Image of Lauren Austin
Jury

Lauren Austin
Chief Creative Officer
MKG

NEW YORK, USA // Having worked as a producer early in her career, Lauren joined full service creative agency MKG in 2007, rising through the ranks from Director of Production to Chief Creative Officer. The COVID-19 pandemic hit on the heels of Lauren’s return from maternity leave, requiring her to lead MKG’s massive positioning pivot from live, high-touch experiential marketing services to outdoor, distanced, hybrid and virtual events. During that time, highlights included support for NYC restaurants through a campaign with Seamless/Grubhub that garnered thousands of social posts and word-of-mouth mentions and over 738,000 impressions. Lauren has since spearheaded a shift back to the memorable, innovative activations MKG is known for – like a two-part installation at SXSW for WeTransfer, two IRL builds at Coachella for Absolut and HBO, annual dynamic builds for Meta at Vidcon, mobile activation tours for CBS and PlutoTV, an entire fan-focused music festival for Netflix and so much more. Throughout her tenure, Lauren has been instrumental in MKG’s impressive growth rate that continues to increase. In 2023, MKG was named to Ad Age’s A-List at the #1 Experiential Agency of the Year.