Margaret Johnson

Margaret Johnson is a 21-year veteran of Goodby Silverstein & Partners and leads the agency’s creative department as Chief Creative Officer. Advertising Age named Margaret Executive of the Year in 2018, and over the years she has been named one of the industry’s top chief creative officers by Forbes, Business Insider, Adweek and The Drum.

Under her leadership GS&P has architected work that transcends media, with Ad Age putting the agency on the top of its A-List in 2019 and Creativity magazine awarding GS&P as one of its top 10 Most Innovative agencies in 2017. This work includes famed Super Bowl spots, such as Pepsi’s “More Than OK”; the Doritos Blaze vs. MTN DEW ICE rap battle starring Peter Dinklage and Morgan Freeman; the Cheetos Museum; Lessons in HerStory, an augmented-reality app that rewrites history to include historical women figures; the Tostitos “Party Safe” bag, which was created to prevent drunk driving after the Super Bowl; Doritos “No Choice” chips, which encouraged Millennials to register to vote in the 2016 election; Dreams of Dalí, the Oculus Rift experience for the Salvador Dalí Museum; the anti-cyberbullying campaign “#IAmAWitness” for the Ad Council; the “Unacceptable Acceptance Letters” campaign to combat sexual assault on college campuses; Doritos Rainbows, the profits of which supported the It Gets Better Project; and the Häagen-Dazs “HD Loves HB” campaign. The latter prompted Congress to conduct hearings on colony collapse disorder.

Margaret serves on the boards of the One Show and Facebook’s Creative Council and was a founding member of the 3% Conference. She was appointed president of the 2019 Cannes Film Lions jury and has judged the ANDYs and the Clios, as well as the prestigious Titanium category of the Cannes Lions. At every major show, Margaret has won awards, including the One Show’s first-ever Green Pencil for the Häagen-Dazs “HD Loves HB” campaign. Margaret also produced and directed Dunkumentary, which was featured in the Short Film Corner at Cannes.

Margaret graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a BA in journalism and mass communication, for which she was inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism 2019 Hall of Fame. She earned a degree in art direction at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia.