AME's Grand Jury members are recruited from 5-regions around the globe. They bring years of extensive strategic 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. 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.
2023 Grand Jury member Maggie Gross is Principal and Head of Sratedgy at Deloitte where she leads the brand practice and strategy team. She found her way into strategy because of her love of storytelling, game theory, and anthropology. She has led strategy for brands like Dos Equis, Samsung, Keurig/ Green Mountain, Lysol, truth, and Special Olympics. Her work with American Express on Small Business Saturday reframed the idea into the Shop Small movement - leading it become a nationally recognized holiday by Congress, an annual cultural phenomenon, and a pillar of the Amex brand. Maggie was recognized by the United Nations for her consistent track record of building global, impactful brands. Her work and ideas have been featured in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and are even spotlighted in the Smithsonian Museum.
Keep reading to learn what Magggie is looking for when awarding creative and effective advertising and her thoughts on why effectivenes competitions are important.
AME Awards: As a strategic creative, what stand-out attributes do you recognize in award-winning creative effective advertising?
Maggie Gross: I’m constantly looking for the work that effectively drives financial impact. We’ve done some research at Deloitte on this and developed a metric called BrandWorth that identifies the four things that matter most: Values Alignment, Experience Satisfaction, Message Memorability, and Share of Culture. These are the things that I’ll be paying attention to as I review work this year.
AME Awards: Why are effectiveness competitions like the AME Awards important?
Maggie Gross: I understand the difficulty CMOs have prioritizing brand investment, particularly in times of economic downturn or within sales-driven organizations focused on short-term wins. Our BrandWorth research reveals the shared attributes of the world’s most successful brands, tested across 24,000 brands and 21 industries. It proves that branding does indeed drive revenue returns, and I believe that awards that focus on effective branding helps strengthen the CMO’s position within the C-suite.