After earning a Master’s in Journalism/Advertising under Don Schultz at Northwestern, Ken Krimstein began his career at Ogilvy & Mather in New York, on American Express, Hershey’s, Kraft, and AT&T. His work won Andy Gold awards for Maxwell House coffee, One Shows for British Tourism, and Duracell, an Effie for International Paper, and Art Director’s Club recognition for Hershey’s and Avon. During his two years as Creative Director at Ogilvy in Hong Kong, he swept the Hong Kong 4A’s, including the Gold for best campaign and best copywriting craft.
At McCann in New York, he worked on Coke, Smirnoff, USAir, New York Tourism and won CA recognition for Black & Decker’s Dustbuster.
In 1993 he started Krimstein/Clapps with the global Gilbey's Gin account and quickly added J&B, A&P’s Waldbaum’s Supermarkets, Tower Air, Mistic, American Express, China Grill, Rihga Hotels and Kaplan Test Prep. The agency then merged into Biederman, where as ECD of the sixty person shop, he ran the business on Lands’ End and LandsEnd.com, Tri-State Cadillac Dealers, JFK Airport, and NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
In 2007, he became Chief Creative Officer of Partners and Jeary, New York, and has spearheaded integrated creative campaigns on all clients; carrying strategically-focused big ideas across print, television, events, interactive, custom publishing, radio, out of home, exhibition design, corporate identity and just about any other medium they can come up with for clients such as SpaFinder, Sterling National Bank, Jewish Home Lifecare, Edison Innovation Foundation, Community Foundation of New Jersey and pro-bono work for the National Skin Cancer Foundation, which has garnered over two million dollars in donated media for this important cause.
2009 brought a merger, and currently Krimstein is ECD of the New York office of Laughlin/Constable, a 120 person agency with offices in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York.
A father of three, he lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and has published articles in Forbes and Adweek as well as the New York Observer. He has had cartoons published in the New Yorker, and has a book of his work coming out from Random House in 2010. He has been teaching creative strategy annually at AWNY’s College Career Conference since 1998. He has also taught strategy at Syracuse, NYU, and SVA.