“The only thing stronger than Meghann’s rigor is her empathy,” reads R/GA’s Creativity Awards entry for Meghann MacKenzie.

Both are evident in the achievements of the agency’s global executive strategy director. MacKenzie, a former statistics professor at the London School of Economics, greatly expanded the Interpublic agency’s relationship with a major client, Samsung. Not only did MacKenzie secure metaverse and e-commerce advisory work for the electronics giant, she also built a team to handle its customer relationship management. The CRM business alone, R/GA said, is substantial enough to rank as a top 10 global client. 

But it was the empathy that really won the judges over, as seen in her work for Procter & Gamble’s “The Talk.” That platform already had several elements generally aimed at the Black community, but MacKenzie adapted it to combat Asian-American bias. She created an all-Asian team of strategists who uncovered the insight that Asian Americans face daily indignity when people do not pronounce their names correctly.

“The Name” campaign, in the agency’s words, “showed the power of recognizing a Korean-American girl’s name, from birth through childhood.” It generated 4 billion impressions, but more importantly, it generated empathy among 90% of viewers for the Asian Americans affected.

MacKenzie’s campaign “shows human truths that everyone talks about in their own communities but not necessarily on a bigger stage,” said one judge. “That is the goal—to move people and change minds. The strategy is written all over that.”

See all the 2023 Ad Age Creativity Awards winners.