Scale AI builds a flexible creative engine with Contra
Overview
Scale AI built a fully fractional creative team to power hypergrowth marketing
Scale AI was scaling fast across multiple business units, with over 15 marketers driving campaigns that demanded constant creative output. To keep up, they needed a flexible creative team that could deliver high-quality design and video at hypergrowth speed, without the overhead of full-time hires or slow procurement systems. By turning to Contra, Scale AI quickly assembled a fractional team of top-tier creatives who built systems, templates, and AI workflows that cut turnaround times from a week to just hours, giving the marketing org the agility it needed to scale.
The Challenge
As Scale AI expanded across multiple business units, the demand for creative assets surged. With over 15 marketers to support, Quintin Au, Growth & Performance Creative Lead for Gen AI, needed a scalable creative engine, fast.
"I had to scale a lean creative team of contractors to support 15+ marketers across four business units."
— Quintin Au
The Solution with Contra
Scale AI turned to Contra to quickly find and onboard top fractional creatives
Fast hiring: Responses from designers came within days.
Simple payments: Instead of lengthy vendor setup in Coupa, payments were made directly with a Brex card.
Fractional model: Contractors could flex their hours up or down depending on the volume of creative experiments or channel performance.
Through Contra, Au discovered standout talent:
A 10x designer and a 10x video editor who built templates, systems, and AI-assisted workflows.
Creative turnaround times shrank from a week to just 1–3 hours.
Outcomes
With Contra, Scale AI built a fully fractional creative team that rivals traditional in-house setups:
Faster execution: Cut turnaround times by 80–90%.
Scalable model: Flexible bandwidth to match campaign demand.
Operational efficiency: Simplified procurement and payments.
High-quality output: Access to vetted, specialized contractors who could operate at hypergrowth speed.
"Best of all, they worked part-time, and we could flexibly ramp up or down depending on which creative experiments or channels were winning."
— Quintin Au
Today, Scale AI’s creative team runs fully on fractional contractors hired through Contra.
About Contra
Contra is the all-in-one platform for hiring and managing top independent professionals. With free contracts, commission-free payments, and a marketplace of highly skilled talent, Contra makes it simple for companies like Scale AI to build flexible, world-class teams.
