REGGIE Brand Catalyst Awards Grand Jury

STEVE MCGOWAN

Senior Director, US Consumer Experience (CX)
Mondelēz International

BIO

McGowan has 30 years of experience in Brand Management, Category Development & Planning, Sales Strategy, Shopper Insights, Category Management, Shopper Marketing, Shopper Activation, Merchandising, Industry Events and Consumer Experience across HJ Heinz, Cadbury, Kraft Foods and Mondelēz  International.  He and his team have won over 9 Cannes Lions, 22 Effies ad 23 Reggies including 1 Super Reggie.  He has his BS from Carnegie Mellon University and his MBA from Wake Forest University. 

Q&A with Steve McGowen

Please provide one word that defines great brand leadership today. 

Strategic 

Please share one trend you are watching closely. 

Fully integrated programming 

In one sentence – What will it take to make an entry worthy of a REGGIE Brand Catalyst award? 

A strong consumer insight linked to the brand strategic positioning connected to a specific audience with activation that threads that insight to the target to the activation vehicles all driving category and brand growth. 

What advice would you offer to teams preparing submissions for the REGGIE Brand Catalyst Awards? 

2 things: 
1) Ensure that the insight is threaded through the full activation & tactics chosen.  
2) Ensure that there is category growth and not just brand growth. 

Why do awards programs like REGGIE Brand Catalyst matter to the health and progress of the marketing industry? 

It is a great way to showcase thought leading amazing work that we can all learn and aspire towards. 

What distinguishes exceptional brand-building work from work that is simply “good”? 

Great question. Great work can be super complicated but also can be very simple yet extremely effective. So a great program is build on a great consumer insight and then that insight is connected through the consumer, activation, tactics and results all tie back cohesively. Lastly, the program has to deliver incremental business results both for the brand and the broader category. 

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

Actually no. My expectations / standards have always been pretty high. What has changed is the different tactics that can be employed today versus 5 years ago. For instance, we want to make sure programs are fully integrated now and then. Now retail media is a big component of much work. 

When reviewing submissions, what signals tell you that a program is driving real, sustainable business growth? 

The program has to drive category growth first and foremost. And then has to drive brand growth. Category growth is more important because without it then the retailer has no incentive to bring in a program from that brand again. 

A key section of the case study submission is dedicated to how teams brought their big idea to life; for you as a judge, what details would you consider critical for entrants to include? What will it take for this section to achieve a higher score over other submissions? 

I would love to see how the idea is consistently brought across a multitude of different medium and tactics with cohesive look and feel. 

An effective performance evaluation framework is critical to show the value a marketing campaign delivered. What type of evaluation framework do you use when assessing marketing efforts? What metrics and KPIs will you expect entrants to provide in their submissions? 

I would like to see both business results as well as marketing results. For instance I want to see incremental category and brand sales increases. I also want to see marketing KPI’s such as growth in HHP, Buy rate and brand engagement metrics. 

Get to know the 2026 REGGIE Brand Catalyst Grand Jurors.