Lessons That Last: Inside the 2025 AAF Advertising Hall of Fame
On Thursday night, April 24th, the American Advertising Federation will host the ‘Biggest Night in Advertising’, the induction ceremonies for the 2025 Advertising Hall of Fame. Eight legendary leaders, along with one corporate icon, will be inducted. The are as follows:
- Linda Boff, CEO of Said Differently and former global chief marketing officer at General Electric.
- John Hayes, former chief marketing officer at American Express.
- David Lubars, former chief creative officer at BBDO Worldwide and Chairman BBDO North America.
- Alex López Negrete, president, CEO and co-founder of Lopez Negrete Communications.
- Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard.
- Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of The Ad Council.
- Rishad Tobaccowala, former chief strategist and growth officer at Publicis Groupe.
- Susan Wojcicki, the late CEO emeritus of YouTube. Wojcicki was also presented the David Bell Award for Industry Service. Wojcicki died in August 2024 following a two-year battle with lung cancer.
- Mars, Incorporated was named the corporate inductee.
To mark the occasion, LBB reached out to this year’s honourees to reflect on their careers and share the lessons, campaigns and moments that shaped them. In part one of this two-part series, they look back — offering insights not only into what they’ve learned, but what the next generation of creative leaders might carry forward.
A summary of their reflections follows. LBB’s Addison Capper curated the conversations.
The Biggest Lessons That Shaped Their Careers
Linda Boff> I believe in the power of ‘yes’. Saying yes has led me to partner with amazing creatives whose ideas are bold and new and at times a little scary. But it has also led to outstanding never-been-done before work that helped GE remain modern and relevant. Like partnering with Zac Posen to design 3D printed dresses for the Met Gala. Or designing an anniversary pair of sneakers made of the same materials GE used to help manufacture the Moonboots that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wore when they first stepped on the moon. And I would add that saying yes to staying at GE for 20 years gave me the chance to be part of an all-star team who brought the company back to a place of vitality.
John Hayes> The biggest lesson I learned is avoiding mistakes at all costs only makes you less effective. I learned to put my energy into trying new things and preparing for recovery when a mistake was made. This meant owning up to mistakes early and working to solve the problem. Great brands are built by being bold and recovering effectively when problems occur.
David Lubars> That you always want to be a chef, not a waiter. The waiter takes the order and brings back something expected and acceptable. OK, fine. Whereas the chef prepares an extraordinary meal with amazing sauces you never imagined existed - and now that you’ve tasted it, you love it and want more. A great chef surprises and delights, goes above and beyond, creates something truly memorable. It’s what a great creative agency does.
Lisa Sherman> I’ve been uplifted by friends, family and partners in the industry at every step of this journey. With their support, I’ve developed the ability to stay nimble and accept that if there’s one thing that’s constant, it’s change, but you can navigate anything with the right people around you. Learning to build and maintain these relationships with care has been the most valuable lesson in both my career and in life.
Rishad Tobaccowala> To thrive we have to adapt to the forces of change since they do not adapt to us. Change is difficult and it sucks. But irrelevance is even worse.
The Campaigns and Experiences That Provided Their Most Useful Lessons
Gülen Bengi (on behalf of Corporate Inductee Mars, Incorporated – lead chief marketing officer, Mars, and chief growth officer, Mars Snacking)> At Mars, across all our snacking, food and pet brands, we don't just talk about our purpose, we live it. PEDIGREE was able to live its purpose to end dog homelessness by personalising adoption for shelter dogs. The PEDIGREE Adoptable campaign uses AI to put real, adoptable dogs at the centre of global advertising by turning every PEDIGREE ad into a digital ad for a shelter dog that is adoptable near the viewer. This was an incredibly impactful campaign, increasing dog adoption rates and driving increased website traffic to local shelter site profiles for the dogs. With each campaign we launch, we aim to learn something, and PEDIGREE Adoptable was a great learning in how technology, communities and brands engage to have great results for shelter dogs, our PEDIGREE® brand, and our business.
Alex Lopez Negrete> Every advertising professional will tell you that every single campaign, every body of work provides unique lessons that push you forward, inform your perspective. However, the one that comes to mind is our first campaign for Walmart that dates back to the mid-1990s and lasted a bit more than a decade (campaigns surely don’t last that long anymore). This was the ‘real stories’ era of Walmart advertising (in those days, Wal-Mart). We had a creative and production crew looking for customer stories across the entire nation, 50 weeks a year. And while we did uncover some great stories in the store, the most powerful stories about the connection between customers and their (making special note on their) Walmart were those we found outside the store. Community centres. Church gatherings after mass. Festivals. Family reunions. Schools.
As an Hispanic agency and an Hispanic marketer, I always felt we had a real connection, a true understanding of our community – but this took it (and us) to an entirely new and higher level. Yes it was a lot of work, a lot of time away from home, and thousands of miles of travel. But the honour, the privilege of meeting Hispanic America personally, to get such a personal and deep understanding of my market, my community, my people in this country is something that I think is uncommon and a real gift. I will always be thankful to Paul Higham, our Walmart CMO at the time, for this challenge and this gift.
Among the many lessons we learned, aside from getting the deepest possible understanding of our own community in situ, I would cite:
- Nothing can replace real. And, when properly executed, when the customer can see themselves, their reality and their priorities reflected by a brand, there is a sense of gratitude and connection that is powerful and irreplaceable. Customers, especially Latino customers, thirst to be seen and recognised in an honourable, relevant and accurate way.
- Storytelling is one of the, if not THE most powerful set of paints we have as marketers. When customers can play back a story, relate to it, get engaged by it – recall and acceptance soar. A collection of vignettes, as beautifully produced as they may be, will never be as effective as storytelling well done. Mind you, they don’t have to be big stories – in fact, sometimes, the small stories are the most powerful, the most relatable.
- Customers take things personally. It’s not just ‘the’ Walmart or ‘the’ McDonald’s they go to. It’s ‘their’ Walmart, ‘their’ McDonald’s. And, there, they have or make friends, and yes, have or make family. And, everything matters. These aren’t just places of business, they are forums where real life plays out, small moments at a time – and customers carry these with them – and this is where clients win. Or lose.
- Humans are perfectly imperfect. That’s what makes us such a magnificent species. It is the blemishes and imperfections we carry that make us, us. An irreplaceable us. A beautiful and magnificently flawed us. Ours is a reality worth embracing and celebrating.
I guess, bottom line, what this campaign taught me was a deep, sincere love and appreciation for the customer. Granted, Walmart culture is built upon this tenet, but having the privilege to go in so deeply, year after year, store after store, town after town took me deep in the weeds and it was the experience of a lifetime. There’s not a day I don’t think of this ‘tour’ and consistently glean lessons from it all still today.
Raja Rajamannar> It is hard to pick just one, but I would say Touch Card, which was actually a product innovation that marketing pioneered to help those who are blind or partially sighted pay independently with their cards. To bring the need to life, close your eyes and take one of your cards out of your wallet – can you tell which card it is? Or which way to orient it to pay? Likely not, so we created a set of notches that help people to distinguish between debit, credit and prepaid cards with touch alone, as well as know the orientation. Simple but super effective.
The Touch Card development and subsequent campaign was deeply personal for me because my grandmother was blind. Growing up, I saw how difficult it was for her to navigate the world — and that always stayed with me. Later in my career, when I finally had the influence and opportunity to do something about it, I knew I had to act. Since then, it has been immensely gratifying to hear from parents, caregivers and others — as well as those who are blind or partially sighted themselves — who’ve shared how much of a game changer this has been for them. That kind of feedback truly makes all the effort worthwhile. Today, the Touch Card is available in dozens of markets around the world, making life just a bit easier for countless people.
What made this campaign such a valuable learning experience was what came after the launch. We had a beautiful creative that showcased powerful, heartwarming moments of people experiencing the Touch Card for the first time. It resonated emotionally, but as we listened to feedback from the community, we realized that this traditional, visually heavy marketing medium wasn’t fully accessible to the very audience we were trying to serve. That was a pivotal moment. Instead of seeing it as a setback, we saw it as an opportunity to innovate further. We quickly launched Spotlight, a video campaign with audio descriptors that provided a clear explanation of the feature. Launching Spotlight was not only incredibly rewarding, it was also a reminder that when you are motivated by the right intentions, and stay open and agile, the results can truly be transformative.
The lessons we learned on this journey were invaluable. By staying closely connected to the people we’re serving – and being open to their feedback – we were able to refine and elevate our creative in ways that truly made a difference in people’s lives. In the end, we were not only proud of what we built, but how we built it: with empathy, purpose and a desire to make a difference.
Lisa Sherman> When covid-19 turned our nation upside down in early 2020, it became immediately clear that the Ad Council had a role to play. We were in the market just five days after the World Health Organization declared the global pandemic, and already laying the groundwork for a new coalition that could mobilise as soon as vaccines became available.
Our Covid-19 Vaccine Education Initiative was unlike any singular campaign we’d done before. An unprecedented crisis called for an unprecedented communications effort, centred on a strategy to align facts and resources with trusted messengers who could authentically and effectively relay them. It combined all of the Ad Council’s greatest assets to deliver a multi-faceted public education initiative with multiple campaigns designed to reach specific communities and their individual reasons for hesitancy. Through this tailored strategy, we reached over 75% of eligible Americans with our messaging.
This enormous effort brought to light an incredible opportunity to deepen our impact across all of our campaigns at the Ad Council, ultimately solidifying the blueprint for our large-scale, multi-year initiatives. Now, five years later, we’ve built on the successes and learnings from our Covid-19 Vaccine Education Initiative to apply the same model – big tent coalitions, trusted messengers, optimized research and multiple campaigns designed to reach individuals with the messages that will resonate – to mental health, gun violence prevention and more. All with the empathetic approach that has always set us apart.
