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 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.

2024 AME Grand Jury member Lynette Wong is the Head of Strategy at Ogilvy New York, co-leading a team of 30+ brilliant strategists. Her professional journey has taken her from ethnographic researcher to brand strategist, engagement planner, business consultant, account manager, social & PR specialist, inequality-fighting NGO founder and insect-farming sustainability entrepreneur across Singapore, Amsterdam and New York. Her passion for cultural decoding, strategic integration and team-building is how she leads or has grown the global brand and marketing strategies for Fortune 50 clients like Verizon (yes, with Beyoncé at the Super Bowl – her American dream come true), Samsung, IBM, Google, IHG, KFC, GSK, BMW and other world-class acronyms. She’s since earned over 45+ awards from Effies to One Shows and loves transforming brands, solving complex problems simply and helping people shine for who they are.

In the interview below Lynette Wong shares her insights on how brands are adapting in the realm of mobile gaming, future forward trends, data anyalitics and AI, corporate social responsibility and much more. 

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

Lynette Wong: Because we all need 1) constant Exposure to Excellence or we get complacent and 2) Openness to diversity of thought and new ways of problem-solving or we get stuck and lose our creative edge. Also, 3) they’re just fun and a way for the strategic community to raise the bar together, define the future of where strategy should be taking the entire industry and rewrite the playbook. Great work starts with us.

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

Lynette Wong: Did it do the super ambitious and hard-to-do thing that it says it set out to do in a way that got me to see the brand, product, audience, channel etc. in a way I never have before (eliciting that elusive ‘that’s so smart I wish I thought of that’ gut punch)? Did it take a risk and it paid off? And of course, was it crafted and story-told in the most simplistic and human way.

AME Awards: What future forward trends and innovations are brands embracing for 2024?

Lynette Wong: Yes of course there are the tech trends like AI, voice tech, AR, privacy etc.
But more importantly, globally and of personal interest to me is the re-definition of success on people’s own terms (not brands’, not businesses’, not bosses, not even their mothers). It’s a cultural wave that will change everything and for the longer-term. As younger dreams diversify and evolve, what and how we spend our money on will too. Markets have always been shaped by identity and aspiration. And if the next generations aren’t constrained by past symbols of status and homogenous definitions of success, then brands need to keep up in 2024 via personalization (one person’s dream isn’t another), non-judgmental openness (if 1 in 2 gen Zers want to be influencers today, meet them there don’t mock them) and cultural innovation (with the rise of new unmet needs).

AME Awards: How has the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence impacted the effectiveness of advertising campaigns?

Lynette Wong:I’m a little data nerd so I love more data being analyzed at speed and accuracy with AI to 1) prove effectiveness against ‘what would have beens if we did something elses’ and 2) even using it to predict the future and project sustained impact of a strategic or creative choice in one campaign vs something else.

When it comes to the rise of AI being able to produce more things more quickly and pumped through media, I believe we’ll need to stand guard against 1) increasing seas of sameness and blandness being produced and 2) not mixing up quantity vs quality of impact, relevance and effectiveness. Remembering that we’re judging a creative game vs a volume game.

AME Awards: How are emerging technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and interactive content shaping the landscape of advertising effectiveness?

Lynette Wong: To me, they don’t reshape effectiveness at all. The medium may change (as it did from pigeon mail to direct mail to social media), but we should still be measuring the same things: did people engage with it, remember it and do something because of it. Only thing is maybe the time and number of steps it took to go from initially engaging to acting on it (aka clicking ‘buy’) may now be collapsed.

AME Awards: In what ways are brands incorporating augmented reality and virtual try-on experiences in their advertising to enhance the online shopping journey? Can you share examples of successful campaigns that used AR or virtual try-ons to drive consumer engagement and conversion?

Lynette Wong: Nike’s done a great job at crafting the total brand experience and making it all feel like a shopping party, not a shopping process. From their super immersive flagship stores you’d want to go hang out at with friends and that go beyond transactions to their online SNKRS app that connects you to the wider sneakerhead community with virtual try-ons, to the Nike+ app that extends passion to sports into daily life etc. They’ve used all this new technology (except for investing in NFTs) to truly create that party vibe.

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

Lynette Wong: Do it before you say it.
Say it simply and without embellishments or exaggerations (because the internet will find you out).
The $$$ you invest in the marketing/telling people of what you did should not be higher than the $$$ you donated or put to CSR (e.g. if you donated $100,000 to a school but then spend $10M advertising it, there’s a problem there).

And share how you’re measuring its real impact. (where the $$$/the time/the policy change goes. How many turtles did it really save. The next gen is more accepting of progress vs
perfection).

AME Awards: How have brands adapted in the realm of mobile gaming? How do you design advertisements that encourage user engagement and interaction rather than passive viewing?

Lynette Wong: So many great brands give real value: in skins, in maps, in weapons, in new challenges, in additional points etc. You have to add to the game itself vs detract from it.