Growth Strategy speakers

Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from. A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle. Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor). Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo. A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press. Biography highlights Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets. Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024). Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing. Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC). Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation. Biography Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work. His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline. His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC. What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers. Key speaking topics Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour Purpose-led marketing and brand activism Cultural intelligence and foresight Marketing for social change The future workforce and generational diversity Brand communities and the creator economy Innovation, imagination and creativity Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention Audience outcomes A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research. A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks. A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up. Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.

Why organisations work with Les Binet The 60:40 brand-to-activation framework he co-developed with Peter Field is the most cited effectiveness benchmark in UK marketing strategy. Organisations use it to build a defensible, evidence-based case for long-term brand investment to boards focused on quarterly ROI. His analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank covers more than 1,000 case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and over three decades of commercial data. No comparable longitudinal evidence base for marketing investment decisions exists in published form. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health and anticipating market share movements, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories using publicly available Google Trends data. Research he presented at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference showed that marketing budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite – a gap his work directly addresses. His grounding in Physics, Artificial Intelligence research and LSE econometrics makes him one of the few voices in effectiveness who can construct, interrogate and critique the statistical models organisations use to evaluate their own campaigns. Biography highlights Co-author of The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013) and four further IPA effectiveness reports; has contributed to more IPA Effectiveness Awards papers than any other individual (per the Advertising Association) Former Group Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB; joined BMP account planning in 1987 and remained across all iterations of the agency for more than three decades Recipient of the IPA President’s Medal (2014), the highest honour the UK advertising industry can award Elected IPA Honorary Fellow (2004); Convener of Judges, IPA Effectiveness Awards (2005) Board Advisor, Journal of Advertising Research; named in Campaign Magazine’s “40 over 40” (2023) MA Physics, Oxford; MPhil Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh; postgraduate Economics (Birkbeck) and Econometrics (LSE) Biography The Long and the Short of It, published by the IPA in 2013, is one of the most-cited effectiveness documents in marketing. Its co-author, Les Binet, spent three decades at adam&eveDDB building the evidence that most organisations structure their marketing investment around the wrong metrics. The research drew on 996 advertising effectiveness case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and more than 30 years of IPA Databank data. Its central finding of the “60:40 heuristic” recommended that most consumer brands allocate roughly 60% of marketing budget to brand building and 40% to short-term activation. The report has since been cited in over 70 academic publications and referenced across multiple languages. Binet’s subsequent work has continued to extend the evidence base. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health using Google Trends data, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories. At the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference, he presented research with Medialab showing that budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving marketing effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite. He read Physics at Oxford and completed an MPhil in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh, later adding postgraduate study in Economics at Birkbeck and Econometrics at the LSE. Elected an IPA Honorary Fellow in 2004, he received the IPA President’s Medal in 2014. He serves as a Board Advisor to the Journal of Advertising Research and consults independently through Binet Consulting. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness measurement Brand building versus short-term activation The 60:40 investment framework Share of Search and brand demand indicators Econometrics and advertising evaluation Media effectiveness in digital environments Evidence-based marketing investment strategy Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders making significant media and brand investment decisions CFOs and finance functions reviewing marketing accountability and budget allocation Boards and executive teams evaluating the commercial return on advertising investment Strategy, planning and insight functions in organisations with major advertising spend Audience outcomes A clear, evidence-grounded framework for distinguishing short-term ROI from long-term profit growth, and why the difference matters to boards Practical understanding of the 60:40 brand-to-activation heuristic and how to adapt it by sector, brand maturity and business context A working introduction to Share of Search as a predictive brand health indicator, applicable without specialist tools or budget A stronger internal case for protecting brand investment in organisations under pressure to demonstrate immediate measurable returns Familiarity with the specific effectiveness patterns – reach, share of voice, emotional advertising – that the IPA data consistently identifies as drivers of commercial results

Why organisations work with Liz Jackson She has been on both sides of the table: founder of a B2B marketing firm she ran for 17 years, and now Sales & Marketing Director at M&A advisor BCMS, where she works with owner-managers through valuation, growth-to-sale, and the transition into life after exit. She runs The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have already sold their companies through BCMS. Few speakers can draw on a live, operational community of post-exit founders for their material. Her credibility on resilience is earned, not borrowed. She lost her sight at 25, the same year she founded Great Guns Marketing, and built the business into a multi-site national operation while blind. The MBE in 2007 was for services to business, not for personal story. She turns the conversation about disability and inclusion into a problem-solving conversation. Her framing, that disabled people develop unusually strong problem-solving instincts because they have had to, gives leadership teams a sharper lens on adversity and capability than the standard inclusion talk. Biography highlights MBE, 2007, for services to business Honorary doctorate, Staffordshire University, 2012 Founder, Great Guns Marketing, a national B2B telemarketing business she led for 17 years Sales & Marketing Director, BCMS (Initium Corporate Finance), advising owner-managers on sale and transition Host of The Fellows Group, a network of 200+ entrepreneurs who have exited their businesses through BCMS Featured on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire Author of StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall Biography Great Guns Marketing was launched in 1998 by a 25-year-old with no degree, a £1,000 grant and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. The same year, its founder lost her sight. Over the next 17 years the business grew into one of the UK’s leading B2B telemarketing firms, with offices across England, Scotland and Ireland. That arc is the foundation of Liz Jackson’s commercial credibility, but it is no longer her main subject. As Sales & Marketing Director at BCMS, the M&A advisor for owner-managed businesses, she now sits inside the transactions she once would have been on the other side of, coaching founders through valuation, growth-to-sale and the life that begins the day the cheque clears. She also hosts The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have exited their companies through BCMS. It gives her a working evidence base on what actually changes for founders after a sale, the parts that are well rehearsed and the parts that are not. That material sits behind her work on entrepreneurship, growth strategy and exit planning, and it is what distinguishes her from speakers whose entrepreneurial story stopped at the founding moment. Jackson’s MBE, awarded in 2007 for services to business, and her honorary doctorate from Staffordshire University in 2012 are the public markers of that record. The Channel 4 Secret Millionaire appearance and her book StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall, are the points where her story has reached a broader audience. Inside a leadership room, her sharpest material is on how owner-managers can run a business now with the discipline of a business that will one day be sold. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Growth strategy for owner-managed businesses Sale readiness and post-exit transition Sales and B2B customer acquisition Resilience and adversity in business building Disability, problem-solving and inclusion Networking and founder community Ideal for Owner-managers, founders and shareholder-directors of mid-market businesses M&A advisors, private equity portfolio companies and corporate finance audiences Sales and commercial leadership teams in B2B businesses DEI and leadership audiences seeking a substantive voice on disability and capability Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what running a business “to be sold” actually looks like operationally, not just financially Specific insight from a network of 200+ post-exit founders on what makes the transition succeed or fail A sharper framing of disability and adversity as a source of commercial problem-solving capability A direct account of how a national B2B business was built, and sustained, by a founder operating without sight

Why organisations work with Michael Brenner His core argument; that empathy outperforms authority as both a marketing and a leadership lever, is grounded in practitioner experience inside SAP and NewsCred, not academic research; senior leaders engage with it as a claim someone has actually lived, not theorised His book Mean People Suck gives CMOs and CHROs a shared language for the link between culture, employee engagement, and revenue outcomes, making it useful in conversations that usually stay siloed The “Champion Leader” model is a named, transferable alternative to command-and-control management: specific enough to teach, tested across both large enterprises and early-stage startups His content marketing work is anchored in a measurable ROI framework from The Content Formula, translating content investment into financial terms for leaders who need to justify budgets to the CFO, not just the marketing team He has operated on both sides of the client-agency relationship, which means his diagnosis of where organisations waste marketing spend carries a credibility most single-perspective speakers cannot match Biography highlights CEO and Founder of Marketing Insider Group, a content marketing agency serving Fortune 500 brands and B2B technology companies Former VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP and Head of Strategy at NewsCred Author of three books: Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life (2019), The Content Formula, and Digital Marketing Growth Hacks Named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post Contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian; contributor at Content Marketing Institute Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine; facilitated content strategy workshops for MarketingProfs Biography Most organisations treat their marketing problem as a content problem. The more accurate diagnosis is a leadership one: companies default to self-promotion when their customers need help, and they build management cultures that reward compliance when growth requires empathy. Michael Brenner spent two decades working from the inside of that tension – as VP of Global Content Marketing Strategy at SAP, as Head of Strategy at NewsCred, and as CMO across a series of high-growth technology startups. His 2019 book Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads to Bigger Profits and a Better Life argues that low employee engagement and weak marketing performance share a common root: a leadership culture that has traded empathy for authority. The research and case evidence he assembles make it a commercial argument, not a motivational one. As founder and CEO of Marketing Insider Group, Brenner has built content marketing programmes for more than 75 brands. His earlier book, The Content Formula, provides a practical ROI framework that converts content investment into financial language – useful for marketing leaders who need to make the commercial case to a CFO, not just a brand committee. His keynote work is structured around two named concepts: the “Champion Leader,” a model for leaders who close the gap between what organisations ask their teams to do and what actually drives results; and the “Bullseye Organisation,” which frames customer-centricity as a structural discipline rather than a values statement. A contributor to Forbes, The Economist, and The Guardian, and named Top CMO Influencer by Forbes and Top Business Speaker by The Huffington Post, Brenner speaks across the United States and Europe, primarily to senior marketing, commercial, and leadership audiences. Key speaking topics Customer-centric marketing strategy Content marketing ROI and measurement Empathy-led leadership Employee engagement and culture The Champion Leader model Organisational alignment around the customer B2B marketing and demand generation Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors seeking a measurable framework for content marketing investment CHROs and culture leads addressing the connection between employee engagement and commercial performance CEOs and senior leadership teams weighing the limits of authority-based management B2B technology and SaaS organisations building customer-first marketing and go-to-market capabilities Audience outcomes A practitioner-built argument for why empathy is a commercial lever, with specific cases and research rather than aspiration The “Champion Leader” framework as a named, teachable model for shifting from directive to customer-oriented leadership A measurable ROI methodology for content marketing that can be used in internal budget and investment conversations A practical method for identifying where self-promotional bias is costing the business in audience reach and revenue Clearer criteria for distinguishing marketing that serves the customer from marketing that serves the organisation’s ego

Why organisations work with Ola Ahlvarsson He has built, scaled, and exited businesses across two decades of European internet history, from Boxman in the late 1990s through Star Stable Entertainment and Epicenter, so his counsel on scale-up decisions is operating advice rather than commentary. He runs SIME, the Stockholm summit that has gathered C-level executives, founders, and investors annually since 1996, which gives boards a direct line into where Nordic and global tech is moving next. He co-founded Epicenter, a Nordic innovation hub now spanning Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki, with industry clusters in AI, longevity, food systems, and real estate, providing a current view of how corporates are partnering with startups. His advisory client list includes Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted, which signals comfort sitting with senior teams in regulated, large-cap environments. He works equally well as a keynote and as a moderator, which is rare; for boards designing high-stakes innovation summits, that dual capability is genuinely useful. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of Result, the Stockholm-based business builder behind Spray, Spraydate, Sellbranch, and Keynote Media Group. Co-founder of Star Stable Entertainment, the Stockholm-based MMO studio behind one of Europe’s most successful children’s online games. Co-founder of Epicenter, the Nordic innovation hub operating across Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. Curator and host of SIME, running since 1996 in Stockholm. Named «Top Ten Leading European Internet Entrepreneurs» by The Wall Street Journal in 1999 and a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. Author of Mission Possible (Midas, 2005), Silicon Valhalla (2016), Happy Business (Aniara), and Mindchange (Fritanke, 2024). Biography European internet history runs through a small group of operators who built it from the inside. Ola Ahlvarsson is one of them. From Boxman in the late 1990s to Star Stable Entertainment in 2010, he has co-founded more than twenty companies and watched several through to acquisition, including Spray to Snowfall and Spraydate to Match.com. Result, the Stockholm builder he co-founded in 1999 and led as CEO until 2008, was the engine behind much of that portfolio. Through it, and later through Keynote Media Group, he assembled a working knowledge of what scale, exit timing, and corporate partnership actually require. The Wall Street Journal named him among Europe’s top ten internet entrepreneurs the year Result launched. In 2014 he co-founded Epicenter, now a Nordic innovation hub with sites in Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki and clusters in AI, longevity, sustainable food systems, and real estate. He also curates and hosts SIME, the digital business summit he has run in Stockholm since 1996, which gives him a continuous view of how the industry’s centre of gravity moves. His written work brings a softer edge to the operator profile. Mindchange (2024) draws on his career and his parallel life as a karate and kickboxing competitor to argue that emotional control is a strategic asset for senior leaders. He has presented at the World Economic Forum, DLD Munich, World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, and Le Web in Paris, and advised Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Ericsson, Telenor, and Schibsted. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital transformation Innovation and corporate venturing Future of technology Business model innovation Self-leadership and performance under pressure Nordic and European tech ecosystems Ideal for Boards and CEOs designing innovation strategy or new venture units Chief Innovation, Chief Strategy, and Chief Digital Officers leading scale-up partnerships with startups Executive teams running annual summits or leadership offsites that need a substantive moderator as well as a keynote Audience outcomes A working understanding of how serial founders judge timing, capital, and exit, drawn from twenty-plus years of operating decisions. A current read on the Nordic and European tech landscape, including how innovation hubs and corporates are partnering today. Practical handles for installing founder-style decision-making inside a corporate operating model. A perspective on emotional control and self-leadership that connects athletic discipline to executive performance.

Why organisations work with Peter Field His IPA Effectiveness Databank analysis – spanning over 1,000 campaigns, 80+ categories, and 30 years – gives senior marketers an empirical base for budget decisions that no internal dataset can match in scale or authority. The 60:40 principle he co-established with Les Binet is now the dominant reference point for CMO-level investment decisions globally; organisations use it to resist short-term pressure from finance and hold the case for brand building with the board. His 2019 Crisis in Creative Effectiveness report – showing that creatively-awarded campaigns had lost their effectiveness advantage entirely due to short-termism – gives marketing leaders the evidence to argue for sustained creative investment rather than disposable activation. The Creative Effectiveness Ladder, co-developed with James Hurman for Cannes Lions and WARC, gives organisations a practical evaluation tool for assessing the long-term ambition of creative work before it runs. His extension of effectiveness principles into B2B – The Five Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing – fills an empirical gap that most B2B marketing leaders have had to navigate without equivalent guidance. Biography highlights Cambridge graduate; 15 years as a strategic planner at advertising agencies including BMP (later part of the DDB network) Co-author with Les Binet of the IPA Effectiveness Databank series: Marketing in the Era of Accountability (2007), The Long & The Short of It (2013), Media in Focus (2017), Effectiveness in Context (2018) Author of The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness (IPA, 2019) – analysing 24 years of data on the declining relationship between creative awards and business outcomes Co-author with James Hurman of The Effectiveness Code (Cannes Lions/WARC, 2020), which produced the Creative Effectiveness Ladder framework Honorary Fellow of the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Regular keynote speaker at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, IPA EffWeek, and WARC Sessions Biography Marketing measurement has a structural flaw: the channels easiest to measure in real time are the ones least suited to building durable growth. Peter Field has spent 25 years making that argument with evidence – the IPA Effectiveness Databank, a repository of independently verified advertising effectiveness data spanning more than three decades. With Les Binet, Field co-authored the series of IPA Effectiveness Databank reports that set the empirical terms for decisions about budget allocation, media strategy, and creative investment. The Long and the Short of It (2013) established the 60:40 principle: most organisations systematically under-invest in brand building relative to short-term activation. Long-term emotional campaigns, the data showed, generate roughly double the profit of short-term approaches. The series has been cited in over 70 international academic publications and textbooks. Field’s solo research extended these findings into the relationship between creativity and effectiveness. The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness (IPA, 2019) revealed that creatively-awarded campaigns had become no more effective than non-awarded ones – the first time in 24 years of data – driven by the industry’s shift toward short-term activation work. His co-authored Creative Effectiveness Ladder, developed with James Hurman for Cannes Lions and WARC, provides a practical framework for evaluating the long-term ambition of creative work before it runs. A Cambridge graduate and former strategic planner at BMP, Field is an Honorary Fellow of the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. His research has been presented at Cannes Lions, WARC Sessions, and IPA EffWeek, and has shaped how CMOs, CFOs, and boards across the world evaluate the returns on marketing investment. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness and budget allocation Long-term brand building vs. short-term sales activation Creative effectiveness and the business case for creativity Measurement, metrics, and the limits of digital attribution Brand growth and pricing power B2B marketing effectiveness Evidence-based commercial strategy Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders under short-term commercial pressure from CFOs or boards CFOs and CEOs seeking an empirical framework for evaluating marketing investment decisions Brand and creative strategy leads making the case for long-term creative ambition internally B2B marketing directors who have lacked an effectiveness evidence base equivalent to B2C Audience outcomes A clear, evidence-based framework for allocating budget between brand building and short-term activation – grounded in 30+ years of campaign data A working understanding of why short-term digital metrics can systematically mislead commercial decision-making The analytical language to present the commercial case for brand investment to a CFO or board Practical criteria for evaluating whether a creative strategy is built for long-term effectiveness or short-term efficiency Awareness of how the Five Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing translate consumer effectiveness evidence into B2B strategy

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 Richard Reed He built Innocent from a £500 stall at a London music festival to Europe’s number one smoothie brand and a Coca-Cola exit valued at over half a billion dollars. He ran every stage of that growth as co-CEO of the brand side of the business. JamJar Investments has backed Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com. The portfolio gives him a live investor view of what is working in consumer brands today, beyond any retrospective Innocent story. He pioneered “wackaging”, the on-pack conversational copy that built Innocent’s brand voice. Other UK consumer brands copied the device for more than a decade, which is unusually long-lived evidence of a marketing mechanic that travels. Innocent committed 10% of profits to charity through the Innocent Foundation from day one, and Reed kept that operating model intact through every funding round and the Coca-Cola sale itself. Purpose at scale is something he has actually operated, not theorised. His book “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing” (Canongate, 2016) collected single pieces of advice from Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and Sir David Attenborough among others. He brings that breadth of access into the room with senior audiences. Biography highlights Co-founder of Innocent Drinks (1998); grown from £500 of fruit at a London music festival to Europe’s number one smoothie brand Sold Innocent to The Coca-Cola Company in 2013, in a transaction valued at over half a billion dollars Co-founder of JamJar Investments, the consumer-focused early-stage venture firm whose portfolio includes Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com Author of “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing…” (Canongate Books, 2016), with interviews including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama and Sir David Attenborough Appointed CBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the food industry and to charity Founder of Art Everywhere; co-founder of the Innocent Foundation; presenter of BBC Three’s “Be Your Own Boss” Biography Innocent Drinks started with £500 of fruit at a London music festival in 1998, and a sign asking passers-by whether the founders should give up their day jobs. Fifteen years later, Coca-Cola paid over half a billion dollars for the company. Richard Reed was one of three Cambridge graduates who took it that distance, running the brand side of the business as co-CEO from market stall to category leader. What set Innocent apart at scale was discipline about what to keep. The brand voice, the on-pack “wackaging” copy that competitors imitated for over a decade, and the 10% of profits committed to charity through the Innocent Foundation all stayed intact. They survived every funding round and the eventual Coca-Cola sale. By 2010, Innocent held roughly three-quarters of the UK smoothie market. Since 2013, Reed has invested in the next wave of consumer founders through JamJar Investments. The portfolio reads as a working hypothesis about where consumer brand power is going: Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health, Tails.com. He carries the operator’s view of what scales and what does not into every deal. Beyond the day job, he authored “If I Could Tell You Just One Thing” for Canongate Books in 2016. The book drew single pieces of advice from Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama, Sir David Attenborough and forty-odd others, with author’s profits donated to mentoring and social inclusion charities. He was appointed CBE in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the food industry and to charity. Key speaking topics Building consumer brands from start-up to category leader Brand voice, marketing innovation and the wackaging mechanic Social purpose as operating model, not communications layer Scaling under competitive pressure and corporate ownership Early-stage investing in consumer businesses Founder mindset and entrepreneurial discipline at scale Customer conviction and brand love in commodity categories Ideal for Founders and founder-CEOs scaling a consumer-facing business through the awkward middle stages Marketing, brand and customer-experience leaders working on customer conviction inside large organisations Boards and corporate development teams making capital decisions on consumer brands or considering an acquisition of one ESG, sustainability and purpose leads moving social commitments out of communications and into the operating model Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what scaling a consumer brand demands at each stage, from market stall to category leader to corporate exit Specific examples of how Innocent built brand voice, wackaging and category share, and what survived corporate ownership versus what did not A live investor-side read on which consumer-brand bets are paying off, drawn from JamJar’s positions in Deliveroo, Tony’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health and Tails.com A grounded argument for why social purpose works commercially when it is built into the operating model, with the Innocent Foundation as the worked example

Why organisations work with Roberta Lucca She has built a multi-million dollar VC-backed business from scratch and won a BAFTA doing it. Few speakers in the innovation category can show that operational record. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees what an early-stage company that actually has traction looks like, and translates that pattern recognition into how corporates should evaluate their own internal bets. Her AI material is shaped by founding BOLDR, an AI-powered coaching product, not by commentary at a distance. She speaks about deployment, user behaviour and product reality. She works fluently across gaming, AI and consumer technology, which lets her unpack why game-industry mechanics (engagement loops, iteration speed, distributed teams) increasingly apply to non-games businesses. Visible UK platform credibility through BBC One’s The Apprentice and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP makes her recognisable to senior internal audiences and easy to position to a wider all-hands. Biography highlights Co-founder of Bossa Studios, the London games studio behind BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread BAFTA Games Award winner (Online-Browser category, 2012) Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, the UK fund whose portfolio includes Zoopla, Cazoo and Depop Co-founder and CEO of BOLDR, an AI-powered virtual coaching product Judge and angel investor on BBC One’s The Apprentice; mentor on Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech; named London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts by the Evening Standard Biography Bossa Studios was a blank canvas in 2010. A decade later it was a VC-backed multi-million dollar games business with a BAFTA on the shelf for Monstermind and global hits in Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Roberta Lucca was the co-founder and CMO who shaped that arc, and the experience defines the perspective she brings to corporate audiences. She has since repeated the founder cycle. WonderLuk was an early move into on-demand 3D-printed consumer goods. BOLDR, her current company, is an AI-powered coaching product where she sits as co-founder and CEO. The pattern matters: she has built across gaming, consumer hardware-adjacent commerce and applied AI, which is unusual range for a speaker booked into innovation slots. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees the deal flow from inside one of the UK’s most active early-stage funds. That vantage point sharpens her view of what genuine traction looks like and how corporates routinely misread it. It also gives her language that lands with executive teams trying to decide whether their innovation programmes are working. She is visible on the UK platforms that senior internal audiences recognise, BBC One’s The Apprentice as a judge and angel investor, and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP as a mentor. Forbes named her in its Top 50 Women in Tech list, and the Evening Standard named her among London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts. The recognition matters less than the operating record behind it: she is, demonstrably, someone who has built the kind of company most corporate innovation teams say they want to learn from. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up discipline Applied AI and emerging technology Innovation inside large organisations High-performance team building Creative industries and gamification Diversity in technology and venture Futurism, Web3 and the metaverse Ideal for Boards and ExCos shaping innovation portfolios and corporate venture programmes CMOs, CDOs and product leaders facing decisions on AI and emerging tech investment CHROs and talent leaders rethinking team composition and entrepreneurial capability Conferences and internal summits in technology, media, financial services and consumer goods Audience outcomes A working definition of what early traction looks like inside a new venture, drawn from venture capital deal flow A sharper view of which corporate innovation pilots are worth doubling down on and which are quietly stalling Specific examples of how gaming mechanics and AI products are built, taken from companies she has founded Language to use with boards about risk, capital allocation and team design for innovation bets A more confident point of view on where AI is genuinely changing product, and where it is hype

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Seth Godin The permission marketing framework, first articulated in 1999, anticipated the mechanics now encoded in GDPR, email consent law, and the inbound marketing movement. Organisations working with Godin are drawing on the original source, not a derivative Purple Cow provides a genuinely testable argument: remarkability must be designed into the product or service from the outset, not applied as a marketing layer afterwards: a direct challenge to most organisations’ R&D and go-to-market sequencing His body of work spans 21 bestsellers over three decades with a consistent intellectual thread; buyers are not engaging with a single-thesis speaker, but with someone whose thinking has proved durable across multiple market cycles Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame – the only person known to hold all three – giving him third-party validation across the full spectrum of marketing practice His daily blog, running for over 25 years without interruption, is itself a proof point for the compounding value of consistent, permission-based communication: a lived demonstration of the principle he teaches Biography highlights Author of 21 international bestsellers translated into 38+ languages, including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, This Is Marketing, and This Is Strategy (2024 National Bestseller) Originator of the «permission marketing» and «interruption marketing» frameworks (1999), now foundational to digital marketing, CRM practice, and consent regulation worldwide Founder of Yoyodyne, a pioneering permission-marketing company sold to Yahoo! in 1998; served as Yahoo!’s VP of Direct Marketing post-acquisition Inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame (AMA New York, 2018), the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame (2013), and the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA in computer science and philosophy, Tufts University Founder of the altMBA, an intensive online leadership and decision-making workshop Five TED Talks; author of one of the most-read daily business blogs in the world Biography Seth Godin sold his first company, Yoyodyne, to Yahoo! in 1998 for $29.6 million. It was a permission marketing business: built around the then-contrarian argument that reaching people who had consented to hear from you was worth more than reaching vastly more people who had not. That argument is now the structural basis of email marketing, CRM, and data consent regulation across most markets. His 1999 book Permission Marketing named the framework and introduced its counterpart: interruption marketing, the logic of buying attention from people who did not want to give it. The book’s central claim – that anticipated, personal, relevant communication outperforms volume-based reach at every commercial stage – has proved more durable than most marketing theory of its era. HubSpot built a software category around a version of it. GDPR made it legally mandatory. The same structural argument runs through his subsequent work. Purple Cow made the case that a product worth noticing is the precondition for marketing worth running. Tribes reframed leadership as community-building rather than hierarchy. This Is Strategy, published in 2024 and a US National Bestseller, gives organisations a practical framework for distinguishing between long-term systems thinking and reactive planning. Each book refines the same underlying question: what does it actually take to earn the attention and trust of people who have a choice? He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a degree in computer science and philosophy from Tufts University. Inducted into three marketing halls of fame and the author of 21 international bestsellers, Godin writes a daily blog that has run without interruption for over 25 years; a compounding body of public intellectual work that few business writers at any level have matched. Key speaking topics Permission-based marketing and opt-in engagement Market differentiation and the logic of remarkability Strategy, systems thinking, and long-term planning Tribe leadership and community-driven growth Creative practice and the discipline of shipping work The economics of attention in overcrowded markets Climate communication and collaborative action Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rethinking acquisition and retention strategy CEOs and senior strategy leads pressure-testing their differentiation logic Founders and growth-stage leaders building category identity Boards and executive teams resetting planning frameworks in volatile conditions Audience outcomes A working understanding of the permission marketing framework and how it applies to current customer acquisition and retention strategy A testable argument for why remarkability must precede marketing investment, not follow it Practical framing for the difference between short-term attention tactics and long-term trust-building Exposure to the systems-thinking approach in This Is Strategy, useful for teams that confuse tactics with strategy A challenge to default assumptions about reach, volume, and interruption as commercial levers

Why organisations work with Steve Faktor He works from a proprietary, named methodology, the 4C’s of Innovation™, developed inside Fortune 100 innovation programmes at American Express, Citi and MasterCard, not adapted from case studies of others’ work. His operating record is concrete. As head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, he launched commercial products including Zync, LoyaltyEdge, and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. His 9 Corporate Personality Types™, the viral Forbes piece picked up by NPR, gives audiences a working tool for diagnosing why innovation initiatives die inside specific corporate cultures. He carries a 750,000-strong LinkedIn following from his status as one of the platform’s original 160 Influencers, alongside figures like Richard Branson. Buyers hiring him get a futurist whose calls are public and dated. The voice in Econovation, sharp and satirical, is the same voice on stage. Senior leaders get an honest read on innovation work without the consultant gloss. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of IdeaFaktory, the innovation incubator behind multiple $100M+ businesses for Fortune 100 brands, built on its proprietary 4C’s of Innovation™ process. Former Vice President of Growth and Innovation and Head of the $50M Chairman’s Innovation Fund at American Express, where he launched Zync, LoyaltyEdge and the Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. Former SVP of Innovation and Growth Ventures at Citigroup; senior strategy and innovation executive at MasterCard; former management consultant at Arthur Andersen. Author of Econovation: The Red, White, and Blue Pill for Arousing Innovation (Wiley, 2011). Forbes and Harvard Business Review contributor; one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following. Host of The Trendaddy show; media credits include The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Bloomberg Radio and MSNBC. Graduate of NYU Stern School of Business. Biography At American Express, the Chairman’s Innovation Fund came with a $50M budget and a brief to launch new businesses inside the company. Steve Faktor ran it. Out of that role came Zync, LoyaltyEdge and a Private Sales joint venture with Vente Privée. The same period produced the methodology he has since codified as the 4C’s of Innovation™: context, creativity, capabilities and culture. That methodology is the operating logic he now applies through IdeaFaktory, the innovation firm he founded after leaving AmEx. IdeaFaktory has helped Fortune 100 clients launch multiple $100M+ businesses by partnering with vetted startups and rebuilding their internal innovation programmes from the culture out. The ‘culture out’ part matters. His viral Forbes piece on the 9 Corporate Personality Types, picked up by NPR, came from watching innovation initiatives die at the hands of identifiable, predictable internal characters. Faktor’s second strand of work is futurist. Econovation (Wiley, 2011) argued that consumerism was ending and producerism was emerging, with economic value shifting to those who make rather than those who consume. As one of LinkedIn’s original 160 Influencers, with a 750,000-strong executive following and Forbes and Harvard Business Review columns, he has built more than a decade of dated, public predictions clients can audit. In a boardroom, both strands earn their seat. Senior teams get a working framework rooted in real product P&Ls, the AmEx ones with his name on them, not someone else’s case studies. They also get a voice that has been right enough, often enough, in public, that buyers can audit the work before they commission it. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and methodology Corporate-startup partnerships and commercialisation Growth strategy in financial services and consumer goods Futurism and trend forecasting Innovation culture and corporate change Business model innovation Digital commerce, payments and loyalty Ideal for Chief Innovation Officers and Heads of Strategy in Fortune 500 firms whose innovation programmes have plateaued at pilot stage. Growth and commercial leadership teams in financial services, payments and consumer goods evaluating where to commit capital next. Boards and executive committees commissioning a candid, externally validated read on internal innovation capability. Founders and corporate venture teams looking for an operator’s view of how large enterprises actually make buying decisions. Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for why their innovation programmes are stalling, anchored to the 4C’s of Innovation™. A working vocabulary for the cultural archetypes that block or enable change inside large organisations, drawn from the 9 Corporate Personality Types. A view of which trends in technology, economics and consumer behaviour are most likely to disrupt their P&L over the next five to ten years. A short list of the highest-leverage moves a senior team can make to convert innovation budget into commercial product launches.