AME's Grand Jury members are recruited from 5-regions around the globe. They bring years of extensive experiece crafting ground-breaking results driven work for prominent brands to the jury panel. They are Strategic, Innovative, Analytical, Critical Thinkers, and Creative Storytellers who are dedicated to ensuring brand awarness and equity. 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.
2025 Grand Jury member, Hyunwoo Park is CEO at INNORED in South Korea. He founded INNORED in 2007, and, since then, the company has sustained consistent levels of growth over the past 17 years, becoming well positioned as the leading independent advertising agency in Korea, where, historically the industry has been primarily dominated by major in-house agencies of the top Korean conglomerates, which essentially makeup near 80 percent of the market share for domestic advertising.
Hyunwoo was named the “Korean Advertiser of the Year” in 2022 and also served as a “Juror” at the London International Advertising Festival, the New York Festival, the Korea Advertising Awards and the YouTube Works Awards.
INNORED has created and built up several successful flagship, portfolio campaigns, leading to deep rooted, long term partnerships with major global brands such as Burger King, North Face, Airbnb, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever, as well as strong relationships with some of the leading domestic brands such as Korea Ginseng Corporation, Binggrae, Dongseo Foods and Maeil Dairy, amongst others.
Hyunwoo shares his industry insights on the challenges brands across global markets, corporate social responsibility, the evolution of purpose driven advertising and more.
AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards essential for measuring impact and industry growth?
Hyunwoo Park: Advertising agencies want to create creative impact. However, marketers just want business results. Creativity should be expanded to cover business impact. Only creativity that can demonstrate its effectiveness as a business solution will survive in the future. This is why I want to review and learn from effectiveness competitions like AME Awards.
AME Awards: How do you see purpose-driven advertising evolving in terms of effectiveness? What are some strategies brands are using to resonate with consumers?
Hyunwoo Park: In terms of effectiveness, purpose-driven advertising focused on short-term performance marketing that resulted in immediate purchase results. However, in the future, the category of brand concerns is expanding to a 'stage of intimacy' with consumers. Short-term purchases are briefly sweet, but have nothing to do with making a brand healthy. Therefore, it is now necessary to design a campaign with careful experience to create 'brand love'.
AME Awards: With the focus continuing on corporate social responsibility, how are brands authentically communicating their values and impact?
Hyunwoo Park: It's the age of B2E (all). Everyone who experiences a brand is a part of it now. The in-house members, partner companies, and their families who make it understand, experience, and promote our brand before anyone else. The power of word of mouth that a brand can create should never be overlooked. Before promising or shouting something at a consumer, it's more about how transparent and authentic the brand is. Now, rather than just a line of cool fake copies, small but sincere actions can spread to people faster. You have to check three more times to see if what you have is real and sustainable, and if you have confidence, you have to communicate more boldly now.
AME Awards: What challenges do brands face in maintaining effectiveness across diverse global markets, and how do you approach creating strategies that resonate across different cultures?
Hyunwoo Park: Creating strategies that can empathize with diverse cultures must be very careful. This is because, given all regional and cultural characteristics of various countries, the original brand's unique charm can be lost. When diversity becomes more important, it means that we must respect individuality more. Understanding, strengthening, and confidently expressing the brand's unique heritage can be a shortcut to creating a business impact in the global market.