Customer Experience & Marketing

Why organisations work with Neil West First-hand operator perspective from inside Apple Music, the App Store, Apple TV+ and iTunes during the period the company shifted a billion-dollar services business across Europe. A specific thesis on simplicity as competitive advantage, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026) and structured as nine rules leaders can apply to their own products and teams. Useful for the meeting after the strategy offsite: he speaks to the practical work of cutting features, killing projects, and protecting customer experience from internal politics. Co-founded the iTunes Festival and curated Apple’s relationship with artists from Beyonce to Bono, which gives the talks the texture of a content business, not a generic technology keynote. Translates Steve Jobs era principles into language that lands with commercial and product leaders who have to ship, not theorise. Biography highlights Head of Services, Apple Southern Europe, with responsibility for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+ across the region. Head of Music, Apple UK and Europe, for ten years, including the period iTunes became the world’s largest music retailer. Co-founder and curator of the iTunes Festival. Author of It Just Works: The Nine Simple Rules of Apple’s Success, Macmillan Business, September 2026. TEDx speaker on The Beatles, Steve Jobs, and Team Management. Earlier career: European Editor-in-Chief at Rhapsody, the first music streaming subscription service, Creative Director at Garageband.com (founded with Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and Sir George Martin), and Editor-in-Chief of NEXT Generation magazine. Biography iTunes was a record store before it was a streaming service, and the App Store was a developer experiment before it was a platform. The hard part of running those businesses across Europe was not adding features. It was deciding what not to build, what to pull, and which artist or partner relationship was worth defending against internal pressure to standardise. West did that work for sixteen years. As Head of Music for Apple in the UK and Europe, he led the team through the period iTunes became the world’s biggest music retailer, and co-founded the iTunes Festival as a way of binding the catalogue to a live cultural moment. He then ran Services for Apple Southern Europe, a billion-dollar portfolio covering App Store, Apple Music, TV+, iCloud, Books, Podcasts, Arcade and Fitness+, through the shift from downloads to subscription. His argument now, set out in It Just Works (Macmillan Business, 2026), is that Apple’s edge has always been a discipline for removing complexity rather than a talent for adding features. The book offers nine rules drawn from inside the business, on simplifying products, reducing friction in customer journeys, and protecting focus when an organisation grows. His TEDx talk on The Beatles and Steve Jobs makes the team-design version of the same case. For audiences in product, marketing, services and digital businesses, the value is the operator detail. He talks about specific decisions, named launches, and the politics of holding a line on customer experience when commercial pressure points the other way. Key speaking topics Simplicity as commercial operating discipline Customer experience in subscription and platform businesses The shift from downloads to streaming and what it taught the wider content economy Product and service launches at scale Building and managing creative teams Lessons from inside Apple’s services business Ideal for Product, services and platform leaders running multi-product portfolios CMOs and customer experience leaders in subscription, media and consumer businesses Innovation and transformation directors looking for an operator voice rather than a consultant frame Leadership teams resetting after a period of feature accumulation or proposition drift Audience outcomes A working definition of simplicity that can be applied to a roadmap, not just a brand line. Specific tests for deciding what to cut from a product, service or process. A view of Apple’s services business from inside the European operation, including how artist and partner relationships were handled. Language for protecting customer experience against internal pressure to add complexity. A team-design lens drawn from how Apple, and before it The Beatles, structured small creative groups for output.

Why organisations work with Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian She built the experience function at WeTransfer from inside the executive team across ten years, a rare track record of innovation craft sustained at commercial scale rather than delivered as one-off consulting. She has a method for staging ideas in public, tested at the scale of a 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl performance with NASA scientists and at the scale of small-room design studios at Google, Mattel and Unilever. Her academic foundation is unusual for a creative director: a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway alongside an RCA Design Interactions MA, which gives her work argumentative spine rather than spectacle alone. She runs the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate institution whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter, so she arrives in a room with an active network of researchers and practitioners across science, design and politics. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody, the field’s most explicit signal that her practice has moved from emerging to canonical. Biography highlights Chief of Experiences at WeTransfer from 2012 to 2022, ten years on the executive team during the company’s growth into a global creative platform. Founder and director of the University of the Underground, a tuition-free MA programme hosted at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Designer of Experiences at the SETI Institute since 2013; Vice Chair of the IAF Committee for the Cultural Utilisation of Space. Founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, performed with Sigur Ros at the Hollywood Bowl to 17,500 people. PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London (Human Geography and Political Philosophy); MA, Royal College of Art (Design Interactions, Dunne and Raby). Design Week Awards Hall of Fame, 2023. WIRED Innovation Fellowship, 2014. Karman Fellowship, 2022. Arts Council England Exceptional Award for Disaster Playground. Biography Most companies treat innovation as an internal practice: research teams, pilots, internal demos, the occasional product launch. The harder discipline is staging an idea so that customers, staff and the broader public feel it. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian has spent fifteen years building a method for that second discipline, first inside a scaling technology company, then as a commissioned director for brands and cultural institutions. She joined WeTransfer in 2012 as its first Head of Experiences and stayed for a decade, eventually serving as Chief of Experiences on the executive team. Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios operated inside WeTransfer as its user experience and innovation department, with a remit that grew from public projects with creative communities to B Corp development, US business expansion, and the founding of the editorial platform WePresent and the University of the Underground. Her parallel practice is anchored by the International Space Orchestra, which she founded in 2012 with scientists and astronauts from NASA Ames, the SETI Institute and the International Space University. The project produced a feature film, a Hollywood Bowl performance with Sigur Ros, and a recording that was played from the International Space Station. It is the clearest example of her core craft, which is the orchestration of scientific and institutional collaborators into something a non-expert audience can feel. In 2017 she founded the University of the Underground, a tuition-free postgraduate programme at Sandberg Instituut whose advisory board includes Noam Chomsky, Paola Antonelli and Jill Tarter. Design Week inducted her into its Hall of Fame in 2023 alongside Jonathan Ive, Es Devlin and Neville Brody. Key speaking topics Immersive experiences as innovation practice Building creative communities inside commercial organisations Public-facing storytelling for science and technology Cultural strategy and brand Interdisciplinary collaboration across science, design and the arts Space culture and the public communication of complex science Independent institution building Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Brand Officers and creative directors at consumer or technology brands looking to move from advertising-led growth to experience-led growth. Heads of Innovation and Chief Strategy Officers whose pilots are not translating into customer-visible products or cultural relevance. Cultural institutions, design and architecture studios, and science communication leads commissioning ambitious public projects. Senior leadership teams inside scale-up technology companies considering how to build a brand that creators and partners care about. Audience outcomes A working definition of what an experience function does inside a commercial company, drawn from ten years of operating one at WeTransfer. Concrete patterns for staging an idea publicly, from Hollywood Bowl scale down to a small studio activation. A view of how scientific institutions, creative communities and commercial brands can be brought into the same room without flattening any of them. A reading on where the experience economy is heading, grounded in her current work at SETI, the International Astronautical Federation and the University of the Underground.

Why organisations work with Nicholas Webb He has filed and won more than 40 US patents in healthcare, consumer, and industrial technologies. The advice on innovation comes from someone who has run the full cycle from invention to commercial product, not from a researcher reporting on it. The Innovation Mandate and What Customers Crave are used inside operating companies as design references for innovation programmes and customer experience strategy, not as airport reading. Global Gurus has named him a Top 30 customer service authority for multiple consecutive years, a credential held alongside a working consulting practice with boards of multibillion-dollar companies through LeaderLogic. His healthcare work is unusually concrete for a speaker in this space: a documentary, The Healthcare Cure, that won the Sedona International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award, plus recent AI patent filings in patient monitoring. He builds keynotes around a specific commercial problem the buyer names, rather than a fixed deck. Useful when a board wants a session calibrated to an actual strategic decision, not a generic future-of overview. Biography highlights More than 40 US patents granted, spanning healthcare devices, consumer products, and industrial technologies, including one of the world’s smallest medical implants for ocular surface disease. Author of What Customers Crave, The Innovation Mandate, What Customers Hate, Happy Work, Lucid Leadership, and The Healthcare Mandate. CEO of LeaderLogic LLC, advising boards of multibillion-dollar companies on innovation and customer strategy. Named to Global Gurus’ Top 30 Customer Service authorities list for multiple consecutive years. Director of The Healthcare Cure, a documentary on US healthcare reform that won the Audience Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival in 2021. Former Chief Innovation Officer and adjunct professor at a leading US medical school, awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for contributions to healthcare. Biography A patent is a useful filter. It is one of the few credentials in this field that requires a working invention, a defensible claim, and the discipline to take an idea through to a commercial product. Nicholas Webb has more than 40 of them, across healthcare devices, consumer goods, and industrial technologies, including one of the world’s smallest medical implants for ocular surface disease and an early wearable. That track record sits behind everything he says about innovation. He runs LeaderLogic LLC, a consulting practice that works with boards of multibillion-dollar companies on innovation strategy and customer experience. His books, including The Innovation Mandate, What Customers Crave, What Customers Hate, and Lucid Leadership, function as design references for those engagements rather than standalone trade titles. Global Gurus has placed him among the world’s top 30 customer service authorities for multiple consecutive years. The healthcare work runs in parallel and gives the rest of his thinking a useful test bed. He directed The Healthcare Cure, a documentary on the structural failures of US healthcare that won the Audience Choice Award at the Sedona International Film Festival in 2021, and continues to file AI patents in patient monitoring and mood-state analysis. Healthcare is where his views on innovation, customer experience, and AI are stress-tested in a high-stakes operating environment. For SA clients the practical value is this: a speaker who can sit with a board, take in a specific commercial question, and respond with a session built around the inventor’s logic of constraints, hypotheses, prototypes, and evidence. The output is not inspiration. It is a clearer view of where innovation pays and where customer experience is quietly costing the business growth. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed commercial discipline Customer experience and the growth agenda AI in operating strategy Healthcare transformation and patient experience Leadership clarity under hyper-complexity Workforce engagement and talent retention Board-level innovation governance Ideal for Boards and executive committees reviewing innovation strategy or customer experience performance CEOs, CCOs, and CMOs accountable for growth in mature or commoditised categories Healthcare executives and provider networks navigating clinical, workforce, and AI transformation simultaneously Chief Innovation Officers and strategy leads building an internal innovation operating model Audience outcomes A clearer view of where current innovation activity is producing returns and where it is absorbing resource without compounding effect A practical model for customer experience design grounded in identifying what specific customer types love and hate, rather than aggregate satisfaction scores A board-level reading of AI as an operating discipline, with examples from healthcare and consumer technology A working definition of leadership clarity that holds up under complexity, drawn from Lucid Leadership Language and structure to take innovation conversations out of culture talk and into commercial governance

Why organisations work with Nick Brackenbury A working answer to the visibility problem in physical retail. NearSt connects to point-of-sale systems and surfaces live in-store stock inside the platforms where shoppers already search, including Google and Facebook. Operating scale to back the argument. NearSt’s technology integrates with over 130 stock management systems and reaches over 800,000 retail locations globally, with Google as a named platform partner. Investor and partner credibility from inside retail and tech. Backers include Grosvenor Group, YYX Capital, Will Hobhouse of Heal’s and Jack Wills, and senior engineers from DeepMind and Google Research. A concrete view on where the high street competes and where it loses. Useful for retailers, landlords, and brands deciding how much to spend on stores versus marketplaces. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of NearSt, founded 2015, headquartered in London. Named platform partnership with Google connecting in-store inventory into Search and Maps. Total funding of approximately five million pounds across two rounds, led by YYX Capital and joined by Grosvenor Group, True Global, and Moscar Capital. Former Account Director at Ogilvy, working on Jaguar Land Rover, Nestle, and BP’s London 2012 Olympic sponsorship. Speaking platforms include RetailWeek Live, Wired Retail, eCommerce Expo, the British Retail Consortium, and Accenture events. Awards include RetailEXPO Innovation Award 2019, Get in the Ring Western Europe, RetailWeek Startup of the Week, and a London Book Fair Innovation Award. Biography A shopper looking for a specific product in 2026 starts in the same place: a search bar. The shop five minutes away has the item on the shelf. The shopper does not know that, so the order goes to a warehouse. NearSt was built to close that gap, by piping live in-store inventory directly into Google Search, Google Maps, and other consumer platforms. The company was co-founded in 2015 by Nick Brackenbury and Max Kreijn, both former Ogilvy account leads. Brackenbury was one of the agency’s youngest account directors, working across digital programmes for Jaguar Land Rover, Nestle, and BP’s London 2012 Olympic Games sponsorship. NearSt began as a same-hour delivery platform for London high street shops and pivoted into the infrastructure layer beneath the search engines themselves. That pivot is the substance of the speaking material. NearSt’s technology now plugs into more than 130 stock management systems and reaches over 800,000 retail locations globally. Investors include Grosvenor Group, YYX Capital, True Global, and Moscar Capital, alongside angels from Heal’s, Jack Wills, DeepMind, and Google Research. Awards from RetailEXPO, RetailWeek, Get in the Ring, and the London Book Fair sit on top of that operating record. For senior retail and brand audiences, the value is a working commercial argument. Physical stores hold inventory that online retailers cannot match for speed of fulfilment or sustainability of footprint. The constraint has been discoverability, not stock. Brackenbury talks about that constraint from inside the system that is removing it. Key speaking topics The future of high street retail Local commerce and in-store inventory visibility Customer experience in physical retail Retail technology and platform partnerships Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Pivoting a business model under pressure Ideal for Retail leadership audiences: CEOs, CMOs, and heads of stores at multi-site retailers and brands. Property and landlord audiences with high street and shopping centre exposure. Marketing and customer experience leaders weighing physical store investment against marketplace spend. Entrepreneurship and scale-up audiences interested in pivoting from B2C to platform infrastructure. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why local stock is the most under-used competitive asset in physical retail. Specific examples of how integrating store inventory with Google and Facebook changes footfall and conversion. A founder’s account of pivoting from a consumer-facing app to an infrastructure business, with the commercial reasoning. A working framework for evaluating retail technology investments against measurable in-store outcomes.

Why organisations work with Nik Wood BBC business desk credibility on stage. Years anchoring Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money mean he reads board-level interviewees with the calibration of a working business journalist, not a hired host. He produces as well as presents. Through Good Call Media he brings his own camera and editing capability into the event, so live film inserts, recorded interviews and stage content are built and run by the same team that hosts the day. He is equally comfortable interviewing a CEO and a frontline employee. The marketing and communications grounding at Hammonds before broadcast journalism shows up in how he handles mixed-seniority panels. A working journalist’s instinct for the unscripted moment. He has interviewed four UK prime ministers and a string of African heads of state across his career, which translates to composure when a corporate panel goes off-script. Biography highlights Former BBC business correspondent and presenter on Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money. Co-founder and director of Good Call Media, an independent corporate film and event production company established in 2007. Career interviews include four UK prime ministers and several African presidents. Reporting background covers the Northern Ireland conflict and financial markets across London, Asia and the United States. Earlier career as Director of Marketing and Communications at Hammonds law firm. Corporate and not-for-profit clients include the Eden Project, CQI, IMLPO and Build Africa. Biography The host of a senior corporate event has a narrow job and a wide one. The narrow job is timekeeping and introductions. The wide job is reading the room, extracting the argument from each speaker, and giving the audience a reason to lean in after the third panel of the morning. Nik Wood does the wide job. His credibility on stage comes from the BBC business desk. As a business correspondent and anchor on Working Lunch, Business Breakfast and Wake up to Money, he interviewed chief executives, regulators and policymakers as a working journalist, not as a meeting facilitator. Earlier reporting work spanned the Northern Ireland conflict and financial markets in London, Asia and the United States. Four UK prime ministers and several African presidents sat across the desk from him. In 2007 he co-founded Good Call Media with producer Fiona Molloy. The company is a working film and event production house, not a personal speaking vehicle. That matters operationally: when Nik hosts an event, the same team builds the film inserts, runs the recorded interviews and edits the day’s content. The audience gets a single coherent production rather than a host bolted onto someone else’s running order. He began his career as Director of Marketing and Communications at Hammonds law firm. The combination of in-house corporate communications experience and broadcast journalism explains the range he is booked for: investor and analyst events, awards ceremonies, internal town halls, board-facing panels, and client engagements at organisations from the Eden Project to Build Africa. Key speaking topics Conference moderation and event chairing On-stage interviewing of senior executives Awards ceremony hosting Panel facilitation Live broadcast interviewing Corporate film and video production Business journalism Ideal for Companies running investor days, AGMs or analyst events that need a host who can interview a CFO with credibility. Internal leadership offsites and town halls where the chair needs to draw out both board and frontline voices. Awards ceremonies and recognition events requiring a confident master of ceremonies. Conference organisers who want host and production handled by a single team. Audience outcomes A running order that holds together across a full day, with each session building on the last. Interviews with senior speakers that surface the actual argument, not the prepared statement. Live film and video content integrated into the stage programme, used to set up sessions and shift pace. A panel discussion that stays on the question the audience came to hear answered.

Why organisations work with Nirmalya Kumar He has run group strategy inside one of the world’s largest conglomerates. As a member of the Tata Sons Group Executive Council from 2013 to 2016, he was responsible for group-level strategy and customer centricity across Tata’s operating companies. His Marketing as Strategy thesis, published by Harvard Business Press, is the reference text for CEOs and CMOs trying to elevate marketing from a campaign function to a profit-and-loss instrument. Brand Breakout, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp, codifies eight specific routes by which emerging-market brands take share from Western incumbents, including the Asian tortoise route and B2B-to-B2C migration. It is one of the few books on the subject grounded in named cases rather than generic globalisation theory. Private Label Strategy gives executive teams a worked playbook for competing with retailer brands, an issue that returns to the boardroom every time a downturn compresses margins in consumer goods. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame induction in 2017, the AMA Mahajan Award in 2021, and roughly twenty thousand Google Scholar citations place his work in the upper tier of academic marketing thinkers actively booked by industry. Biography highlights Lee Kong Chian Professor of Marketing, Singapore Management University; Distinguished Fellow, INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute. Member, Group Executive Council of Tata Sons (2013 to 2016), reporting to Chairman Cyrus Mistry, with responsibility for group strategy. Former Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Aditya Birla India Centre at London Business School (2003 to 2013). Author of eight books, including Marketing as Strategy and Private Label Strategy, both Harvard Business Press; and Brand Breakout (Palgrave Macmillan). Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame (2017); awarded the Thinkers50 Global Village Award (2011); awarded the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy (2021). Board service across ACC, Bata India, Tata Chemicals, UltraTech Cement, and Zensar. Biography Marketing inside large organisations has been losing strategic ground for two decades, and the cost is now visible at the top line. CEOs see commoditisation, retailer power, and emerging-market competitors moving faster than their own brand portfolios. Kumar’s central argument, set out in Marketing as Strategy (Harvard Business Press, 2004), is that the answer is not better campaigns but a redefined role for marketing as the architect of customer-driven growth across the organisation. His subsequent work develops that argument against specific commercial pressures. Private Label Strategy, co-authored with Jan-Benedict Steenkamp at Harvard Business Press, addressed the structural rise of retailer brands. Brand Breakout, published as Western incumbents woke up to Tata, Lenovo, Haier, and Mahindra, mapped eight named routes by which emerging-market brands cross into global markets. Clash, on Amazon versus Walmart, examined the platform-versus-retail confrontation now defining consumer business. The work is reinforced by an operating record. From 2013 to 2016 Kumar sat on the Tata Sons Group Executive Council under Cyrus Mistry, leading group strategy across one of the most diversified industrial portfolios in the world. He has held faculty positions at London Business School, IMD, and Kellogg, and currently holds the Lee Kong Chian Chair at Singapore Management University. The recognition follows from the substance: Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, the Global Village Award in 2011, the AMA Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy in 2021, and a citation record above twenty thousand on Google Scholar. For boards weighing how to make marketing pay back its budget, his work is the operating manual. Key speaking topics Marketing as strategy Private label and retailer power Brand-building from emerging markets Competing with low-cost rivals Customer centricity in conglomerates Strategy and innovation in India Platform versus retail competition Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders seeking to position marketing as a P&L discipline CEOs and boards of consumer goods, retail, and industrial groups facing margin compression from private label or emerging-market entrants Executive teams in Indian and Asian conglomerates planning international brand strategy Strategy and corporate development leaders working on portfolio decisions and customer-centric reorganisation Audience outcomes A working definition of what marketing must control inside the organisation to drive profitable growth, beyond the campaign function A framework of named routes by which emerging-market brands take share from incumbents, with worked cases A practical view of when to fight, partner with, or build a private label, drawn from the Harvard Business Press study A Tata-scale account of how group strategy and customer focus get implemented across diversified portfolios A sharper read on the Amazon-versus-Walmart structural shift and what it means for consumer companies

Why organisations work with Oliver Leisse A live trend-research operation behind every keynote. SEE MORE runs ethnographic fieldwork across more than 50 global cities, so the material is observed evidence, not desk-research speculation. A specific point of view on the AI agent shift. His 2024 book “The Age of Agents” with Tim Cortinovis sets out what changes when software stops waiting for prompts and starts acting on goals. A named framework leadership teams can use after the room empties. The Four Metatrends (Commitment, Convenience, Creativity, Connection) and the Consumer Trend Circle give clients a reusable structure for trend triage. Two decades of strategy work for brands including Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, REWE and Deutsche Post. The frame of reference is commercial planning, not academic forecasting. Bilingual delivery in English and German for European audiences who want substance in either language. Biography highlights Founder of SEE MORE, Future Research and Development, Hamburg (2008). Founder of EARSandEYES GmbH (1997), an early online market and trend research institute. Former strategy consultant at DDB, TBWA, BBDO and Springer & Jacoby. Author of “Be prepared” (Haufe Verlag, 2012; 2nd ed. 2014), “So geht Zukunft” (Edel, 2020), “The Age of Agents” (2024), and “Die Zukunft der Gastro” (Deutscher Fachverlag, 2024). Named clients include Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Post, REWE, Burda and AON. SEE MORE conducts qualitative ethnographic research across more than 50 global metropolitan markets. Biography Most futurist content arrives at boards as desk research dressed up in graphics. The signal-to-noise ratio is poor, and the planning horizon is rarely operational. SEE MORE was built to produce something different: ethnographic field observation across more than 50 global cities, fed back into commercial strategy work for organisations that need a defensible view of the next three to five years. The institute’s founder spent the first part of his career as a strategy consultant inside DDB, TBWA, BBDO and Springer & Jacoby. In 1997 he set up EARSandEYES, one of the early online market and trend research firms. SEE MORE followed in 2008. Clients have included Deutsche Bank, TUI, Henkel, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Post, REWE and Burda. The current centre of gravity is AI agents and what they mean for operating models. The 2024 book “The Age of Agents”, co-written with Tim Cortinovis, argues that the shift from prompted assistants to goal-directed agents changes how work is structured, not just how it is automated. That argument runs through his current keynote material on automation, customer evolution and the future of work. What separates this work from the broader futurist field is the discipline of the underlying method. The Four Metatrends framework (Commitment, Convenience, Creativity, Connection) and the Consumer Trend Circle give leadership teams a reusable structure for triaging weak signals. Both are anchored to observed behaviour in named markets, which is what makes them usable in a planning conversation. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and AI agents Future of work and leadership Customer evolution and consumer behaviour Automation and the operating model Trend research and strategic foresight Generation Z and changing workforce expectations Retail and customer experience disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting three-to-five year strategy under AI and automation pressure CMOs and customer experience leads tracking consumer behaviour shifts across European and global markets HR and transformation leads redesigning work around AI-agent capability Innovation and strategy teams looking for a structured trend-triage method Audience outcomes A clearer read on which AI and consumer-behaviour signals matter for the next planning cycle, and which can be deprioritised. A working understanding of the Four Metatrends framework and how to apply it to a specific business unit. A specific point of view on AI agents as an operating model question, not a tooling question. Named examples from observed consumer behaviour in global metropolitan markets, drawn from SEE MORE field research.

Why organisations work with Oliver Peyton He pioneered the model of high-quality restaurant and café concessions inside cultural institutions, with sites at the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Wallace Collection and Kew Gardens, and can describe the operating logic from the inside. He has presided over both the building and the public administration of Peyton & Byrne, and discusses commercial failure and reinvention as someone who has lived it. He has applied a single operating philosophy, hospitality as a service discipline, across nightclubs, restaurants, bakeries, drinks brands and the funeral sector with Exit Here. Fifteen years as a judge on the BBC’s Great British Menu has given him sustained scrutiny of how performance operations function under pressure, and a vocabulary that translates for audiences outside hospitality. He has consulted for Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard, organisations large enough to expose any thin theory of consumer-facing operations. Biography highlights Founder of Peyton & Byrne, with restaurants and cafés inside the National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Wallace Collection, Kew Gardens, the British Library and the Wellcome Collection. Judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu from 2006 to 2021. Honorary OBE for services to catering, presented in 2012. Founder of Exit Here, a contemporary funeral business in Chiswick and Crouch End, opened in 2019. Founder of Unknown Pleasures, a premium canned cocktail brand launched in 2021. Author of two cookbooks; columnist for GQ Magazine; consulting client list includes Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard. Biography Hospitality is a public discipline. Every cover is a transaction watched in real time, and a single bad year can take a brand that took fifteen years to build. Few operators have spent longer testing what that requires than Oliver Peyton. He opened nightclubs in Brighton and London in the early 1980s. He moved into restaurants with the Atlantic Bar & Grill in 1994, then launched a string of London venues including Coast, Mash and Isola. In 2005, he founded Peyton & Byrne, which placed restaurant and café concessions inside major London cultural institutions, including the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Wallace Collection and Kew Gardens. The trajectory has not been linear. In October 2016, Peyton & Byrne entered administration after losing contracts, including Kew Gardens and the British Library. It was acquired by Sodexo, where Peyton stayed on as creative director. In 2019, he founded Exit Here, a contemporary funeral business in Chiswick, now also operating in Crouch End. It applies the hospitality model to a sector he describes as largely unchanged since the Victorian era. In 2021, he launched the premium canned cocktail brand Unknown Pleasures. Alongside the operating career, Peyton spent fifteen years as a judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu, from 2006 to 2021. He has also presented and contributed to programmes on restaurant turnaround. He was awarded an honorary OBE for services to catering in 2012 and has consulted for Sodexo, British Airways, Virgin and Pernod Ricard. His career makes a practical point. Consumer-facing operations are a portable discipline. Operators who have lived through public failure and started again carry an authority that strategists rarely match. Key speaking topics Hospitality and consumer-facing operations Restaurant and catering entrepreneurship Brand building inside cultural and visitor attraction venues Commercial reinvention after public failure Operating discipline in service businesses Cross-sector application of hospitality models Ideal for Hospitality, retail and consumer-facing operators looking at growth or repositioning CEOs and founders of brands operating inside host environments such as museums, galleries, transport hubs and public venues Boards weighing turnaround, recovery or reinvention strategy after operational failure Senior leaders in catering, foodservice and customer-facing service industries Audience outcomes An operator’s account of how restaurants and consumer venues actually generate margin, and where it leaks Specific case material on building brands inside the National Gallery, Royal Academy, Kew Gardens and similar host venues A direct read on how Peyton & Byrne entered administration, what was lost, and what came next A view of how hospitality discipline transfers into adjacent sectors, drawn from the funeral business, Exit Here and drinks brand Unknown Pleasures

Why organisations work with Omar Johnson He has a documented commercial result at the scale most marketers will never reach: Beats by Dre from $20 million to $2 billion, acquired by Apple for $3 billion. He is operating, not reminiscing. As founder of Øpus Intelligence, he is currently applying generative AI to cultural relevance for clients including Nissan, the NBA 2K League, and NFL franchises. He built the campaigns marketing teams still study: the 2012 Beats Olympics athlete play that drove a 600% international sales lift, and the “Straight Outta Somewhere” meme generator that reached over a billion people on a near-zero media budget. He gives senior marketing leaders a working model for cultural relevance as a commercial discipline, with named brand cases from Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, and Kraft, rather than agency-side theory. Biography highlights Former Chief Marketing Officer, Beats by Dre, and former Vice President of Marketing, Apple. Led Beats from $20 million to over $2 billion in revenue, culminating in the $3 billion acquisition by Apple in 2014. Founder of ØPUS United and founder of Øpus Intelligence, a generative AI platform for cultural relevance, with clients including Nissan, NBA 2K League, Tennessee Titans, and Minnesota Vikings. Author of “Dear White Corporate America,” following a full-page New York Times open letter on racial equity in June 2020. Named “Brand Genius” by Adweek and one of the “Most Innovative CMOs” by Business Insider. Earlier marketing leadership across Nike (including campaigns with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant), Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soup. MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Biography Beats by Dre grew from $20 million to more than $2 billion in revenue in four years and was acquired by Apple for $3 billion in 2014. Omar Johnson was the third employee through the door and the Chief Marketing Officer who built the brand engine that made the trajectory possible. The case studies have lasted longer than the headphones themselves. At the 2012 Olympics, instead of paying for sponsor rights, Beats put national-flag headphones on athletes through a private lounge, lifting international sales by 600%. In 2015, the “Straight Outta Somewhere” meme generator reached over a billion people on a near-zero media budget. Both built category leadership through cultural participation, not paid reach. After Apple, Johnson founded ØPUS United, a brand management firm, and then Øpus Intelligence, a generative AI platform that productises cultural relevance for marketers. Live clients include Nissan, the NBA 2K League, and NFL franchises, with a 2025 partnership with Sundial Media (parent of ESSENCE, Refinery29, AFROPUNK) extending the model further into culture media. His earlier career across Nike, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and Campbell Soup gave him the inside view of large brand systems; his post-Apple work gives him the operator’s view of what is breaking in them now. Adweek named him a Brand Genius. Business Insider named him one of the Most Innovative CMOs. His 2020 New York Times open letter, “My Open Letter to White Corporate America,” became the book “Dear White Corporate America.” Key speaking topics Brand building and category leadership Marketing strategy and growth Cultural relevance as a commercial discipline Generative AI in marketing and brand management Customer experience and brand authenticity Storytelling and creative campaign design Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and senior marketing leadership teams CEO and executive committee offsites where growth depends on brand strength Consumer, retail, sports, media, and entertainment audiences Innovation, creative, and customer experience functions exploring AI in marketing Audience outcomes A working definition of cultural relevance that can be applied to a brand plan, not a slogan Named campaign cases (Beats Olympics, Straight Outta Somewhere, Nike commercials with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant) used to illustrate how cultural participation beats paid reach A current view from inside a generative AI marketing platform on what the technology actually changes for brand teams A direct provocation to senior leaders on authenticity, representation, and the commercial cost of getting either wrong

Why organisations work with Ömer Atiker Three decades of running digital agencies, not advising on them. He has founded, scaled, and sold internet ventures since 1996, which gives his keynote content the texture of an operator rather than a commentator. Author of four German-language reference books on digital transformation, including titles with Wiley and Campus, used inside companies as practical handbooks rather than thought-leadership accessories. Works in German, English, and Dutch at conference register, which makes him a credible booking for DACH-headquartered firms with international leadership audiences. Client list spans regulated industrials (BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius), platform technology (Amazon, Google, Adobe), and consumer-facing operators (Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi), so the examples on stage match the room. Sits at the intersection of digital marketing, AI deployment, and change leadership, which is the precise zone where most enterprise transformation programmes get stuck. Biography highlights Industrial engineer from the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT), with a master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. Founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, in 1996. Founder and CEO of Click Effect, a Freiburg-based digital marketing and transformation consultancy, since 2006. Author of four books on digital transformation, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020. Worked alongside Frithjof Bergmann, the originator of the New Work concept, during a sabbatical period. Keynote clients include BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Amazon, Google, Adobe, Singapore Airlines, Mitsubishi, and John Deere. Biography Digital transformation has never been short of strategy. The bottleneck sits further down the operating stack, in the daily handover between leadership intent, technology choices, and the people who have to do the work differently on Monday. Atiker has spent thirty years inside that handover. He studied industrial engineering at the University of Karlsruhe and wrote his master’s thesis on human-machine interaction. In 1996 he founded ArtWork, one of the first internet agencies in the Netherlands, and sold it after the dotcom cycle. In 2006 he founded Click Effect in Freiburg, the digital marketing and transformation consultancy he still runs. Between agencies he took a sabbatical and worked with Frithjof Bergmann, the philosopher who originated the New Work concept. That period sits behind the leadership and culture material in his keynotes, which treats digital change as a problem of human adoption first and technology second. His four books, published by Wiley, Campus, and GABAL between 2017 and 2020, function as practical playbooks for German-speaking enterprises rather than airport thought-leadership. The client list reads as a cross-section of the European industrial and platform economy: BASF, Bayer, Merck, Fresenius, Singapore Airlines, Amazon, Google, Adobe, John Deere, Mitsubishi. He works in German, English, and Dutch, which makes him a natural fit for DACH-headquartered companies running international leadership programmes around AI and digital execution. Key speaking topics Digital transformation execution AI in the enterprise Digital and remote leadership Customer centricity and digital marketing Corporate culture and digital adoption Innovation under operating constraints Personal development in the digital age Ideal for DACH-headquartered enterprises running multi-year digital and AI transformation programmes CDOs, CMOs, and transformation leads responsible for moving from pilot to operational deployment Industrial and life-sciences boards translating digital strategy into customer-facing change Senior leadership offsites where the audience needs an operator’s view, not a consultant’s frame Audience outcomes A practitioner’s reading of where their own transformation programme is most likely to stall Concrete examples of digital and AI deployment from regulated industrials and platform companies A clearer separation between technology decisions and the leadership behaviour those decisions require Language and reference points senior leaders can use with their own organisations after the session

Why organisations work with Omer Wilson He has run the brand function inside three of the most consequential data centre platforms of the last decade, including Digital Realty in EMEA and APAC, giving him a working model of how technical infrastructure businesses actually win category leadership. He has been voted Datacloud Marketer of the Year on two separate continents, in Monaco in 2015 and Singapore in 2018, which is a rare double inside the industry’s only credible peer-voted award. He builds brand strategy that translates between cultures, with operational experience in the UK, Singapore and now Portugal, and a Turkish-British background that informs his work on Asia and emerging-market positioning. He is currently leading marketing for a 1.2 GW, EUR 8.5 billion AI-era data campus in Sines, which means his commentary on the next decade of digital infrastructure marketing is grounded in a live programme, not retrospective analysis. Biography highlights Chief Marketing Officer, Start Campus, leading brand and go-to-market for the SINES DC campus in Portugal. Former Chief Marketing Officer at Qarbon Technologies and Pure Data Centres Group. Senior marketing leadership at Digital Realty across EMEA and APAC, joining the company in 2011 in London. Datacloud Data Centre Marketer of the Year 2015, Monaco. Datacloud Asia Marketer of the Year 2018, Singapore. Founder and Chief Strategist, Anatolia.Asia Consulting Group; trained on the IBM Global Graduate Scheme; former Head of Corporate Solutions Marketing for Jones Lang LaSalle EMEA. Biography The data centre industry built its commercial story on power, cooling and square metres. As AI workloads have changed what hyperscale customers actually need, the buying conversation has shifted to sustainability, sovereignty and brand trust. The companies winning that conversation are doing marketing work most of the sector still treats as overhead. Wilson has been one of the operators inside that shift. At Digital Realty he ran marketing across EMEA and later APAC after joining the firm in London in 2011, then took the CMO seat at Pure Data Centres Group and Qarbon Technologies. He is now Chief Marketing Officer at Start Campus, the operator behind the 1.2 GW SINES campus in Portugal, an EUR 8.5 billion programme positioned as one of Europe’s most sustainable AI data centres. His professional voice was shaped early by the IBM Global Graduate Scheme and then by running corporate solutions marketing at Jones Lang LaSalle across EMEA. That mix matters, because he treats brand as a commercial system: pricing, sales enablement and customer narrative working as one engine. He has been voted Datacloud Marketer of the Year twice, in Monaco in 2015 and Singapore in 2018, the industry’s clearest peer signal that the work travels. He also founded Anatolia.Asia Consulting Group, advising technology and infrastructure clients on positioning across Europe and Asia, and is a regular keynote speaker at Cloud Expo Asia, Data Centre World and DCD events. The through-line in his work is category creation: helping technical businesses build brand authority before commodity pressure forces a price conversation. Key speaking topics Brand strategy in technology and digital infrastructure Marketing leadership in data centres and hyperscale Category creation in B2B technology Cross-cultural positioning between Europe and Asia Sustainability and AI as commercial narratives Go-to-market for capital-intensive technology businesses Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders inside technology, infrastructure and capital-intensive B2B businesses CEOs and founders of scale-up technology companies preparing a category narrative Sales and commercial leadership teams in data centres, cloud, energy and adjacent infrastructure sectors Industry conferences in digital infrastructure, AI, cloud and sustainability Audience outcomes A clearer model for how brand work compounds commercial value inside technical categories. Examples from inside the data centre industry of how marketing has shifted from spec-led to narrative-led selling. Practical perspectives on positioning sustainability and AI claims so they hold up with sophisticated buyers. A sharper view of how Asia, Europe and emerging markets behave differently as B2B technology audiences.

Why organisations work with Ozwald Boateng He rebuilt Savile Row’s relevance to a younger global market without abandoning its craft. Few living designers have shifted a 200-year-old category that decisively. He was the first black designer to lead menswear at Givenchy under LVMH, a working case study in taking a personal aesthetic into a heritage luxury house. He co-founded the Made in Africa Foundation and helped launch the $2bn Africa50 infrastructure fund with the African Development Bank, giving him a track record few creative figures can match on capital and continental development. His commercial collaborations span Coutts, Johnnie Walker, Virgin and British Airways, alongside film work for Marvel’s Black Panther. The brand reach is unusually broad for a fashion founder. Biography highlights First English tailor to present a catwalk show at Paris Fashion Week (1994). Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy, LVMH (2003 to 2007). OBE for services to the clothing industry (2006). Best Menswear Designer, Trophees de la Mode, Paris (1996); Best Menswear Designer, British Fashion Awards (2000). Subject of a V&A Fashion in Motion event (2005), one of a small group including Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. Co-founder, Made in Africa Foundation; co-launched the $2bn Africa50 infrastructure fund with the African Development Bank. Biography Savile Row was a closed system when Boateng arrived. The category meant heritage, sober colour, and a customer his father’s age. He kept the cut and changed almost everything else. By 1994 he was the first English tailor to stage a catwalk show at Paris Fashion Week. By 1995 he had a boutique on Vigo Street, the south end of the Row, and a younger clientele was buying suits again. The category shift mattered commercially. In 2003, LVMH appointed him Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy, a role he held until 2007. He was the first black designer to lead menswear at the house. The OBE followed in 2006 for services to the clothing industry. A new flagship at 30 Savile Row, co-designed with the architect David Adjaye, opened in 2008. The second act is less expected. Boateng co-founded the Made in Africa Foundation in 2011 to finance large-scale African infrastructure. With the African Development Bank he helped launch Africa50, a $2bn fund aimed at closing the continent’s infrastructure gap. He has worked with several African governments on industrial and development policy, and the work has been covered by CNN, Bloomberg and Pan African Visions. The collaborations sit alongside the official roles. Coutts, Johnnie Walker, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have commissioned him; Ruth E. Carter put one of his teal mohair suits on screen in Black Panther. The throughline is consistent: a craft practice used as a lever on much bigger systems, from a London street to LVMH to continental capital allocation. Key speaking topics Luxury brand building and reinvention Creative entrepreneurship at scale Heritage brand leadership African economic development and investment Design, identity and cultural representation Diversity in luxury and creative industries Ideal for CEOs and CMOs of heritage brands considering category reinvention Boards and leadership teams of luxury, retail and consumer goods businesses Organisations with significant African market or investment exposure Senior creative and design leaders in fashion, hospitality and lifestyle Audience outcomes A working view of how one founder shifted a 200-year-old category and what that took commercially. A frank account of running a personal aesthetic inside a heritage LVMH house. A specific, named perspective on African infrastructure investment from someone who has helped raise it. A model for building cross-sector collaborations that compound a creative practice over decades.