B2 Awards Top Jury

VINCENT BAHK

Senior Vice President, Marketing
FIS

BIO

Vincent Bahk is the head of marketing at FIS. 

Previously, Mr. Bahk led agency teams at Digitas, Sapient, and Organic. He also was the chief customer officer at Moven, responsible for marketing, communications, and product design across the B2C and B2B lines of business. 

Q&A with Vincent Bahk

Please provide one word that defines great B2B brand leadership today. 

TRUST 

Please share one trend you are watching closely. 

Of course its AI.

In one sentence – What will it take to make an entry worthy of a B2 Award? 

Embrace "the power of the AND" between Innovation and Impact - break from past conventions, spark a commercial action, AND drive real business metrics. 

What advice would you offer to teams preparing submissions for the B2 Awards? 

This is not "best creative advertising award", this is a Marketing and Business award.   

Why do awards programs like the B2 Awards matter to the health and progress of the marketing industry? 

Because this isn't simply a "best creative advertising award", this is a Marketing and Business award. Innovation must be grounded with an insight, that insight must drive human behavior, and the human behavior creates commercial results. Having an award that does this maintains the integrity of Marketing with regards to our business peers. 

What distinguishes exceptional B2B marketing from work that is simply “good”? 

Creativity is much harder in B2B than B2C. And taking creative ideas from B2C and applying it to B2B nets good, but not great. This has everything to do with the insight that inspires the work. The insight is part Emotional Truth, and part Rational Proof, because B2B requires grounding everything to business goals.

When you review the “breakthrough insight” or “aha moment” behind a campaign, what tells you that a team has uncovered something truly meaningful?  What do you most want to understand about their thinking in this section? 

When it's so simple, and obvious that you really wonder if you have, or why you haven't thought about it in the past. It's the insight you don't have to explain, or argue for, it's a revelation that just explained how the world works. 

How do you balance creative ambition with commercial accountability when assessing great B2B work? 

Creativity always drives commercial outcomes. But creativity without commercial outcomes isn't marketing, it's art. Marketing must have commercial accountability. 

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 B2 juror? 

It's not a risk if something fails (commercially). It's a risk if you don't decide what to do with it quick enough. Don't sweep things under the rug, or hold out hope that things will turn around without corrective action. The real risk is complacency, stop that, success comes with decision and iteration.   

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

I am a do-er and an owner. I've been on both sides of the table where I'm trying to push for the largest window of opportunity for creative, but also having to justify every dollar spent on a campaign as if it's the best decision possible. It's easy to create an idea/campaign that satisfies one side of the table, but both? Rare. 

Get to know the 2026 B2 Top Jurors.