AME's Grand Jury Spotlight Interviews celebrate the exceptional minds shaping the landscape of advertising and marketing communications. Our esteemed panel for 2024 includes visionary leaders renowned for creating influential, results-oriented campaigns for leading brands worldwide.This diverse jury coming from top-tier agencies around the globe represent some of the most  strategic trailblazers in the industry.Their dedication to driving impactful, innovative work not only sets the standard for excellence but also inspires future generations of marketers and advertisers.

Meet Jacqueline Colognesi, a distinguished member of the 2024 Grand Jury and Senior Vice President of UX Strategy & Innovation at The Considered, Jacqueline brings a wealth of industry experience, invaluable leadership perspectives, and a keen eye for innovation to the esteemed jury panel Jackie is a historian, strategist, and writer who has spent over a decade on initiatives designed to improve personal well-being and patient access to care. She’s co-founded a startup designed to reduce loneliness in cities, designed the first online ordering portal for IUDs, and built out platforms to guide patients through complex genetic testing processes.

In the interview below Jacqueline shares her insights on AI, corporate social responsibility, why effectiveness competitons are important and what she's looking for in award-winning work.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?

Jacqueline Colognesi: It’s important to recognize a job well done! Those of us in marketing know how difficult it is to go from concept to something that’s actually living and breathing in the real world, especially something that keeps the spirit of its initial vision. And competitions drive us all to keep at creating amazing work, even when the going gets tough.

AME Awards: As a creative strategist, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?

Jacqueine Colognesi: As a strategist, I always like to tease out what the driving insight behind any piece of advertising is. I’m always impressed by creative solutions that actually solve a problem in a completely unexpected way, or in a way that’s so simple it’s amazing no one has thought of it before!

AME Awards: With an increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, how do brands effectively communicate their values and societal contributions in their marketing strategies?

Jacqueline Colognesi: Brands can effectively communicate their values and societal contributions by pointing to actual change – putting a stake in the ground, highlighting their contributions, and saying “this is what we stand for and this is what we’ve done about it.” It’s easy to sport platitudes about change, but consumers are ever wiser to greenwashing and false claims. It’s harder – and braver, and more effective, to actually make change and then talk about it.

AME Awards: In terms of conversational marketing, how do you develop and implement strategies that leverage AI-driven interactions to enhance the customer experience?

Jacqueline Colognesi: Guardrails are important! Conversational AI can be used incredibly effectively, and cleverly, if it’s given a set of parameters in which to work. Helping customers solve a specific problem, for instance, but still letting the customer drive the conversation in their own words.

Conversational AI also needs to be deployed thoughtfully and used only when it can genuinely enrich an experience or solve someone’s problem faster, and not just in lieu of humans for novelty’s sake.