Ana Andjelic
Most brands can no longer rely on advertising spend to sustain commercial growth. Consumer purchasing decisions are now driven by taste, values, and cultural affiliation, forces that sit outside the traditional marketing brief. Organisations built for reach-and-frequency marketing have no structural model for converting cultural relevance into revenue.
Ana Andjelic is a brand executive and Doctor of Sociology, three times recognised by Forbes for her CMO work, who helps organisations replace advertising-led brand models with a strategy of cultural influence, the approach she used to deliver a 27% comparable sales increase as Chief Brand Officer of Banana Republic.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ana Andjelic
- Her “aspirational economy” thesis that brand value is now built through social, cultural, and environmental capital rather than product features or advertising reach gives leadership teams a conceptually rigorous basis for repositioning brands in fragmented consumer markets, not just a set of tactics.
- She has delivered verified results at scale: the Banana Republic rebrand under her leadership produced a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase, which means boards are not being asked to take a theory on faith.
- Her two Routledge-published books, combined with The Sociology of Business newsletter (ranked among Substack’s top 15 business publications), mean her framework is publicly available, continuously tested, and already in use by the marketing leaders her audiences need to influence.
- She brings C-suite brand experience across three distinct commercial contexts – global mass retail (Banana Republic, Esprit), contemporary luxury (Mansur Gavriel), and independent fashion (Rebecca Minkoff), making her diagnostic toolkit applicable beyond any single category or brand tier.
- A Columbia sociology doctorate and a senior career at agencies including Droga5 and Havas means she can diagnose what has broken in a brand’s relationship with culture and explain why, not just describe the symptoms.
Biography highlights
- Chief Brand Officer at Banana Republic, rebrand delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase
- Former Global Chief Brand Officer at Esprit, led brand repositioning across Europe and market re-entry in North America and Asia-Pacific
- Author of two books published by Routledge: The Business of Aspiration and Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture
- Recognised three times by Forbes for CMO work, including Forbes CMO Next
- Publishes The Sociology of Business, ranked among the top 15 business publications on Substack
- Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Fast Company, The Guardian, Adweek, and Vogue
- PhD in Sociology and MA in Media Studies; senior agency experience at Droga5, Havas Media, and Spring Studios
Biography
Ana Andjelic spent two decades in C-suite brand roles, at Banana Republic, Esprit, Mansur Gavriel, and Rebecca Minkoff, while simultaneously building a body of intellectual work that explains why most brand strategy fails. The result is a perspective with unusual commercial credibility: she has made the argument at board level and then delivered the numbers.
Her central thesis, developed in The Business of Aspiration (Routledge), is that modern consumers no longer signal status through wealth or possessions but through taste, curation, and values – what she calls social, cultural, and environmental capital. The organisations that understand this are not running better advertising. They are restructuring brand strategy around cultural influence: collaborations, creative communities, content, and what she identifies in her second book, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture, as the systematic production of cultural hits.
At Banana Republic, she translated this framework into a full brand repositioning that delivered a 27% year-on-year comparable sales increase. At Esprit, she oversaw the brand’s repositioning across Europe and its re-entry into North American and Asia-Pacific markets. Both assignments required her to make cultural arguments in commercial terms and to redesign the marketing function to deliver them.
Andjelic holds a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and a Masters in Media Studies. Her Sociology of Business newsletter is among Substack’s top 15 business publications. She contributes to Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, Fast Company, and Vogue, and is a frequent expert source for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Key speaking topics
- Brand strategy and repositioning
- Cultural influence and the aspirational economy
- Consumer aspiration and shifting status symbols
- Cultural hitmaking as commercial strategy
- The Creative Class and cultural audience segmentation
- Brand storytelling and narrative architecture
- Retail innovation and brand-driven growth
Ideal for
- Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Brand Officers leading brand repositioning or category entry
- C-suite leaders in fashion, luxury, and retail responsible for connecting brand investment to commercial outcomes
- Strategy and brand teams in consumer-facing businesses seeking a model for cultural relevance that scales
- Boards and leadership teams reviewing brand value architecture, growth planning, or market re-entry
Audience outcomes
- A working framework for understanding how social, cultural, and environmental capital now drive brand value and purchase decisions, and what that means for brand investment
- A practical model for redefining brand strategy as cultural influence, with organisational and operational implications
- Clarity on the role of cultural products, collaborations, content, entertainment, community, in building sustainable brand growth beyond advertising
- A method for segmenting audiences by their relationship to culture, including how the Creative Class functions as an amplification layer
- Tested examples of how cultural strategy translates into commercial results, including the conditions that made the Banana Republic repositioning work
Talks
Shows how brands can build a portfolio of cultural assets, content, capsules, archives, collaborations, and connect them into a coherent creative universe that sustains commercial relevance.
Key takeaways:
- The range of cultural products available to brands and how each functions within a brand strategy
- How to reorganise the marketing function around a model of cultural production
- How to deliver cultural products consistently and connect them into a unified, self-reinforcing strategy
Examines how a clear brand narrative underpins enduring consumer appeal and financial performance, and how to operationalise that story across the full commercial operation.
Key takeaways:
- How a coherent brand story unifies the organisation and streamlines commercial decision-making
- How to use brand narrative to align marketing, merchandising, and product design
- How to build a brand stack that ensures all applications consistently deliver the brand story
Analyses how brands operate across a fragmented cultural landscape, targeting multiple subcultures rather than a single mass audience – and what that requires structurally.
Key takeaways:
- How to use cultural influence to create multiple, reinforcing entry points into the brand
- Why mass markets are aggregations of niches, and how to target them without diluting brand identity
- How to design the organisation for a cultural influence strategy at scale
A strategic and operational examination of how brands create cultural hits that convert attention and conversation into measurable commercial performance.
Key takeaways:
- How to position a brand as a participant in culture rather than a segment of the market
- How to reframe brand strategy as a strategy of cultural influence with defined outputs
- How to connect cultural hits into a self-reinforcing commercial loop
Explores the Creative Class, the audience that directs consumer aspiration and spending, and how brands can identify, engage, and work with this group to build cultural influence.
Key takeaways:
- How to define and segment the Creative Class within a brand’s specific market context
- How the Creative Class functions as an amplification layer for cultural and commercial momentum
- How to structure partnerships with Creative Class audiences to build lasting influence
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |