Leslie A. Stone

Leslie is a passionate champion of great people and big ideas. She thrives in collaboration with clients, suits and creatives alike; working with integrated teams to create the elusive “red thread”; brainstorming; and shepherding young talent. Leslie favors simplicity over jargon and conversation more than charts. This humanistic approach has fueled a career marked by award winning work across the brand, advertising, and media world as both hired gun and in-agency leader.

For American Express, she created a blind social experiment: in-home cocktail parties that led to a modern reinterpretation of “Membership” and a new talent strategy. This brief became the Brand’s first ever global campaign: “My Life, My Card” featuring Ellen Degeneres, Robert DeNiro and M.Night Shyamalan (Gold Effie). In home research with spouses informed a 2-year NPD path and created the ONE card, a non-travel related credit card. Trend analysis, projective techniques, and on-the-street research led to a unique point of view for Wonderbra with a target audience inspired equally by Holly Go Lightly and Seinfeld’s Elaine (Silver Effie). In 2005, she was privileged to work directly with Tribeca Film Festival founders Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro to craft a new mission statement. This work inspired a Gold Effie winning campaign, new film trailer and the Brand’s iconic
logo. More importantly, the festival achieved its highest ever numbers for downtown economic recovery while increasing its industry legitimacy. For SAP she authored the brand strategy to the highly commoditized and competitive cloud category by using a strategy inspired by political campaigns. While working at Goodby Silverstein she led and won 2 major pitches for E*Trade and the best ever consumer electronic device: TiVo! She then partnered with Hoover to present and publish findings for the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) on the impact of DVR technology. In 2000 she predicted the Golden Age of Content well before the launch of WiFi, Hulu or Netflix.