The 2025 AME Grand Jury 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 and represent some of the most recognized creative and 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.

Bastian Goldschmidt is Chief Strategy Officer of Grabarz & Partner, Hamburg. He believes that a healthy mix of empathy, simplicity and human understanding is the most powerful basis for creating impactful ideas. In his career he has worked for a range of international clients such as Apple, Airbnb, Burger King, IKEA, Porsche and Volkswagen, helping all of them to move people and their businesses at the same time.

In the interview below Bastian shares his perspective on the qualities of award-winning work, storytelling's role in effectiveness, future forward innoviations and much more.

AME Awards: From your perspective as a creative strategist, what standout qualities define award-winning, effective advertising today?

Bastian Goldschmidt: A solid understanding of the power and possibilities data can bring to the party, combined with tons of empathy and the curiosity to understand why people think, feel and act the way they do.

AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards essential for measuring impact and industry growth?

Bastian Goldschmidt: Marketing is too often still managed by a post & pray mentality. We need to make more of the continuously increasing amount of data to understand the impact our work can and should have. Effectiveness awards are the perfect campaign for the power and necessity of data across the whole marketing process and how it can make the life of CMOs, creative agencies and customers much more rewarding.

AME Awards: In your experience, what role does storytelling play in the effectiveness of a campaign? Are there elements of narrative or structure that make campaigns especially memorable or impactful?

Bastian Goldschmidt: As long as we create work for human beings (and I’m optimistic this will remain true for some time), there is no effectiveness without a story. And stories need ideas that resonate emotionally. Good news: there is nothing that prevents us from using the power of emotions – even in a lower funnel DCO banner.

AME Awards: What future-forward trends and innovations will we see brands adopt for 2025?

Bastian Goldschmidt: We will see a massive increase of content quantity, not necessarily quality – driven by AI and its scaling potential. This makes it even harder for brands to stand out. The solution we should focus on even more than ever: creative excellence that still can only be delivered by human intelligence.