REGGIE Brand Catalyst Awards Grand Jury

DEBORAH HYUN

Senior Vice President, Global Brand Marketing
Lululemon Corporation

BIO

Deb Hyun is a global marketing leader with nearly 20 years of experience building and scaling brands, while delivering measurable and profitable growth, for some of the world’s fastest growing companies. 

Deb is currently the SVP, Global Brand Marketing at lululemon, where she is responsible for leading initiatives that drive cultural relevance while accelerating brand growth around the world. 

Prior to lululemon, Deb has held senior marketing leadership roles at Uber and Headspace, where she built diverse high-performing teams that drove meaningful cultural and top and bottom line impact, earning industry recognition. Deb was previously recognized as Ad Age’s 40 under 40 as well as Business Insider’s CMOs To Watch. 

Q&A with Deborah Hyun

How have your expectations of great marketing evolved over the past few years— and how does that shape how you evaluate work today? 

Brands that produce great marketing drives culture. And by making a place within culture, great marketing changes the growth trajectory for the brand for the long term. It builds beyond the moment of that campaign, shapes how consumers see and perceive the brand in the long term. 

This starts with having a clear and differentiated positioning that, at times, might not resonate with everyone. 

In an environment where attention spans are short and consumers are inundated with information, when I evaluate work, I look for how sharp the insight is and/or how the work drives differentiation for the brand that has the best chance of capturing attention. 

I also look for longevity and how this work will live beyond the moment or trend. Great work should be able to stand the test of time and a typical campaign cycle because it seems to be a universal truth that is not time-bound. 

How do you balance creative ambition with commercial accountability when assessing great brand work? 

Often times people believe that you can’t do both, so they treat these objectives as separate briefs or separate objectives. 

Great brand work can and should deliver both because creative ambition needs to be born from commercial objectives. 

What lessons from your own leadership journey most influence how you assess excellence? 

I’ve learned that in order to truly drive excellent results, it requires alignment and buy-in across the organization because the consumer journey is so dependent on how the storytelling comes to life across various touchpoint. 

The last thing any brand wants is for their org to show up in the consumer journey, as it will create friction for the audience. 

Getting that organization alignment will ensure that there is clarity for the consumer on what the brand stands for and what is the most important message that brand wants the consumer to know about their products. 

Risk taking and effectiveness, sometimes friends, sometimes foes. How have you handled the balance in your marketing efforts, and how will you weigh these elements in your role as a REGGIE Brand Catalyst juror? 

Risk taking and effectiveness actually go hand in hand. 

In order to drive long-term impact, there’s some level of risk taking required to make the investment now to see the results much later than when something goes out into market. And in order to make a mark on culture and make an impression with consumers, it’s usually work that boldly declares a new idea that consumers haven’t seen before, and that’s risky. 

As a juror, I’ll be looking for where and how a brand has chosen to take risk in order to drive effectiveness, keep an eye out for not taking risks just for risk's sake but ensuring that it was also grounded in an insight. 

Get to know the 2026 REGGIE Brand Catalyst Grand Jurors.