Customer Experience & Marketing

Why organisations work with James Sinclair He runs the playbook he teaches. The Partyman Group is a roughly GBP 40 million portfolio across childcare, leisure, food and beverage, and heritage brands that he owns and operates, not advises. He has a concrete thesis on why price-led consumer businesses fail, set out in The Experience Business, and can show operators how to apply it inside their own units. He has done the hardest part of growth through acquisition in public: the 2023 rescue of Party Pieces from administration is a documented case study in buying a broken consumer brand and absorbing it. He raised GBP 700,000 from 21 lenders at 20 years old without venture capital, and has built every subsequent business on cash flow. Founders who are bootstrapped or PE-averse hear their own constraints in his story. He is direct, funny, and pitched at operators rather than boardrooms. Audiences of SME owners, franchisees, and consumer brand teams tend to leave with something they can action on Monday. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Partyman Group: soft play centres, Twizzle Tops Day Nurseries, Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park, Rossi Ice Cream, a grade II listed hotel, and Party Pieces. Acquired Party Pieces from the Middleton family out of administration in May 2023. Author of The Millionaire Clown and The Experience Business: Why Price-Focused Businesses Fail And What Winners Do Instead. Host of James Sinclair’s Business Broadcast podcast and a long-running YouTube channel focused on business operating decisions. Built the group without venture capital, funded through cash flow and lender-backed acquisitions. Speaks regularly across the UK and Europe to entrepreneur, SME, and franchise audiences. Biography Party Pieces was insolvent and more than GBP 2.5 million in debt when James Sinclair bought it out of administration in May 2023, adding the Middleton family’s party supplies brand to a portfolio that already included soft play centres, nurseries, a farm park, and Rossi Ice Cream. That kind of deal sits at the centre of how he has built the Partyman Group: find a distressed consumer business, buy it cheaply, and fold it into an operating model designed around experience rather than discounting. The group now reports turnover in the region of GBP 40 million. Sinclair built it without venture capital, starting at 16 as a children’s entertainer and, at 20, raising GBP 700,000 from 21 separate lenders to open his first soft play centre in Basildon. The first location hit GBP 1 million turnover inside a year. Every subsequent acquisition has been funded on cash flow and operator credibility, not equity rounds. His book The Experience Business sets out the thesis that underpins all of it: price-focused consumer businesses lose because customers are buying a feeling, and the winners are the operators who invest in the moments that feeling depends on. The Millionaire Clown, his earlier book, is the operator’s version of the same argument told through the businesses he has bought, broken, and fixed. What buyers get when they book him is not a strategist commenting on a sector. It is an owner-operator describing, specifically, how he grew a multi-brand consumer group through acquisition, what he overpaid for, what he did not, and how he keeps experience from degrading as the portfolio scales. The register is closer to a founders’ workshop than a keynote, which is why he tends to land well with SME and franchise audiences. Key speaking topics Growth through acquisition in consumer businesses Buying and turning around distressed brands Experience-led differentiation over price competition Building multi-brand portfolios without venture capital Cash flow, profitability, and operator discipline Customer acquisition for consumer and leisure brands Entrepreneurship and founder-led scaling Ideal for SME founders and owner-operators scaling consumer businesses Franchise networks and multi-site leisure, hospitality, and childcare operators M&A and corporate development leads working on distressed consumer assets Entrepreneur conferences, business schools, and founder communities Audience outcomes A working mental model for when to compete on experience and when price still matters A concrete view of how to evaluate a distressed consumer business before buying it Operator-level tactics for protecting customer experience as a portfolio adds brands A bootstrapped founder’s case for funding growth through cash flow and lenders rather than equity Specific stories, including Party Pieces, that audiences can pattern-match against their own deals

Why organisations work with Jeannie Walters She gives operators a working method, not a slogan: the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks turn customer-experience strategy into something a leadership team can run, not just endorse. She translates CX from a contact-centre function into a board-level commercial lever, framed around retention, loyalty, and the cost of reactive service. The dual credential set (CCXP and CSP) is unusual: she is certified in the discipline she speaks on and in the craft of speaking itself, which means content holds up under scrutiny from CX practitioners. A 2026 book with Mission Driven Press and Simon and Schuster distribution gives her thesis a citable spine, with named tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take back into the business. Reach into operating teams runs deeper than most keynote speakers: more than 500,000 LinkedIn Learning participants, plus the Experience Action podcast, mean her language is already inside many client organisations before she arrives. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, a customer experience consultancy founded in 2009. Author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations” (Mission Driven Press, April 2026). Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. Host of the Experience Action podcast, recognised by CX Network among its leading CX podcasts. LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners; named clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate, and SAP Litmos. Biography Most companies that say they are customer-centric are not. They are service-centric, organised to absorb complaints, route tickets and react to survey scores. The decisions that actually shape loyalty, retention and willingness to pay sit upstream, in product, operations and leadership, and that is the gap Jeannie Walters has spent two decades closing. She is the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, the consultancy she launched in 2009 to help organisations design customer experience as a deliberate discipline rather than a reactive function. Her clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate and SAP Litmos, and the work tends to focus on the same problem: leadership intent that does not survive contact with the operating model. Her 2026 book, “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations”, published by Mission Driven Press with Simon and Schuster distribution, sets out the thesis. CX is treated as a business discipline with named tools, including a CX Mission Statement, a CX Success Blueprint, and the Four Cs of CX Culture, that give leadership teams something to run rather than something to admire. Her CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks structure the operating side of that work. Credentials reinforce the practice. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a Certified Speaking Professional, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners. The Experience Action podcast, named by CX Network among its top CX podcasts, extends her work into the day-to-day of leaders trying to put it into effect. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer loyalty and retention Proactive versus reactive customer experience Customer journey design Employee experience and CX alignment CX measurement and accountability AI in customer experience Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and CX leadership functions CMOs and Chief Revenue Officers responsible for retention and lifetime value Heads of operations and service in B2C and B2B businesses where churn is a board issue Senior leadership teams trying to convert customer-centric language into operating discipline Audience outcomes A working definition of customer experience as a commercial discipline, separate from customer service. A method for spotting where the journey is leaking value, drawn from the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks. A clearer link between CX investment and the metrics finance and the board care about: retention, lifetime value, churn cost. A practical view of how AI changes CX expectations, and where automation should and should not enter the journey. Language and tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take into the next operating review.

Why organisations work with Cyril Jamelot He has launched products that reached scale inside the world’s most demanding FMCG marketing machines: Coke Light Lemon at Coca-Cola, Nalu, and Alpro Light at Danone Alpro. The storytelling discipline he teaches is the one he used on shelf, not a theoretical model. Two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, “Offering your soul, a disruptive marketing strategy” and “From silver to gold”, show him able to hold a serious commercial argument in a 15-minute format that translates directly to a keynote stage. His book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours sets out a thesis that brand love is built through specific narrative practice, not adjectives, and gives senior commercial teams a shared vocabulary for what their content is actually for. He delivers in French and English to international audiences, with more than 200 conferences across 10 countries; useful for European groups running cross-market brand or sales kick-offs. Through CECYDI and Morphoblue he is still operating as a consultant and researcher, so the material in the room is current commercial practice, not retrospective. Biography highlights Former marketing executive at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro, with product launches including Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light. Founder of CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and principal of Morphoblue, a market research agency. Author of I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours, Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique and Ils étaient là. Two TEDx talks delivered at TEDxULB on marketing strategy and the senior consumer market. More than 200 conferences delivered across 10 countries in French and English. Marketing and communication faculty in business schools. Biography Coke Light Lemon, Nalu and Alpro Light all reached shelf because someone inside the marketing teams at Coca-Cola and Danone Alpro could explain, in a sentence a buyer would repeat, why the product mattered. Cyril Jamelot built that habit as an FMCG marketing executive before he ever called it storytelling. That operating background is what separates his work from agency-side storytelling consultancy. The argument running through his book I love marketing: The soul of tomorrow’s Marketing is yours is direct: brands earn attention by saying something specific about themselves, in language built for the customer, repeated across every channel the business actually controls. Adjectives and brand decks do not do this work. Narrative architecture does. He now runs two firms: CECYDI, a marketing and communications agency, and Morphoblue, a market research practice. He teaches marketing and communication in business schools, has delivered two TEDx talks at TEDxULB, and has spoken at more than 200 conferences across 10 countries in French and English. Les secrets du Storytelling Stratégique sets out the ten-step method behind the keynote material, used by sales, marketing and internal communication teams. The room he is most useful in is the commercial leadership offsite where the question is no longer what the brand says but whether anyone outside the building still recognises it. He gives marketing, sales and customer-experience teams a shared way of building a story the business can stand behind and the market will repeat. Key speaking topics Strategic storytelling for brands Brand positioning and differentiation Customer experience in retail and FMCG Sales narrative and social selling Internal communications and leadership communication Marketing innovation and product launch Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders running brand refresh, repositioning or product launch programmes Sales leadership and customer-experience teams at consumer brands and B2B sellers building a narrative-driven commercial approach Internal communications leaders and HRDs needing senior leaders to communicate change more memorably European commercial offsites and kick-offs requiring a bilingual (French and English) keynote Audience outcomes A working definition of strategic storytelling that maps to commercial outputs: a launch, a campaign, a sales pitch, an internal message. A clearer view of what a brand story is for, and what it is not, with examples from Coca-Cola, Danone Alpro and other FMCG operators. A vocabulary the marketing, sales and internal communication teams can share when they argue about content. Specific moves senior leaders can use to make their own messages more repeatable.

Why organisations work with Jamie Kern Lima A founder track record at a scale almost no speaker in the entrepreneurship category can match: a category-creating consumer brand sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion, after Sephora said no for six years and QVC said no for three. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s history, with direct operating experience inside a $30 billion strategic acquirer post-acquisition, not just pre-exit. Two New York Times bestselling books, “Believe IT” and “Worthy”, giving sales teams and leadership audiences a tested framework on rejection and self-worth that the speaker has already road-tested with millions of readers. Host of the Gracie Award-winning Jamie Kern Lima Show, with first-time podcast interviews from figures including Meghan Markle and Michelle Obama, which gives the platform reach and the speaker a sharpened interviewer’s instinct for what actually moves an audience. A Columbia MBA and Columbia Business School board member who chooses to lead with the founder story, not the credential stack. The buyer gets the substance underneath the inspiration. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of IT Cosmetics; sold to L’Oreal in 2016 for $1.2 billion. First female CEO of a brand in L’Oreal’s 100+ year history. Two-time New York Times bestselling author: “Believe IT” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and “Worthy” (Hay House, 2024). Host of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show”, winner of the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast, Lifestyle. Guest Shark, ABC’s Shark Tank, Season 16. MBA, Columbia Business School; member of the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers. Listed on Forbes’ America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Biography IT Cosmetics was turned down by Sephora for six years and by QVC for three before Jamie Kern Lima got either retailer on the phone. By 2016 the company was the largest luxury makeup brand in America, and L’Oreal paid $1.2 billion to acquire it. She became the first female CEO of a brand in the group’s history. The founding story is unusual because the product positioning was unusual. IT Cosmetics was built around real skin: rosacea, hyperpigmentation, post-chemotherapy skin, customers QVC’s buyers were not used to seeing on camera. Kern Lima insisted on putting them there. That decision, more than any single marketing tactic, is what separated the brand from the prestige beauty pack and made it acquirable at scale. Post-exit, she has built a second platform with similar discipline. “Believe IT” and “Worthy” are both New York Times bestsellers; “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” won the 2025 Gracie Award for Best Podcast in the lifestyle category, on the back of first-ever podcast interviews with Meghan Markle and a multi-part series with Oprah Winfrey. She is on the board of overseers at Columbia Business School, where she earned her MBA in 2004. For a corporate audience, the relevant content is concrete. How a category-creating consumer brand survives years of rejection from the gatekeepers it depends on. How founder-led marketing competes with conglomerate marketing budgets. What changes inside the business the day a $30 billion strategic acquirer owns it. What stays the same. Key speaking topics Founder-led brand building and category creation Selling to and operating inside a strategic acquirer Authenticity as a marketing operating principle Rejection as a sales and growth discipline Direct retail, on-camera selling and QVC scale-up Resilience and self-worth for senior leaders Women’s entrepreneurship at scale Ideal for Sales kick-offs, especially in consumer, retail, beauty, and direct-to-consumer categories CMOs and brand teams reframing what “authentic” marketing means in practice Founder and scale-up audiences inside corporate venture, accelerator, and women’s leadership programmes Annual conferences seeking a headline keynote with mainstream cultural reach Audience outcomes A working playbook on building demand for a consumer brand the trade buyers have already rejected A clearer framework for how founder-led companies should think about brand voice after acquisition Specific tactics on handling rejection as a recurring operational event, not a one-off setback A renewed willingness, particularly among senior women, to put their own conviction back at the centre of commercial decisions

Why organisations work with Jenk Oz A live daily feed of Gen Z behaviour. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages across 220+ countries and territories, feeding his brand advice with first-party data instead of commissioned surveys. Consulting credibility built on named client work. Thred Media has advised Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, and Ogilvy on Gen Z strategy, so executive audiences engage with a working commercial operator. Primary-source Gen Z insight. Thred’s editorial team is almost entirely Gen Z, which grounds brand strategy work in lived cohort behaviour. A structural edge in data. The combination of publishing arm, Change Maker Discord community, and consulting practice generates zero- and first-party signals on emerging youth culture that traditional agencies do not hold. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Thred Media, the Gen Z publishing and consulting business headquartered in London. Thred.com publishes in 17 languages, reaches audiences in 220+ countries and territories, and generates approximately 350,000 monthly article reads alongside 200,000+ social followers. Consulting clients include Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, Hilton, Meta, Universal Music Group, and Epic Games. Named on Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), winner of Digiday’s Future Leader Award and Greater Good Award, and recipient of a Webby/Anthem Young Leader Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Member of the Google Z-Council, Oracle for Startups, and the Microsoft Surface young entrepreneur programme. Delivered three TEDx talks and has spoken at 90+ international conferences, including Amazon AWS Summit London (where he interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels), Forbes Summit Cincinnati, Vox YMS New York, Oxford University Model UN, and Brand Week Istanbul. Biography Most brand advice about Gen Z is produced from outside the generation it describes. Survey data and panel research reach brand teams after the fact, often long after the behaviour they track has moved on. Thred Media was built on the opposite principle. What became Thred Media began with a school show-and-tell by an eight-year-old Jenk Oz about the activities he was doing outside class. That project grew into iCoolKid, which was rebranded and repositioned as Thred Media in 2019. Today, Thred.com publishes in 17 languages and reaches audiences in 220+ countries, giving the business a live first-party read on what young consumers are actually doing and buying. The consulting arm applies that feed to commercial questions. Coca-Cola, Google, Ford, Dunkin’, Microsoft, Snapchat, Ogilvy, and Hilton have used Thred Media for Gen Z strategy work that draws on live behaviour from the Change Maker Discord community and the editorial desk. Recognition has followed: Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe), the Digiday Future Leader Award, a Webby/Anthem Award in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. The commercial distinction is straightforward. He runs a functioning Gen Z business that advises major consumer brands, and he belongs to the generation he is paid to interpret. He has delivered three TEDx talks, interviewed Amazon CTO Werner Vogels at AWS Summit London, and been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Fortune, and the Evening Standard. Key speaking topics Gen Z consumer behaviour Brand relevance and the Gen Z market Gen Z marketing strategy Youth culture and social change Digital activism and clicktivism Youth entrepreneurship The future of work through a Gen Z lens Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand directors, and consumer strategy teams are trying to close the relevance gap with Gen Z consumers. Agencies and consultancies whose clients are asking sharper questions about youth audiences than internal research can answer. Corporate innovation and growth teams are building commercial plans that depend on reaching emerging consumer cohorts. Board and executive audiences wanting a primary source on Gen Z behaviour, not secondhand interpretation. Audience outcomes A live view of how Gen Z is actually behaving across purchase and media decisions, drawn from Thred.com’s daily publishing feed and Change Maker community. Recalibrated assumptions about the signals brands use to judge youth relevance, with examples from named client work. Specific examples of where established brands are winning and losing Gen Z attention, drawn from Thred Media’s advisory engagements. A direct read on how social change and purpose shape purchase decisions in the generation that now accounts for the largest share of emerging consumer spend.

Why organisations work with Ella Sy She works inside the signals, not on top of them. Her day job as Business Futures Strategy Director at GDR is reading retail, tech, and consumer change for commercial clients, not curating trend decks from the outside. She pairs a futures lens with delivery discipline. Alongside the strategy work she runs programme at Elevate, so her view of change includes what it takes to operationalise it, not only name it. Her brief is genuinely cross-sector. Named client work spans Google, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts, which gives her material from both B2B technology and consumer-facing brands. She brings a non-Anglosphere cultural read. French-born, Asian heritage, London based, working in English, French, and Mandarin. Useful for boards with EMEA and APAC exposure who want more than a US-centric view. She is comfortable with soft territory that leadership teams often duck: meaning, purpose, human growth inside commercial strategy. Named bookings in this register rather than retrofitted from a trends talk. Biography highlights Business Futures Strategy Director at GDR, a retail and brand strategy consultancy. Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, and Chair of its Youth Board Committee. Former Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide, part of Publicis Groupe. 13+ years of strategy across retail, technology, wellness, banking, luxury, and FMCG. Client engagements include Google across LatAm markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, and KSL Resorts. MA in International Marketing and Communication. Works in English, French, and Mandarin. Biography Most organisations treat foresight as a slide at the start of strategy offsites. GDR, where Ella Sy is Business Futures Strategy Director, sells it as a product to retailers and brands that need to place commercial bets on where consumer behaviour is going next. That is the discipline she brings into the room. Before GDR, she was Global Strategy Director at Zenith Worldwide inside Publicis Groupe, running strategy for large advertising clients. The common thread across the two roles is translation. Taking messy, contradictory signals from culture, technology, and consumer behaviour and turning them into positions a leadership team can defend and a business can execute against. She also holds an operational role: Strategy Director and Head of Programme at Elevate, a UK youth mentoring organisation where she chairs the Youth Board Committee. That side of the work keeps her close to delivery rather than only advice, which is unusual for a speaker working in the futures space. Her client record crosses categories that rarely share speakers: Google across Latin American markets, Microsoft, Jaguar Land Rover, Costa Coffee, Preferred Hotels, KSL Resorts. French-born, of Asian heritage, based in the UK, she works in English, French, and Mandarin, and the cultural range shows up in how she frames audiences outside the Anglosphere default. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and business futures Consumer and cultural signal reading Customer experience and brand strategy in an AI-shaped market Organisational culture under technological disruption Purpose-driven leadership and human growth Cross-cultural strategy across EMEA and APAC Ideal for CSOs, chief strategy officers, and transformation leads deciding where to place medium-term bets. CMOs and customer experience leaders in retail, hospitality, and consumer technology. Boards and executive teams setting a three-to-five year direction under technology and consumer volatility. International leadership groups that need a non-US-default reading of culture and consumer change. Audience outcomes A sharper read on which emerging signals in consumer behaviour and technology actually matter for the business in the room. Working language for talking about culture and customer experience together rather than as separate agendas. Examples from retail, luxury, hospitality, and technology clients that test the ideas against real commercial pressure. A more honest view of the gap between seeing change and executing on it inside a large organisation. Cross-cultural context for leaders whose markets extend beyond the US and UK.

Why organisations work with Kate Ancketill A ten-year run delivering the trends keynote at the NRF Big Show, the largest retail technology event in the world, makes her the reference voice for what major retailers are about to do next. Twenty-five years inside GDR Creative Intelligence working with P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Lego and Moet Hennessy, which means her examples are drawn from live client work, not desk research. A three-to-five year forecasting horizon that is short enough to commit budget against, longer than the next quarter, and grounded in case examples rather than abstract futures. 2025 Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, and a BizTech Top 30 IT Influencer listing, which gives buyers an external read on quality before they commission. Biography highlights CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, a London-based futures and innovation consultancy founded in 1992. Ten consecutive years as trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York. Named clients include P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. 2025 Speaker Awards: Best AI and Future Technology Speaker. BizTech Magazine Top 30 IT Influencers, 2024. Regular broadcast and conference commentator on AI, retail, high street decline, and consumer behaviour. Biography The retail and consumer industries are running two clocks. One is quarterly, governed by trading, footfall, and conversion. The other is the three to five year horizon on which AI, automation, and Gen Z consumer behaviour are quietly rewriting the operating model. Boards are being asked to commit capital against the second clock with the analytical habits of the first. Kate Ancketill has spent twenty-five years inside that gap. As CEO and founder of GDR Creative Intelligence, she has worked as the innovation partner to a roster of consumer brands that includes P&G, Tesco, Sephora, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Moet Hennessy, Costa Coffee, Lego and the BBC. The work is granular, weekly tracking of the innovations that are reshaping retail, hospitality, brand and technology, then translated into specific commercial implications for clients planning two and three product cycles out. That practitioner base is what makes her platform work. For ten consecutive years she has delivered the headline trends keynote at the National Retail Federation Big Show in New York, the industry’s most-watched stage for what major retailers are about to commit to. Martin Reardon, NRF’s CMO, attributes the repeat invitation to her audience scores. In 2025 she was named Best AI and Future Technology Speaker at the Speaker Awards, the year after BizTech Magazine listed her among its top thirty IT influencers. Her current work centres on what consumer-facing AI does to customer experience, brand, and the economics of the store. The argument runs against both extremes: AI is not a productivity bolt-on, and it is not an existential threat, it is the substrate on which the next generation of retail and consumer business models will be built. The job for senior leaders is to read the early signal accurately enough to commit capital before the pattern is obvious. Key speaking topics Business futurism on a three to five year horizon Consumer-facing AI in retail and brand The future of customer experience Innovation and disruptive business models in consumer industries Gen Z and Generation Alpha consumer behaviour Sustainability and the future of consumer brands Trends and innovation at the NRF Big Show The future of the high street and physical retail Ideal for Retail, consumer goods and hospitality boards making three-to-five year capital and format decisions CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding brand and CX around AI Innovation and strategy leads inside major consumer brands Conferences where the audience is operators, not technologists, but the agenda is technology-driven Audience outcomes A clear read on which retail and consumer innovations are signal and which are noise Specific case examples of how named global brands are already deploying AI in customer-facing roles A working three-to-five year horizon for board and CMO planning, not a ten-year futurology piece A sharper view of Gen Z and Generation Alpha as commercial customers, not as demographic abstractions

Why organisations work with Martin Newman He has run multichannel and digital operations inside Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport, so the customer-centricity argument lands as operating advice, not consultancy theory. He built and sold a 100-person global e-commerce consultancy, Practicology, acquired by Pattern in 2018, which gives him a P&L view of what customer experience is actually worth. His framework of new ROIs, set out in “ROI Reimagined”, gives leadership teams a concrete way to measure inspiration, integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention alongside conventional financials. “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019 and is used inside organisations as an operating reference, not a one-off read. He designed and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing, so the same content can be extended from a keynote into a structured learning programme for a leadership cohort. Biography highlights Founder of The Customer First Group and Customer Service Action, an independent platform for consumers to escalate service issues directly to CEOs. Founder of Practicology, scaled to around 100 staff across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia, sold to US-based Pattern in 2018. Author of “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” (Kogan Page, with Malcolm McDonald), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. Author of “The Power of Customer Experience” (Kogan Page) and “ROI Reimagined: 11 Bold New Ways to Measure What Really Matters”. Course director of the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity, delivered with Oxford College of Marketing. Senior multichannel, digital and e-commerce roles at Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport. Biography Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport all sat inside the same generation of UK retailers that had to rebuild their business around digital while keeping the store estate honest. Newman ran multichannel and e-commerce operations inside several of them, which is where his customer-centricity argument actually comes from. He then founded Practicology, an e-commerce consultancy he scaled to around 100 people across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia before selling it to Pattern in 2018. That experience gives him a commercial view of customer experience that most CX speakers do not have, namely what it is worth to a board, and where investment in it gets blocked. Two books with Kogan Page set out the framework. “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. “The Power of Customer Experience” makes the commercial case for customer-centricity as a growth strategy. His most recent book, “ROI Reimagined”, proposes eleven new measures of return, including return on integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention, intended to sit alongside the financial metrics that already run the business. Alongside the books and keynote work, Newman runs Customer Service Action, a platform that escalates unresolved consumer issues to CEOs, and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing. Both extend the same argument: that when service operating choices are visible at the top of the organisation, behaviour changes. Key speaking topics Customer centricity as commercial strategy Customer experience and brand loyalty The new ROIs of customer-led business Multichannel and digital retail operations Organisational culture and the customer Voice of the customer and service recovery Customer-led growth in consumer-facing sectors Ideal for Boards and executive teams in retail, consumer goods, hospitality, financial services and telecoms reviewing their customer strategy CMOs, Chief Customer Officers, CX directors and digital leaders Transformation leads working on culture, service and operating model alongside digital change Leadership development cohorts running CX or growth-focused programmes Audience outcomes A clearer commercial argument for treating customer experience as a board-level strategic lever, not an operational function A working vocabulary for the new ROIs that customer-centric organisations are measuring alongside financials Specific operating examples from inside Burberry, Harrods and other named retailers that translate to other consumer-facing sectors A sharper view of where the gap typically sits between stated customer strategy and the experience the organisation actually delivers Practical reference points from “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” that leadership teams can apply after the session

Why organisations work with Rafe Offer He has run brand portfolios at the scale most marketers only study, including a $1.2 billion Coca-Cola business and a Disney adult merchandise category that grew from $50m to $800m under his marketing leadership. He turned a single concert in a North London flat into Sofar Sounds, a venture-backed live music network operating in over 300 cities, with $40 million raised and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. He works on the seam between brand and community, which is where most companies now have to compete and where most marketing leaders lack practical playbooks. His career spans the corporate brand machine and the founder seat, so the same talk holds up in front of a CMO at a listed business and a scale-up CEO with a board to convince. Biography highlights Founder and Founder-Chair of Sofar Sounds, the global live music community founded in London in 2009. Former Director of Global Marketing, Disney Consumer Products, leading worldwide marketing for a $12bn licensing business. Former Global Marketing Director, The Coca-Cola Company, with responsibility for $1.2bn in stores, attractions, events and licensed merchandise. Former Director of Innovation, Diageo. Founder of “this & that,” a community and tech start-up focused on the practice of dialogue. Sofar Sounds named “one of the top new brands in America” by New York Magazine and described as a “quiet revolution” by The Guardian. Biography A live concert in a North London flat in 2009, eight friends invited to listen to a single performer, became the seed of Sofar Sounds. From that evening, Rafe Offer built a global live music network now operating in more than 300 cities, with about $40 million raised across three funding rounds and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. New York Magazine called it one of the top new brands in America. The unusual part of his career is the route in. Before Sofar, Offer ran the Mickey Unlimited adult merchandise programme at Disney, where the “having fun never goes out of style” campaign helped grow that category from $50m to $800m. He went on to lead worldwide marketing for Disney Consumer Products’ $12bn licensing business, then ran a $1.2bn Coca-Cola portfolio of stores, events and licensed merchandise as Global Marketing Director, before taking a Director of Innovation role at Diageo. That sequence, big-brand operator turned founder, is what gives his perspective its weight. He has built community-led growth from scratch and run brand P&Ls at industrial scale. He talks credibly to a CMO worried about declining ad efficiency and to a founder trying to convert a passionate audience into a fundable business. His more recent venture, this & that, is a community and tech start-up built around the practice of dialogue. It extends the through-line of his work: how organisations earn the right to people’s attention, and how that attention becomes commercial substance. Key speaking topics Brand building in the era of community Customer experience as a growth engine Scaling a start-up from idea to global brand Marketing and innovation inside large organisations Company culture in entrepreneurial businesses Fundraising and commercialising a community brand Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing for a low-trust, low-attention environment Founders and scale-up CEOs converting community traction into investable growth Customer experience and innovation leads inside large consumer businesses Boards reviewing brand and growth strategy in consumer-facing categories Audience outcomes A clearer view of why community has become the central question for consumer brands, with examples from Sofar, Disney and Coca-Cola Specific lessons on running a global brand portfolio at scale, drawn from leading $1.2bn at Coca-Cola and $12bn licensing at Disney A founder’s account of what investors actually fund in a community-led business Practical detail on how culture and customer experience interact in fast-growing companies

Why organisations work with Paul Redmond He brings a five-generation diagnostic, not a Millennials-versus-Boomers cliche, that gives HR and commercial leaders a working language for friction they can already feel. His employability research, built across senior roles at the University of Liverpool, lets him speak credibly to graduate-recruitment, early-careers, and talent-pipeline audiences other generational speakers cannot. His Zombie Jobs thesis, anchored in his 2019 TED Talk and 2024 Trotman book on the AI age, gives leadership audiences a sharp, named frame for which roles AI hollows out and which it does not. He moves comfortably between commercial keynotes and broadcast work, including BBC and ITV current affairs, which translates into a polished platform presence for high-stakes events. Biography highlights Director of Student Experience and Enhancement, University of Liverpool, with continuing lecturing responsibilities. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2010), awarded for writing and research. Author of The Graduate Jobs Formula, Talking about my Generation, A Parent’s Guide to Graduate Jobs, and The Graduate’s Guide to Future-Proofing Your Career (Trotman, 2024). TED speaker: Zombie Careers: Will You Lose Your Job to AI? (2019). Regular contributor to BBC and ITV current affairs; collaborator on the BBC and Tiger Aspect documentary Who Gets the Best Jobs? Speaks across financial services, technology, healthcare, and travel, with named clients including Google, Hargreaves Lansdown, Janus Henderson, Royal London, the NHS, and ABTA. Biography Five working generations now sit inside the same organisation. Each one learned to work under a different economy, a different communication norm, and a different settlement with the employer. The friction this produces shows up in engagement scores, retention numbers, and customer outcomes. Redmond’s work names that friction and gives leaders a way to act on it. His vantage is unusual. As Director of Student Experience and Enhancement at the University of Liverpool, he has spent years inside the machinery that produces the next generation of the workforce, and in continuous research conversation with the employers buying that talent. That has made his commentary on Gen Z and the post-Covid graduate market a regular fixture on BBC and ITV current affairs, and a reference point for HR and early-careers teams across UK plc. The future-of-work strand runs alongside it. His TED Talk Zombie Careers, published in 2019, set out the roles most exposed to AI and robotics, and the cognitive and human skills that survive automation. The Graduate’s Guide to Future-Proofing Your Career, published by Trotman in 2024, extends that argument into a working guide for the AI age. The thesis lands because it is grounded in named research, not in tech-keynote futurism. His books include The Graduate Jobs Formula, Talking about my Generation, A Parent’s Guide to Graduate Jobs, and Making it Happen. In 2010 he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts for his writing and research. Key speaking topics The multigenerational workplace Gen Z and the post-Covid workforce The future of work and AI exposure Graduate recruitment and early-careers strategy Selling and marketing across generations Wellbeing and the staff-customer link Employability and career resilience Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and early-careers leads designing pipelines around Gen Z and a five-generation workforce. Commercial and marketing leaders building proposition and channel strategy across generational customer segments. Executive teams stress-testing which roles AI will hollow out and which human capabilities to invest in. Boards and leadership conferences in financial services, technology, healthcare, and professional services. Audience outcomes A working language for the five generations now in the workforce and the specific friction points each pair produces. A named view of which roles are most exposed to AI and robotics, and which capabilities buyers and employers should be investing in. Practical engagement and retention moves calibrated to Gen Z and post-Covid graduate expectations. A sharper read on how generational difference shows up on the customer side, in buying behaviour and channel preference.

Why organisations work with Daniel Bobroff He has invested retail’s money on retail’s behalf. As co-founder of ASOS Ventures he ran due diligence on the technologies retail boards are now being asked to buy, which is a different vantage point from the consultant or analyst. He built a category from scratch. Pioneering in-game advertising through Microtime gives him a working understanding of how a new commercial medium emerges, scales and is monetised, which transfers directly to current arguments about immersive commerce and gamified retail. He operates inside the engineering layer. His role at HTEC Group means his views on AI in retail are grounded in actual implementation work on customer experience, cloud and supply chain, not in keynote abstraction. He covers the full retail tech stack in one voice. Boards rarely find a speaker who can talk credibly about ad-tech, VR, visual search, ecommerce platforms and corporate venture in the same session, and link them to a single commercial argument. Biography highlights Founder, Coded Futures, retail and consumer technology advisory firm. Special Advisor, HTEC Group, advising on retail digitalisation, AI and customer experience. Co-founder and former Investment Director, ASOS Ventures, the venture capital arm of ASOS. Founder of Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, credited with starting a now multi-billion-dollar category. Founder of Deibus Studios, video games developer with combined platform sales reported above 50 million units across PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. Has delivered keynotes for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute. Biography Retail has spent two decades arguing about whether technology is a channel, a function or a strategy. The argument is now closed by capital allocation. Personalisation engines, generative AI, gamified loyalty and immersive commerce are all sitting in the operating plan, often without a clear test for which of them pays back and which is a costly experiment in brand theatre. Daniel Bobroff has worked on both sides of that question. At ASOS he co-founded the company’s venture capital arm and was directly responsible for identifying and backing the technologies the retail sector is now being sold. Before that he founded Microtime, the first digital agency dedicated to in-game advertising, and Deibus Studios, an independent games developer whose titles for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo achieved combined platform sales above 50 million units. Today he runs Coded Futures, a retail and consumer technology advisory firm, and sits as Special Advisor to HTEC Group, the global engineering business, where he advises on AI, cloud and customer experience programmes. The combination matters: he sees retail technology from the investor’s underwriting position, the founder’s product position and the engineering partner’s delivery position. That is an unusual sightline for a speaker on this subject. His keynote work, including engagements for Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Mastercard and the Retail Institute, focuses on the same question a board is wrestling with after the third AI vendor presentation of the quarter: which of these bets is real, what does the customer experience actually look like once they land, and how does the commercial model hold up at scale. Key speaking topics AI in retail and consumer-facing operations Gamification of loyalty, engagement and commerce Immersive commerce, VR and the metaverse in retail Hyper-personalisation and predictive analytics Corporate venture capital and retail innovation pipelines Customer experience redesign in fashion and consumer brands Supply chain optimisation through AI and emerging technologies Ideal for Retail and consumer brand boards weighing major AI and digital investment decisions CMOs, Chief Digital Officers and Chief Customer Officers redesigning customer journeys around AI and personalisation Innovation, venture and corporate development teams inside large retailers and consumer goods groups Retail technology vendors and platform partners briefing their senior client audiences Audience outcomes A working sense of which retail AI use cases have shown commercial returns and which are still in the demonstration phase A sharper read on where gamification, immersive commerce and generative AI fit inside an existing retail operating model A vocabulary for discussing personalisation, loyalty and experience investments with credibility at board level A reference set of named retailers, technologies and venture-backed companies to anchor internal strategy debates

Why organisations work with Claire Harper She has run senior marketing inside three of the UK’s most scrutinised retail brands, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, and Argos, during periods of leadership change and digital pivot. She has also done the founder’s job: built IndiaCoco from a dining-table operation to an award-winning multi-channel children’s brand, with the cash-flow scars to prove it. She translates board-level brand strategy into the operating decisions marketing teams actually face the next morning, on pricing, range, channel mix, and acquisition. Her current commercial leadership at London Pulse Netball gives her live material on building a consumer brand in women’s sport, a sector under significant commercial expansion. One credential that travels: first female board director at Mamas & Papas, brought in to scale the brand domestically and internationally. Biography highlights First Head of Customer Acquisition and PR at Ocado, later Head of Marketing during the company’s grocery delivery breakthrough. Head of Online Marketing at Sainsbury’s during Justin King’s turnaround programme. First female board director at Mamas & Papas, with international brand remit. Founder of IndiaCoco childrenswear; winner of Theo Paphitis Small Business Sunday and Jacqueline Gold WOW awards. Non-Executive Director at Blue Diamond Garden Centres; former Marketing Director at Frosts Garden Centres. Currently leading commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball in the Netball Super League. Biography Ocado was a niche online grocer when Claire Harper joined at 26 as its first Head of Customer Acquisition and PR. By the time she had been promoted to Head of Marketing, the company was redrawing what UK households expected from a weekly shop. That early bet on customer behaviour, before the category had a name, set the pattern for the rest of her career. She moved into Sainsbury’s as Head of Online Marketing during Justin King’s “Make Sainsbury’s Great Again” turnaround, and into Argos during a hostile-takeover period that forced the brand to confront multi-channel reality. Both roles asked the same question: how do you keep a customer proposition coherent while the leadership and operating model are being rebuilt around it. At Mamas & Papas she became the first female board director, charged with scaling the brand internationally. She then founded IndiaCoco, a British childrenswear brand that grew from her dining room into a multi-channel business and picked up backing from Theo Paphitis and Jacqueline Gold. The founder years gave her the commercial discipline that corporate marketing budgets rarely teach. She now sits on the board at Blue Diamond Garden Centres and leads commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball, one of the fastest-growing franchises in the Netball Super League. Audiences get a speaker who has run the brand from inside the boardroom and from inside a single-founder profit and loss, in retail categories where the customer is the only honest scoreboard. Key speaking topics Customer-led brand strategy in multi-channel retail Marketing leadership through restructure and ownership change Building consumer brands from founder stage to scale Commercial growth in women’s sport Non-executive contribution to consumer businesses Women’s leadership in retail and consumer industries Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and customer experience leaders in consumer retail Boards and NEDs at consumer-facing businesses navigating ownership or strategic change Founders and scale-up leadership teams in DTC and consumer categories Sponsors, commercial partners, and leadership in women’s sport Audience outcomes A working view of how customer insight should sit at the centre of commercial decisions, not at the end of them Practical reference points from inside Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Argos, and Mamas & Papas during periods of strategic change A clearer sense of where founder discipline and corporate scale-marketing diverge, and what each can borrow from the other A current read on the commercial mechanics of women’s sport as a consumer category