Strategic, Innovative, Analytical Critical Thinkers, Creative Storytellers dedicated to ensuring brand awarness and equity, all of these qualities define AME's Grand Jury. AME's Jury members are experts in effectiveness, their global reputations as both industry leaders and award-winning marketers guarantee that all entries submitted into the AME Awards are evaluated with the utmost of care and consideration.Their commitment to ground-breaking effective work and their understanding of the partnerhip between creative and effective work have delivered impressive results for prominent global brands.
2022 AME Grand Jury member Kaylin Goldstein is EVP, Head of Planning for Leo Burnett, she brings years of award-winning experience and industry insights to the 2022 jury panel. Kaylin helps the world’s most storied brands make their mark on culture and partners with challengers seeking their unfair share of attention. Career highlights include “The Lost Class” for Change the Ref, American Express’ “Small Business Saturday” and Kraft Mac and Cheese’s “World’s Largest Blind Taste Test.” Not only has Kaylin helped her clients take home Cannes Lions, Effies and Jay Chiat Awards, but she herself won Ad Age’s Strategic Planner of the Year award, in 2017.
In the interview beow Kaylin shares her perspective on award-winning creative/effective ads, her favorite ad and the evolution of brand positioning.
AME Awards: What stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?
Kaylin Goldstein: Never been done before. Piques my curiosity. Makes me feel something – doesn’t matter if it’s delight or disgust.
AME Awards: Speak to the evolution of brand positioning, values, and tone of voice during the past few years.
It’s a fascinating time for brands. In the past, a brand signaled a quality product. You could count on getting something good: well made, great tasting, lots of horsepower. Then brands became more than a set of product attributes. Brands communicated meaning. Values. You didn’t just buy a brand, you bought into it. Brands were lifestyles. Brands had purposes that aligned with your belief system. Today, brands are still all of those things. But there’s more openness. More acknowledgement that brands are always in flux. Brand managers and agencies may write the rules and set the guidelines for tone, behavior, look and feel, but ultimately brands are built by the people who use them. Which means that while brands may still need to determine what their values and tone of voice is, the successful ones aren’t afraid to give up some control. They recognize that brands, like culture, are continually made and re-made by people. And this evolution is continuing with the emergence of ‘headless brands’: no centralized authority, all the power in the hands of the community of users. These decentralized brands may not displace more traditional brands but they do challenge some deep-seated notions about what a brand is and does.
AME Awards: Why did you agree to participate on this year’s AME Grand Jury and What do you hope to learn by viewing entries into this competition?
Kaylin Goldstein: So much of the time we are head down, working on the work. It’s energizing to look around and see the amazing things people are doing. If it makes me jealous, that’s a good thing.
AME Awards: What is your favorite most successful ad and why? What campaign resulted in a global brand making an impressive pivot?
Kaylin Goldstein: My favorite thing right now is the Lost Class for Change the Ref developed by Leo Burnett Chicago. Not only did it convey the horror of gun violence but it also calls out the NRA for its decades of pro-gun lobbying. We invited two well-known gun advocates to give the commencement address at a high school that doesn’t exist. Former NRA President David Keene and author John Lott gave their speeches to 3,044 empty seats that represent the students who would have graduated if they hadn’t been killed by a gun. This bait and switch, which turned pro-gun advocates into spokespeople against guns, managed to get people talking about this important issue without needing a tragedy to do so.
A global brand I’ve long admired is Heinz Ketchup. Recently they teamed up with Waze and Burger King in Canada to give free food to drivers stuck in traffic. By embracing Heinz’s famous slowness – it pours at 0.045km/h which is the speed that unlocks the free food for drivers on the Waze app – Heinz is once again acting like a true icon, not just another condiment.