Mythic is proud to announce CMO Taylor Bryant was awarded the prestigious AAF Silver Medal Award during the recent American Advertising Awards Gala in Charlotte. The award recognizes individuals for their outstanding contributions to advertising, including furthering the industry's standards, demonstrating creative excellence and responsibility in areas of social concern.
Through his leadership and collaboration, Taylor has helped Mythic land clients, including MetLife, Ally, Cone Health, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and many more, resulting in award-winning work and driving meaningful business results. Beyond his commitment to delivering business results, Taylor has devoted much of his time to inspiring and empowering the next generation of advertisers. This is evident through his work serving on the AAF Charlotte Board for four years, with two years as president. In that role he launched a mentorship program and led creative community outreach programs and events.
Taylor’s profound impact at Mythic and on the Charlotte advertising community, more broadly, throughout the past seven years is merely a small snapshot of his storied career spanning four decades. His first foray into the advertising world was as an intern at Leo Burnett the summer between his first and second years of business school at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. At the time, he was merely testing the waters to see whether he’d even be interested in advertising.
“My advertising career was a happy accident. Coming out of college, on a scale from one to 10, the likelihood that I would have a career in advertising was zero,” Taylor explained. “I had two internship opportunities — one with Wilson Sporting Goods and the other with an ad agency in Chicago called Leo Burnett. Thankfully, I chose to walk through the doors of Leo Burnett.”
Ultimately, it was Taylor’s time at Leo Burnett where he learned the fundamentals of advertising, rising through the ranks from intern to account director and working with iconic brands like Pillsbury and McDonald's. Taylor went on to serve multiple stints at MullenLowe — once in the early 90s in Boston and again in the 2000s in Winston-Salem — but it was his first experience with the agency known then as Mullen, working hand in hand with Jim Mullen and Joe Grimaldi, that he attributes to laying the groundwork for his approach to entrepreneurship and building a great ad agency.
“I’ve always loved many things about this business, and still do, but at the top of the list is the creative product, and the process for getting to it,” Taylor said. “Navigating that tricky intersection of strategy, art and commerce lights up all of my brain.”
While Taylor nuked the competition with his Totino’s work; helped elevate Timberland from a boot brand to a powerhouse lifestyle brand; wrote the strategy for Nintendo to advertise video games to adults before adult gamers were a thing; and survived the dot-com bubble working with brands like HP, Microsoft and Oracle — and that’s just to name a few — he hasn’t forgotten to pay it forward along the way.
“As a lifelong student of and advocate for this business, it is my hope that my passion, curiosity and mentorship may have sparked a love of advertising, brand storytelling or creative aspirations in the people I’ve worked with,” Taylor explained.
We hope you will join us in celebrating Taylor’s storied career and this incredible accomplishment!
