Guest · Creativity and creative effectiveness
Emma Armstrong
CEO and Global Transformation Officer, BBDO
Thirty years and five or six careers across charity, digital and agency leadership, now running BBDO New York with a conviction that brand and human judgment beat the mean.
About
Emma Armstrong is CEO at BBDO New York and Global Transformation Officer of BBDO, known for arguing that creativity is a measurable business driver and that strong brands and human judgment are what let a company stand out as AI pushes everyone towards the mean.
Armstrong began her career at a small UK charity of 11 people, where the marketing title covered everything from organising the Commonwealth Day observance in Westminster Abbey to fixing the franking machine. The early internet work she commissioned there, CD-ROMs and websites, put her in front of agencies that kept trying to hire her, and after four offers she left charity work for Agency.com to help build the internet. She then spent, by her own account, a decade in digital, a world of KPIs, benchmarks and measurable success that still shapes how she talks about proving creativity.
In 2019 Armstrong took the president role at FCB New York, describing it as a blank slate with a number to hit and freedom to build the team, and she says she built one of the best teams of her career by running what felt like an independent agency inside a holding company. She is now CEO at BBDO New York and Global Transformation Officer of BBDO. Across five or six careers in 30 years, as she puts it, her constant argument is that everything goes back to the people.
Career29 years
- 2025 to now BBDO Worldwide Global Transformation Officer
- 2025 to now BBDO New York Chief Executive Officer
- 2025 to 2026 FCB Global Global Transformation Officer
- 2022 to 2026 FCB New York Chief Executive Officer
Show earlier roles: FCB New York, iCrossing, Grey Group, BBDO, Atmosphere BBDO, Agency.com, BT, HIGH RIDE ADVENTURES (2010) LIMITED, Royal Commonwealth Society
- 2019 to 2026 FCB New York President
- 2018 to 2019 iCrossing Managing Director
- 2014 to 2018 Grey Group EVP, Global Account Director
- 2008 to 2014 BBDO EVP, Worldwide Senior Director
- 2007 to 2008 Atmosphere BBDO Group Account Director
- 2005 to 2007 Agency.com Group Account Director
- 2003 to 2005 BT Interactive Marketing Manager
- 2002 to 2003 HIGH RIDE ADVENTURES (2010) LIMITED Adventure guide
- 2000 to 2001 Agency.com Account / Project Manager
- 1997 to 2000 Royal Commonwealth Society Events & Marketing Manager
How Emma thinks3 convictions
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Creativity is combination
Armstrong defines creativity as a mechanical act of connection: taking two things that have not been brought together and combining them to solve a problem. Because AI is trained on everything that came before, she argues it cannot do this without regressing to the mean. That is why she puts human brains, not tools, at the centre of the work.
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People over technology
For Armstrong the throughline of a 30-year career is that people come first, in culture, in clients and in the work. Technology, she says, only lets humans do what they have always done a little faster or more accessibly. It is where every project starts and ends.
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Human judgment is the edge
Armstrong's sharpest warning is about judgment. As AI drives everyone to the mean, she says human thought becomes the differentiator, and her fear is that cutting junior people to save cost leaves no one able to build that judgment for the next wave. She frames training people to think as the priority of the moment.
