With consumers demanding more natural, less processed food and transparent, responsive relationships with companies and brands, giant, long-established CPG companies are under enormous pressure to adapt quickly. But successfully introducing significant innovation in companies traditionally known more for discipline and consistent performance than for being first adopters or cutting-edge marketers takes an unusual combination of passion, persistence, persuasiveness and practical business know-how.

After three years at Portland's Wieden+Kennedy as an interactive creative director, Matt O'Rourke joined Deutsch LA as executive creative director this past summer to co-lead the agency's digital efforts with Jerome Austria, also an executive creative director.

Alan Cohen most likely qualified as an All Star long before there was an annual awards series recognizing the best and brightest innovators in digital media. In fact, he has been genuinely innovating digital media, advertising and marketing - at scale - long before anyone even knew how to scale it.

It might be stretching it to say that social media has turned corporations into people. But, according to Peggy Ang, it has helped them become better conversationalists.

When Baba Shetty describes his career progression as "interesting," he understates the case by more than a little. He didn't study media or marketing in school and counted among his formative jobs a post at BMW's US headquarters... in product development, where he worked on tweaking an early iteration of the next-generation 3 Series for the North American market. So how did Shetty, now chief strategy and media officer at DigitasLBi, become one of online and offline media's go-to guys, not to mention one of its most eloquent voices?

Tom Bick has a resume that would make Homer Simpson jealous. His second job out of college was with Miller Brewing Co., where he first worked in analytics/research and then led the Miller Lite brand. His job after that was with Hill Holliday in Boston, at which he counted Dunkin Donuts as his primary client. And when he moved back to the client side with Oscar Mayer, Bick found himself knee deep in bacon, figuratively speaking. Told that beer/donuts/bacon constitutes a dream trifecta for many animate beings of the male persuasion, Bick responds with a deadpan, "Well, I guess it …

It's fitting that MediaPost Creative All Star Eric Grunbaum, a founding partner and Executive Creative Director at Apple's bespoke advertising agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab, has dedicated most of his career to the advertising and promotion of the Apple brand and its array of products and services.

David Droga's Droga5 has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to the digital space. To wit: When it was launched in 2006, the indie shop made a splash with that famous video for fashion designer Marc Ecko that fooled people into thinking Air Force One was tagged with graffiti. Remember that clip? It went viral before people even understood what it meant to go viral, and before long, Droga's New York City-based startup was growing and competing with the established players in the advertising industry. Today, Droga5's client roster includes the likes of Diet Coke, Spotify and …

As the Chief Digital Investment Officer of WPP's GroupM, Ari Bluman inherently is one of the most powerful and influential people in digital media; He's been proving that since taking on the role two years ago. But recently he shook up the entire digital media marketplace when he announced he would pull GroupM - and its clients - out of the open RTB trading by the end of 2014.