copy.
He speaks at conferences and gives talks on where creative craft and AI actually meet. And he believes in developing the next generation: the people who will define what unmistakable looks like next are the ones almost nobody is hiring today.
Unmistakable, on purpose.
Career
From December 2026 Creative AI Consultant and founder of Unmistakable, Liederbach am Taunus
2025–2026 Executive Creative Director, Shift Agency, Frankfurt am Main
2023–2025 Executive Creative Director CX, Reply, and Executive Creative Director, Triplesense Reply, Frankfurt am Main
2021–2023 Executive Creative Director, TWT Group, and member of the management of TWT Engage
2012–2021 Group Creative Director Experience, McCANN Worldgroup and MRM, Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf
2009–2012 Creative Director, Generation Digitale, Hamburg
2007–2009 Freelance creative director (design, brand and experience), Germany, United Kingdom and United States
2003–2007 Founder and managing director, cortona werbeagentur, Heidelberg
2000–2003 Art Director, Plainpeak, Heidelberg
1998–2000 Freelance designer for digital projects
Selected work
SIGNS (2019), MRM//McCann for Bundesjugend, the German youth association of people with hearing loss. The first smart tool that recognises sign language in real time and translates it for voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Jan C. Portz was Group Creative Director UX. Awards include a D&AD Wood Pencil, a Webby Award, Gerety Gold, an ADC Bronze Cube, Eurobest Silver and a One Show Merit. D&AD archive
Simpsonize Me (2007), Burger King and The Simpsons Movie with Crispin Porter + Bogusky, with cortona as partner agency. Awards include a Cannes Cyber Lion in Bronze, London International Awards Gold and a One Show Merit.
Awards
Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, Webby Awards, Clio Awards, Red Dot Communication Design, London International Awards, ANDY Awards, Eurobest, Gerety Awards, ADC, Deutscher Digital Award and The FWA.
Talks
2026 Minimum Viable Brand. Keynote at Builders Day, AI Week Frankfurt, AI Studio, 30 October 2026
2026 Framing the Future Talks: KI – Werkzeug oder komplett neues Geschäftsmodell? With Florian Meimberg and Huyen Nguyen, Frankfurt am Main, 1 September 2026
2026 KI-Tag 2026: Impulsvortrag. RMV and rms GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 29 January 2026
2025 OMG! Mit AI zur Lovebrand. 28 October 2025, at AI Week Frankfurt with Shift Agency
2025 How AI is transforming the future of marketing. Keynote AI Hub Partner Club, SPARK Europe, Frankfurt am Main, 24 September 2025
2025 KI-Prompting für kreative Vielfalt – Mit Empathie und Ethik zu inklusiven, emotionalen Designs. Workshop, 8. Kreativwirtschaftstag Hessen, IHK Frankfurt am Main, 27 June 2025
2025 Innovating Empathy: Prompting. Guest lecture and coaching for Master's students, Fachhochschule Salzburg, 3 May 2025
2024 Consistency in Generative AI Image Prompting. Presentation, Reply, Hamburg, 9 April 2024
2024 Frag doch mal die Fincon (Fincon Reply). Podcast guest with Vanessa Stenzel on Customer Experience
Jury appointments
2026 ADC Wettbewerb 2026, jury “Design – Motion, Interface & Graphic Design”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC), see also ADC announcement
2026 The AdForum PHNX Awards 2026, jury member
2025 ADC Wettbewerb 2025, jury “Digitale Medien – Motion + Interface + Interactive Design”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC), see also LinkedIn post
2024 ADC Wettbewerb 2024, jury “Digital Experience – Web 1.0 + Web 2.0 + Transformation + For Good + Internet of Things”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC), see also LinkedIn post
2023 ADC Wettbewerb 2023, jury “Digital Experience – Web 1.0 + Web 2.0”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC)
2022 ADC Wettbewerb 2022, jury “Design – Interface + Motion”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC), see also LinkedIn post
2021 ADC Wettbewerb 2021, jury “Design – Interface + Motion”, Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC), see also Designtag
Memberships and engagement
Member of the Art Directors Club für Deutschland (ADC) and ADC Europe, active as tutor in the ADC seminars and its mentoring programme.
Juror for the ADC Nagel, the AdForum PHNX Awards and Awwwards, among others (see jury appointments).
Speaker and mentor at Hochschule Mannheim, Hochschule RheinMain and Fachhochschule Salzburg.
Founder of the running club Hot Dads Run.
Trained media designer for digital and print media and certified vocational trainer (IHK).
Press
Shift Agency erweitert Leistungsportfolio und Führungsteam, campaign Germany, 2025
Zwischen Technologie und Menschlichkeit: Das sind die wichtigsten UX-Design-Trends 2025, HORIZONT, 2024 (with Oliver Bohl)
UX-Designtrends 2025: inklusiv und brutalistisch, PAGE, 2024
Fünf Trends im UX-Design für 2024, absatzwirtschaft, 2024 (with Oliver Bohl)
Jan Portz neuer Executive CD der TWT Group, MEEDIA, 2022
MRM//McCann Develops First Sign Language Voice Assistant, LBB Online, 2019
DFB-Trikot: Das Wendeleibchen kommt im Expertencheck prima weg, HORIZONT, 2015
Profiles
AI Week Frankfurt speaker profile
Also published as Jan Portz and wiredmonkey.