Margaret Johnson

After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in journalism and mass communication, Margaret earned a degree in art direction at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Her early advertising career included stops at Leonard, Monahan, Lubars & Kelly in Providence, Rhode Island, where she cut her teeth on accounts like Polaroid and Keds tennis shoes, and at the Richards Group in Dallas, Texas, where she worked on Id Software, creators of video games like Doom and Quake. She launched lots of games with monsters, screaming faces and dead bodies.
In 1996 Margaret received a call from GSP. She packed up and headed west. In the years since, she’s worked on just about every account in the building: SONIC Drive-In, TD Ameritrade, Häagen-Dazs, HP, Logitech, Nintendo, Specialized, Foster Farms, Budweiser, Yahoo! and Nest, to name a few. She was made a partner at GSP in 2012.
She’s won awards at every major show, including the One Show’s first-ever Green Pencil for the Häagen-Dazs “HD Loves HB” campaign in 2009, the 2010 Kelly Awards Grand Prize for the Häagen-Dazs “Five” campaign, a 2011 Cannes Cyber Lion for the Yahoo! outdoor interactive “Bus Stop Derby” and two 2011 Lions for the Logitech “Ivan Cobenk” spot, which was included as one of the CLIO Awards’ 100 all-time World’s Best Commercials.
Business Insider named her one of the Most Powerful Women in Advertising in 2012.
In 2008 she produced and directed Dunkumentary, which was featured in the Short Film Corner at Cannes. She also blogs about things she sees out of her car window and is writing a book with her husband about not losing touch with the cool, dynamic person you were before you had kids—a project they started seven years ago, before they had kids. 

Executive Creative Director on Nest, TD Ameritrade, Häagen-Dazs, Sonic, Logitech, Foster Farms, Specialized. Previous accounts include Nintendo, H-P, Nike, Elizabeth Arden