Kian Bakhtiari
Younger consumers and workers no longer accept the trade-offs older marketing playbooks were built on. They expect brands to take a position, deliver on it, and prove it in the product, not in a campaign. Most commercial and brand teams are still reaching them with research that is one cohort behind the cultural reality.
Kian Bakhtiari is the founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy that helps brands and boards reach generations the existing marketing playbook is failing to convert.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari
- Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from.
- A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle.
- Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor).
- Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo.
- A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press.
Biography highlights
- Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets.
- Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024).
- Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing.
- Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone.
- Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation.
Biography
Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work.
His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline.
His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC.
What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers.
Key speaking topics
- Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour
- Purpose-led marketing and brand activism
- Cultural intelligence and foresight
- Marketing for social change
- The future workforce and generational diversity
- Brand communities and the creator economy
- Innovation, imagination and creativity
Ideal for
- CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences
- Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue
- Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base
- CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention
Audience outcomes
- A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research.
- A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks.
- A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up.
- Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.
Talks
A walk-through of what the next two generations of consumers and workers expect from brands, employers and institutions, and where the existing playbook is breaking.
Key takeaways:
- The cultural signals that boards are still missing, drawn from primary network data
- Where purpose translates into commercial growth, and where it triggers backlash
- A practical agenda for CMOs and CSOs trying to convert younger audiences without losing existing ones
The thesis from Kian’s Kogan Page book applied to a leadership audience: how to make purpose an operating reality rather than a positioning claim.
Key takeaways:
- The difference between embedded purpose and PR-led purpose, and why the second now invites backlash
- How to align brand, product and operations around a defensible position
- Examples of brands moving from purpose-as-campaign to purpose-as-business-model
A commercial reading of Gen-Z as a consumer, workforce and political force, and what that means for organisations planning the next decade.
Key takeaways:
- The categories where Gen-Z spending is already reshaping competitive dynamics
- The expectations Gen-Z brings into the workforce and how that hits retention
- Where boards should be investing now to stay relevant to the cohort
A case for imagination as the underused input in business innovation, and how organisations can recover it.
Key takeaways:
- Why most corporate innovation programmes produce variations rather than ideas
- The conditions under which imagination becomes a commercial asset
- Practical changes leaders can make to widen the field of what gets proposed