Marketing & Branding

Why organisations work with Arnt Eriksen PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, and Salesforce all sit on his client list. His point of contact is usually the senior marketing leader carrying the number. His forthcoming book Marketing at Velocity (Kogan Page, April 2027) sets out a thesis on B2B brand compounding, with proprietary frameworks (Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, the Velocity Brand Scorecard) that audiences can apply once they leave the room. Thirty years agency-side at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar means his frameworks come out of work that shipped and clients who renewed. He is a practitioner with a published thesis, which is rarer in this category than buyers expect. Senior marketing audiences have heard the AI-and-content pitch from a dozen other speakers. He gives them a diagnosis of why brand activity is not converting into category position, and a working set of tools for fixing it. Biography highlights Forthcoming book: Marketing at Velocity: B2B Brand Building, Momentum and Category Leadership (Kogan Page, April 2027) Author of Brand You Economics (2021) Thirty years of senior brand experience across more than 75 global brands, including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, Meta, and doTERRA Senior agency career at Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; co-founded his first agency at twenty-five Host of the Marketing at Heart podcast Keynotes delivered across the Nordics, Europe, North America, and Australia, including for Salesforce stages Biography Most B2B brands run their marketing as a continuous feed of campaigns and content. Activity rises, dashboards look healthy, and category position barely moves. Arnt Eriksen’s argument is that this is a compounding problem, not an effort problem. For thirty years he has worked inside the marketing functions of global brands including PayPal, American Express, Visa, Domino’s, Salesforce, and doTERRA. His agency career covered Grey, DDB, Ogilvy, and Isobar; he co-founded his first agency at twenty-five. The pattern in his work is consistent. The brands that pulled away from their categories were the ones whose positioning held long enough to compound. That argument runs book-length in his forthcoming Marketing at Velocity, published by Kogan Page in April 2027. The premise is that speed wins moments and velocity wins markets. Around it sits a working set of frameworks. The One Rule (1rE²Zag), Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard are tools senior marketers can take back into a planning cycle, not concepts that live only on a stage. Beyond the book, he hosts the Marketing at Heart podcast and runs Conquer OS, his London-based consultancy. His client work has produced concrete commercial outcomes, including a Domino’s Internet-of-Things pizza-ordering button that the company’s Digital Director, Nick Dutch, publicly credited with what he called “mind-blowing” return on investment across PR coverage and sales. Key speaking topics B2B brand building Brand velocity and category leadership Marketing strategy for senior leaders Customer relationship economics AI and the modern marketing function B2B narrative and positioning Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders accountable for brand position and revenue contribution B2B leadership teams in crowded categories where differentiation is starting to blur Founders and CEOs of growth-stage businesses where marketing is being asked to translate spend into category position Audience outcomes A working diagnosis of why their B2B brand activity is not converting into category position A set of named frameworks, including Velocity Loops, the TRUTH Framework, and the Velocity Brand Scorecard, that translate directly into next-quarter marketing planning A clear read on whether their current marketing is producing speed or velocity, and what to change if the answer is speed A reframe of trust, story, and consistency as commercial assets that compound, with implications for budget allocation and channel mix

Why organisations work with Peter Fisk He brings a structured framework for business reinvention. Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes drawn from deep work with senior leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas and Patagonia. Senior teams leave with a shared model to argue from. He sits in the rare overlap between marketer and strategist. As former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and now Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, he treats marketing, customer thinking and innovation as parts of one growth discipline. Most organisations still split them across separate functions and budgets. He has worked with senior leaders across more than 300 companies in over 55 countries, with particular depth in Asian innovation and emerging-market growth. The case material is current and varied, not the same handful of examples a leadership team has already seen. As former Thinkers50 Global Director and founder of the annual European Business Forum, he has unusual curatorial access to the leading management thinkers in the world. Sessions draw on what is actually moving across the field. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of GeniusWorks, a London-based strategy and innovation consultancy Professor of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School, Madrid; academic director of the Global Advanced Management Program Former Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Former Thinkers50 Global Director; founder of the annual Thinkers50 European Business Forum Author of nine business books, including Business Recoded, Gamechangers, and the Genius series, translated into 35 languages; Business Recoded shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year Earlier commercial career at British Airways, including responsibility for the Concorde brand Biography The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s largest professional marketing organisation. Peter Fisk ran it before founding GeniusWorks. He used the role to argue that marketing, customer and innovation belong inside growth strategy, where most organisations still treat them as separate functions. That argument has shaped his work since. His career started in physics, in a superconductivity lab. He moved into commercial roles at British Airways, including managing the Concorde brand, before consulting work at PA Consulting Group and Brand Finance. After CIM he founded GeniusWorks, a London consultancy, and joined IE Business School in Madrid as Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His 2020 book Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes for reinventing how a business creates value. It is built on deep interviews with leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas, Patagonia and Spotify. The Financial Times reviewed it as “the book you have to read now”. It was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Through the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, which he founded in 2017 as Thinkers50 Global Director, he convenes the world’s leading management thinkers each year. Recent stages have brought together Michael Porter, Rita McGrath, Erin Meyer and Alex Osterwalder. That curatorial position is unusual for a working consultant. The frameworks in his sessions are continually refreshed by direct contact with the academics and practitioners writing the next generation of management ideas. Key speaking topics Growth strategy in fast-changing markets Business model reinvention Innovation strategy and execution Customer strategy and brand growth The Business Recoded framework: seven shifts for reinventing the business Asian innovation and emerging-market growth Sustainable growth and purposeful business Ideal for CEOs and boards facing slowing growth in mature markets Strategy and innovation leaders responsible for new business models or category growth CMOs and customer experience leaders rethinking how marketing connects to commercial strategy Executive leadership teams running annual strategy or transformation offsites Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the seven shifts that separate business reinvention from incremental change Case material from Asian innovators and global category leaders that most leadership teams will not have seen A connected view of innovation, customer and marketing strategy as one growth discipline Specific direction on where to stop investing, alongside where to grow

Why organisations work with Mark Ritson His “diagnosis, strategy, tactics” framework gives marketing functions a structure for connecting brand spend to commercial outcomes – a discipline most organisations have never been taught and cannot easily develop internally. He spent 13 years as in-house brand consultant for LVMH, working with Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, and Hennessy. His commercial credibility comes from inside the world’s most valuable luxury portfolio, not from agency pitches or conference circuit opinion. His doctoral thesis on the social uses of advertising won the 2000 Ferber Award – the first non-US researcher to receive it – and his co-authored pricing research was cited by George Akerlof in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. No other marketing speaker working today holds that combination of peer-reviewed standing and practitioner track record. The MiniMBA, which he founded and teaches personally, has graduated more than 20,000 practitioners globally. That scale gives him a precise, evidence-based view of where marketing competence breaks down in real organisations – and what it costs them commercially. Nearly 20 years of weekly column-writing in Marketing Week – and multiple PPA Business Columnist of the Year awards – have made him the most credible dissenting voice against marketing faddism. Organisations bring him in when they need someone to challenge internal orthodoxies with evidence rather than instinct. Biography highlights PhD in Marketing, Lancaster University; doctoral thesis won the 2000 Ferber Award as the best dissertation published in the Journal of Consumer Research – the first non-US recipient in the award’s history Faculty positions at London Business School, the University of Minnesota, Melbourne Business School, MIT Sloan (visiting), and Singapore Management University (visiting); MBA Best Teacher prizes at all four institutions In-house brand consultant for LVMH from 2002 to 2015, working directly with senior executives at Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, and Hennessy Marketing Week columnist for approximately 20 years; multiple PPA Business Columnist of the Year awards, the highest award for magazine journalism in the UK; British Society of Magazine Editors Business Columnist of the Year in 2018 and 2022 Founder and lead instructor of the MiniMBA in Marketing and MiniMBA in Brand Management; more than 20,000 graduates globally AMI Sir Charles McGrath Award (the highest marketing honour in Australia); IPA Honorary Fellow (2024); co-authored pricing research cited by Nobel Laureate George Akerlof in his 2001 acceptance speech Published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Advertising Biography Marketing departments spend. The harder question – what that spending actually produces commercially – is the one most organisations cannot answer. Mark Ritson has spent over two decades building the frameworks that make that answer possible, working from inside business schools, luxury brand headquarters, and the pages of Marketing Week simultaneously. His academic foundation is unusually strong. His PhD thesis, “The Social Uses of Advertising,” won the 2000 Ferber Award as the best doctoral dissertation in the Journal of Consumer Research – the first time a researcher outside the United States had received the honour. A Thouron Scholar at Wharton in 1995, he went on to hold faculty positions at London Business School, the University of Minnesota, Melbourne Business School, and MIT Sloan, winning the best teacher prize at each institution. His co-authored pricing research was cited by George Akerlof during his 2001 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. What separates Ritson from other marketing academics is sustained proximity to practice. From 2002 to 2015, he served as in-house brand consultant for LVMH, working with senior executives across Louis Vuitton, Dom Perignon, and Hennessy. That access – combined with nearly two decades writing a weekly column for Marketing Week – gave him a vantage point that bridges research, boardroom, and brand operations in a way few practitioners have held at the same time. In 2019, he left academia to focus on the MiniMBA, an online platform he founded to make evidence-based marketing education available at scale. More than 20,000 practitioners have now completed the programme, built around his “diagnosis, strategy, tactics” framework. The AMI gave him the Sir Charles McGrath Award – the highest honour for marketing in Australia – and the IPA made him an Honorary Fellow in 2024. His consistent argument is that marketing’s commercial standing in the boardroom depends not on new technology or new trends, but on practitioner competence. Key speaking topics Marketing strategy and brand management Pricing strategy and commercial decision-making Marketing effectiveness and measurement Brand building versus performance marketing Marketing capability and practitioner competence Evidence-based marketing frameworks Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders facing board-level scrutiny of marketing budgets and accountability Executive leadership teams seeking a commercial framework for evaluating marketing investment Organisations investing in marketing capability development at scale Strategy, brand, and commercial functions in consumer-facing businesses where the link between brand and revenue is contested Audience outcomes A working framework for connecting marketing strategy to commercial outcomes, grounded in the “diagnosis, strategy, tactics” model Clarity on the evidence base for brand building versus short-term performance marketing, and practical guidance on how to argue for the right balance internally Sharpened understanding of pricing as a strategic rather than a tactical discipline Practical tools for improving the quality of marketing decisions: briefing standards, brand positioning, and market orientation The language and evidence to challenge marketing orthodoxies and fads in their own organisations

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?

Why organisations work with Chris Endersby He treats a brand as an internal operating system before he treats it as a marketing asset, so the work changes how the leadership team behaves, not just how the company looks. The DARE methodology he co-developed at Firestarter gives founders a structured way to test whether their positioning is genuinely differentiated, authentic to the team, resonant with the buyer, and expressed consistently across every touchpoint. His background sits at the intersection of corporate change work at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays and front-line risk management in child safeguarding, which gives him a non-marketing read on how people actually respond to disruption and uncertainty. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy, which means he can hold the harder conversations that surface when a founder’s stated brand and the team’s lived experience do not match. Biography highlights Co-founder and COO of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy for purpose-led scale-up B2B businesses. Co-developer of the DARE methodology (Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, Expression). Corporate change and consulting experience with JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays. Dual professional registration in coaching psychology and psychotherapy. Earlier career as a front-line child safeguarding practitioner, manager and researcher. Biography Scale-up B2B brands tend to fail in the same way. The founder’s original conviction gets diluted in committee, the language drifts toward whatever the competitor set is saying, and the team can no longer explain in plain terms why a customer should choose them. Chris Endersby’s work starts from that failure pattern, and from the observation that brand is rarely a marketing problem first. It is a leadership and behaviour problem that surfaces as a marketing problem. Endersby co-founded Firestarter, a London consultancy that works with founders of scale-up B2B businesses to rebuild that conviction. Alongside his business partner he co-developed the DARE methodology, which moves a brand through four practical tests: is it genuinely Differentiated in its market, Authentic to the people who have to live it, Resonant with the audience it is trying to reach, and Expressed consistently in everything the company does. The methodology is designed to make brand work auditable rather than aesthetic. His credibility for this work comes from an unusual stack. He has spent years inside corporate change programmes at JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS and Barclays, where he learned how large organisations actually metabolise new strategy. Before that he worked in child safeguarding as a practitioner, manager and researcher, which gives him a working understanding of risk, human behaviour under pressure, and the gap between what institutions say they do and what they do. He is registered in both coaching psychology and psychotherapy. The result is a speaker who can sit in front of a founding team and ask the questions that brand agencies usually avoid: whether the leadership group actually believes its own positioning, where the team’s behaviour contradicts the stated values, and what the cost of that contradiction is in hiring, pricing and retention. Key speaking topics Brand differentiation for scale-up B2B Authentic positioning and purpose Founder-led brand strategy Organisational behaviour and brand Change and transformation in growth-stage businesses Coaching psychology applied to leadership teams Ideal for Founders and CEOs of Series A to Series C B2B businesses approaching a rebrand or repositioning Chief marketing officers and brand leads inside scale-ups where the brand has outgrown its origin story Leadership teams preparing for a funding round, acquisition or international expansion where positioning is under scrutiny Audience outcomes A clearer test for whether their current positioning is actually differentiated or just well-written A working understanding of why brand work fails when it stays inside the marketing function Specific questions to take back to their own leadership team about the gap between stated values and lived behaviour A framework (DARE) for auditing brand expression across product, sales, hiring and internal communication

Why organisations work with Dhar Mann He has done what most CMOs are still trying to do: build a content engine that earns ten billion views a year without buying media, and is willing to explain the mechanics behind it. He is one of two entrepreneurs ever ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list two years running, and he runs it from a 125,000 sq ft Los Angeles studio with a full production staff. Buyers get a working operator, not a personal brand. He was named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list and dubbed the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” by The New York Times, which makes him uniquely credible on values-led content as a commercial strategy, not as a CSR talking point. He scaled LiveGlam from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure subscription revenue before founding the studio, which means his commentary on customer acquisition and creator-led growth comes from two successful builds, not one. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Dhar Mann Studios; the world’s #1 digital scripted creator, with more than 140 million followers and over 10 billion annual views across platforms. Named to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list, 2025. Ranked #2 on Forbes’ Top Creators list in 2024 and 2025. Three-time Telly Award winner; Shorty Award for Best YouTube Presence; multiple Kids’ Choice Awards nominations for Favourite Male Creator. Founder of LiveGlam, the cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 to eight-figure annual revenue. Confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, Miami, alongside Dhar Mann Studios CEO and former MTV president Sean Atkins. Biography The creator economy is now worth more than $250 billion, and most large organisations are still trying to work out how to participate in it without losing their brand to it. Dhar Mann Studios is one of the clearest answers in market. From a 125,000 sq ft production base in Los Angeles, the company publishes scripted shorts that have generated over 10 billion views a year and a following of more than 140 million people, built without traditional media spend. The studio model is what distinguishes the proposition. Dhar Mann is the founder and CEO, but the business is run as a vertically integrated production house, with a full writers’ room, actors, post-production and distribution discipline. The New York Times called him the “Moral Philosopher of YouTube” for the values-led structure of the content; Forbes ranked him #2 on its Top Creators list in both 2024 and 2025; TIME named him to the inaugural TIME100 Creators list in 2025. The relevant point for organisations is that values, in his work, are an operating choice that drives retention and reach, not a brand veneer. Before the studio, he founded LiveGlam, a cruelty-free cosmetics subscription business he grew from $600 of starting capital to eight-figure annual revenue, an early proof that he can build a customer-acquisition engine inside a category he did not previously operate in. The same instinct, treating storytelling and community as the primary product, has carried into partnerships with MTV, Amazon, Universal and Instagram, and into a confirmed 2026 keynote at NATPE Global and the Realscreen Summit, where the brief is the convergence of creator economics and traditional media. For senior commercial leaders, the value sits in three places: how to think about content as a customer asset, how to structure a studio rather than a campaign function, and how to use values-led narrative as a loyalty mechanism in categories where awareness no longer converts. Key speaking topics Purpose-driven storytelling and brand loyalty The creator economy and the studio model Building customer acquisition at scale Entrepreneurship and category entry Empathy and values as commercial strategy Culture inside fast-scaling creative businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership teams rebuilding their content function Founders and CEOs scaling consumer or subscription businesses Innovation, marketing and customer experience teams looking to act on creator economics Media, entertainment and platform organisations navigating the convergence with creators Audience outcomes A working view of how a scripted-content studio earns ten billion views a year, and which parts of that model port into a corporate brand function A specific take on values-led content as a commercial choice, with the loyalty and retention evidence to back it up The operating logic behind taking a business from a few hundred dollars to eight-figure revenue inside a new category A clearer read on where the creator economy and traditional media are actually converging, and what that means for marketing spend

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report

Why organisations work with Charlie Whyman A working B2B marketing operating model. The OTTER Framework gives commercial teams a five-step planning structure that ties objectives to tools, training, expectations and review, used inside her consultancy and her current managing director role. Operator credibility, not consultant theory. She runs a specialised aviation services business as managing director of TGIS Aviation, so her commercial advice lands as something already being applied at the top of a P&L. A point of view on customer curiosity as a commercial discipline. Her podcast, The Curiosity Key, and her speaker work argue that better questioning of customers is the input that most B2B marketing teams skip and most commercial strategies depend on. A direct route into the experience of women leading in male-dominated commercial sectors. She has built her career across automotive, mining, shipping and aviation, and speaks credibly to organisations trying to move that conversation past slogans. Biography highlights Managing Director, TGIS Aviation Ltd, appointed 2024 Founder, Curious B2B Marketing, 2017 Creator of the OTTER Framework, a five-step B2B marketing planning system Host, The Curiosity Key podcast Founder, Palmavera, an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business, 2006 Keynote speaker, BHBIA Annual Conference 2025 Biography Most B2B marketing functions are full of activity and short of insight. Campaigns get built before customer questions get asked. That gap is what Whyman has spent the last decade attacking, first through her consultancy Curious B2B Marketing and now through the OTTER Framework, a five-step planning structure that forces objectives, tools, training, expectations and review into one commercial conversation. She is unusual in pairing that practitioner work with an operating role. In 2024 she was appointed Managing Director of TGIS Aviation, a UK firm specialising in airworthiness management for aircraft and engine owners. The appointment came from inside the client base, after she ran the growth strategy as a consultant. It puts her on the board of a niche commercial business while she continues to teach and speak. Her career sits across sectors most marketers avoid: automotive, mining, shipping and aviation. She founded an award-winning Sardinian olive oil business in 2006, weathered redundancy twice, and built Curious B2B Marketing in 2017. She hosts The Curiosity Key podcast, where the recurring argument is that intentional curiosity about customers is the cheapest, most under-used commercial input available to B2B leaders. For organisations, the value is direct. She is a serving managing director with a structured method, a clear position on what marketing is for, and the lived experience of a woman leading in industries that do not naturally make space for her. She talks to commercial teams as one of them, and to leadership audiences as someone who has just come from the P&L. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and operating systems Customer curiosity as a commercial discipline Sales and marketing alignment for commercial leaders Courage and action in career and commercial decisions Women leading in male-dominated industries Growth strategy in specialist B2B firms Ideal for CMOs, marketing directors and B2B commercial leaders CEOs and managing directors of specialist or technical SMEs Sales and marketing leadership teams under pressure to prove pipeline impact Industry conferences in engineering, manufacturing, life sciences and aviation Audience outcomes A clear test for whether a current marketing plan is built on customer insight or assumption The OTTER Framework as a working structure for B2B marketing planning A sharper position on how curiosity, questioning and customer research feed commercial strategy Practical language for talking about courage and action when career or commercial decisions stall A perspective on visibility and influence for women operating in male-dominated commercial environments

Why organisations work with Patrick Renvoise A tested, codified persuasion framework. NeuroMap® is a four-step model SalesBrain has applied in client engagements since 2002, turning cognitive science research into specific decisions about messaging and value proposition design. Co-author of two of the earliest commercial books on neuromarketing. The Persuasion Code (Wiley, 2018) received an Axiom Business Book Award and builds directly on the work of Nobel laureates Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler. Authority earned in enterprise sales before brain science. He sold multi-million-dollar supercomputers at Silicon Graphics and LinuxCare to clients including NASA, Boeing, Airbus and Shell. The framework is shaped by what closes deals in real B2B selling. Recognition from named bodies that buyers respect: an American Marketing Association Next Big Thing in Marketing award (2009) and three Advertising Research Foundation Innovation in Research Awards (2011, 2014, 2015). Trained more than 100,000 executives across 24 nationalities at companies including PayPal, Microsoft, Hitachi, Siemens and GE, giving sales and marketing teams a shared scientific language for messaging decisions. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Neuromarketing Officer of SalesBrain, the first dedicated neuromarketing agency, founded in 2002. Developer of NeuroMap®, a four-step persuasion framework used in SalesBrain’s advisory and training programmes. Co-author of The Persuasion Code: How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime (Wiley, 2018) and Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Button in Your Customer’s Brain (2007). Recipient of the American Marketing Association “Next Big Thing in Marketing” award (2009), three Advertising Research Foundation Innovation in Research Awards (2011, 2014, 2015), and a Vistage “Above and Beyond” speaker award (2008). Former senior business development executive at Silicon Graphics and LinuxCare, where he sold multi-million-dollar supercomputers to NASA, Boeing, Shell, Airbus, BMW and Canon. TEDxBend speaker (“Is There a Buy Button Inside the Brain?”) and trainer of more than 100,000 executives at companies including PayPal, Microsoft, Hitachi, Siemens, Facebook and GE. Biography In 2002, the discipline of neuromarketing did not exist as a commercial practice. Patrick Renvoise and Dr. Christophe Morin co-founded SalesBrain that year to build it. Their premise was that two decades of cognitive science research could be translated into a working method for sales and marketing teams whose campaigns were not delivering. Most marketing assumes buyers can articulate what they want. Two decades of brain research suggest otherwise. The bulk of purchasing decisions are made by what Daniel Kahneman called System 1, the part of the brain that does not respond to logical argument or feature lists. SalesBrain’s NeuroMap® is a four-step framework. The steps are diagnose the pain, differentiate the claims, demonstrate the gain and address the primal brain. It translates cognitive science into specific decisions about messaging and value proposition design. Renvoise’s path to brain science came through enterprise sales. At Silicon Graphics and LinuxCare he sold multi-million-dollar supercomputers to NASA, Boeing, Shell, Airbus, BMW and Canon. After watching what worked and what did not in those rooms, he spent two years researching how the brain processes commercial messages. The result was published in 2007 as Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Button in Your Customer’s Brain. The expanded second book, The Persuasion Code, followed in 2018 from Wiley, building directly on the System 1 and System 2 work of Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler. The methodology has earned recognition from named bodies that buyers respect. The American Marketing Association named NeuroMap its Next Big Thing in Marketing in 2009. The Advertising Research Foundation followed with three Innovation in Research Awards. The Persuasion Code received an Axiom Business Book Award. SalesBrain has now trained more than 100,000 executives across 24 nationalities at companies including PayPal, Microsoft, Siemens, Hitachi, Facebook, GE and Airbus. Key speaking topics Neuromarketing The science of persuasion Sales messaging and value proposition design Brain science applied to decision-making Marketing strategy and effectiveness Complex B2B and enterprise sales Customer communication and influence Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Revenue Officers accountable for marketing and sales return. Sales leaders and B2B teams selling complex or high-value solutions where messaging is a competitive differentiator. Marketing and brand teams responsible for messaging, value proposition and campaign performance. Founder-led companies whose growth depends on the persuasiveness of their commercial communication. Audience outcomes The six stimuli that trigger the brain’s primal decision-making system, and why most traditional messaging fails to reach it. The four steps of NeuroMap®, applied to their own messaging during the session. A clearer view of why customer surveys produce misleading data, and what to use instead. Specific changes to make to current marketing materials and sales conversations.

Why organisations work with Tim Calkins A practical authority on defensive strategy, a discipline most marketing teams do not formally teach. Defending Your Brand was named 2013 Marketing Book of the Year by Expert Marketer Magazine and remains one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to competitive attack A decade of operating credibility at Kraft Foods running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, with responsibility for more than two dozen new product launches A teaching record that boards take seriously: twice-winner of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, one of six faculty to do so in its 40-plus year history Direct, current consulting work with Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and Kraft Heinz through Class 5 Consulting, which keeps the frameworks tested against live commercial pressure A specialism in biomedical and healthcare marketing that makes him useful to pharmaceutical and medtech leadership teams that find generic brand keynotes irrelevant Biography highlights Clinical Professor of Marketing and Associate Chair of the Marketing Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Almost 11 years at Kraft Foods leading brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell, Parkay and A.1. Steak Sauce; responsible for more than two dozen new product launches Author of Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Breakthrough Marketing Plans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 2012); co-editor of Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019) How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018) won Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies Two-time winner of Kellogg’s Lawrence G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2006, 2013); also recipient of the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award and the Kellogg-WHU Top Professor Award Founder of Class 5 Consulting, advising Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst on brand and growth strategy BA History (cum laude), Yale; MBA, Harvard Business School Biography Most marketing teams are trained to launch and to build. Very few are trained to defend. That asymmetry is what Tim Calkins has spent two decades teaching against, first as a brand operator at Kraft Foods, then at Kellogg, where he holds the Associate Chair of the Marketing Department and is Clinical Professor of Marketing. His book Defending Your Brand (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) is one of the few named texts on how incumbents respond to a credible competitive attack. Expert Marketer Magazine called it the 2013 Marketing Book of the Year. The thinking sits on top of close to 11 years inside Kraft, running brands including Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Taco Bell and A.1. Steak Sauce, and launching more than two dozen new products. Through Class 5 Consulting, his current clients include Abbott, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, Kraft Heinz and Hearst, work that keeps his frameworks tested against live margin and share pressure. At Kellogg he teaches Marketing Strategy, Strategic Marketing Decisions, Biomedical Marketing and Marketing Strategy for Growth and Defense, and co-edited the school’s flagship branding texts, Kellogg on Branding (Wiley, 2005) and Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World (Wiley, 2019). His standing inside the school is itself a credential. He is one of only six faculty in the 40-plus year history of Kellogg’s Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award to have won it twice, in 2006 and 2013. His later book, How to Wash a Chicken: Mastering the Business Presentation (Page Two, 2018), took Top Business Book at the IndieReader Discovery Awards and the Gold Prize for Business and Economics at the Foreword Indies, and is read inside Fortune 500 communications and commercial teams as a practical text on how senior executives lose, and win, the room. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and brand building Defensive strategy and competitive response Marketing planning and growth strategy Brand portfolio management Healthcare and biomedical marketing Business presentations and senior executive communication Lessons from Super Bowl advertising Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and category leaders inside established consumer, healthcare and B2B brand businesses Pharmaceutical, medtech and biotech commercial leadership teams running launch or defence on a regulated product Senior executives preparing for high-stakes internal and external presentations Executive education and leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 marketing and commercial functions Audience outcomes A working framework for defending a brand position against a credible competitive attack, drawn from Defending Your Brand A clearer view of how to allocate marketing investment across the brand portfolio under pressure on margin Specific, named tactics for sharper marketing plans, applicable inside the audience’s own planning cycle Practical correction on the recurring failure modes of senior executive presentations, drawn from How to Wash a Chicken Sector-specific application for healthcare and biomedical audiences, where most generic brand content does not land

Why organisations work with Gabriela Salinas She converts brand into a number a CFO will defend. Her methodology training underpins valuations used in M&A, licensing, litigation, and tax disputes at companies including Bank of America, Telefónica, and Repsol. She sits inside the rulebook. Membership of ISO/PC 231, the committee behind the international brand valuation standard, means she can speak with first-hand authority on what counts as a credible valuation and what does not. Her sustainability research pushes back on the prevailing ESG storyline. Perceived sustainability lifts brand value only when customers see it improving the product, a finding that reframes how marketing teams should brief CFOs on ESG spend. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley reference manual cited across the discipline, give her a depth of source material that bureau speakers in marketing rarely match. She teaches the next generation of CFOs and CMOs at IE Business School, which means her frameworks are tested every term against live cases brought by senior executives. Biography highlights Senior Director, Brand Finance, and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute Adjunct Professor of Strategic Brand Management and Brand Valuation at IE Business School since 2011 Author of The International Brand Valuation Manual (Wiley, 2009) and two earlier brand valuation titles Member of ISO/PC 231, the international committee for the brand valuation standard Published in the Journal of Brand Management, Marketing Science Institute, and Harvard Deusto Business Review Previously Global Senior Brand Manager at Deloitte and Managing Director at Brand Finance Iberia Biography Brand is the largest single intangible on many corporate balance sheets, and one of the least understood by the people who sign off on its budget. Boards approve brand investment with little sense of how it converts to enterprise value. CFOs ask for a number and receive a story. Gabriela Salinas works at the seam between marketing and finance, where that confusion is most expensive. As Senior Director at Brand Finance and Global Managing Director of the Brand Finance Institute, she advises corporations on what their brand is worth, how to measure it, and how to manage it as a financial asset. Her client work has included Bank of America, Telefónica, Repsol, Mapfre, Iberia, LaLiga, and Johnson & Johnson. Her authority rests on three foundations. Twenty years of practitioner work across Brand Finance, Deloitte, and FutureBrand in New York, Madrid, Singapore, and Buenos Aires. Three published books on brand valuation, including the Wiley manual that remains a standard reference in the field. And membership of ISO/PC 231, the international committee that wrote the global standard for brand valuation methodology. Her recent research with Carmen Abril at Complutense University tests a question CFOs have been asking quietly for years. Does sustainability add brand value? The finding: only when customers see it improving the product. That answer travels well in rooms where marketing teams are under pressure to justify ESG spend in financial terms. Key speaking topics Brand valuation and intangible asset measurement Brand as a financial asset on the balance sheet Sustainability and brand value Corporate reputation and brand architecture Strategic brand management Brand portfolio strategy in M&A and licensing Ideal for CFOs and CMOs working to align brand investment with measurable enterprise value Boards reviewing brand performance, M&A intangibles, or ESG capital allocation Marketing and finance leadership teams jointly accountable for brand strategy Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for discussing brand in financial terms with CFOs, auditors, and investors Clarity on which brand metrics actually predict commercial outcomes and which are noise A defensible position on whether and how sustainability investment translates into brand value Familiarity with the ISO methodology that underpins formal brand valuation in M&A, tax, and litigation

Why organisations work with Tom Roach He originated the “performance plateau” framework, a specific, named diagnosis of the growth ceiling that confronts brands over-indexed on performance channels, developed in collaboration with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and published in Marketing Week. His IPA Effectiveness Gold Awards span McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, among the most analytically rigorous advertising effectiveness cases in UK industry history. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, he worked directly alongside Les Binet, the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research, placing him at the centre of the field’s most serious practitioner thinking. He is one of the few voices making the commercial case for brand investment from inside a performance-first agency group, giving his arguments about the brand/performance divide an operational credibility that consulting positions rarely carry. His “Share of Model” framework addresses an unmapped emergent risk: how large language models represent brands, and what that means for commercial visibility as AI increasingly mediates discovery and purchase intent. Biography highlights VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group; prior roles at adam&eveDDB, BBH London, Leo Burnett, and AMV BBDO – a career spanning over two decades at the leading edge of UK advertising Multiple Gold IPA Effectiveness Awards across campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB working directly alongside Les Binet Key contributor to BBH London’s designation as IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year 2018–19 Marketing Week columnist; regular speaker at Cannes Lions, SXSW, Google Firestarters, and IPA Effweek Originator of the “performance plateau” concept (with Dr Grace Kite) and associated “Bothism” brand/performance integration framework, widely adopted in marketing practice Biography Many marketing organisations are measuring the right things in the wrong sequence. Brands that concentrated investment in performance channels – search, social, display – often found their growth curve flattening at precisely the moment leadership expected it to accelerate. Tom Roach named this pattern the “performance plateau,” developing the concept with econometrician Dr Grace Kite and publishing it in Marketing Week, where it has since entered mainstream marketing vocabulary. The credibility behind that argument is operational. As Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Roach worked directly alongside Les Binet – the most cited figure in marketing effectiveness research – before that, spending seven years driving BBH London’s effectiveness practice to IPA Effectiveness Company of the Year status in 2018–19. The IPA Gold Awards he contributed to, across McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis, and Barclays, represent some of the most analytically demanding advertising cases in UK industry history. At Jellyfish, part of The Brandtech Group, Roach holds a position that few brand effectiveness thinkers occupy: making the case for long-term brand investment from within a digital-first, performance-oriented agency. That vantage point has produced frameworks with real institutional friction behind them, “Bothism” (the philosophy of ending the false choice between brand and performance), a revised model of how people enter and move through markets, and “Share of Model,” which addresses what large language models say about brands and why this matters commercially. He writes regularly for Marketing Week and speaks at Cannes Lions, SXSW, and IPA Effweek, using those platforms to pressure-test frameworks with practitioners rather than simply advocate positions. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness Brand and performance marketing integration The performance plateau Brand building in fragmented media Creative effectiveness Generative AI and brand strategy AI brand visibility and Share of Model Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams whose growth from performance channels is flattening CFOs and senior leaders challenged to build the internal case for long-term brand investment Brand and performance marketing teams operating in organisational silos Agency leadership and strategy teams working across integrated client portfolios Audience outcomes A specific diagnostic for identifying whether their organisation has hit the performance plateau, and a framework for addressing it Clearer understanding of how brand building and performance marketing are commercially interdependent rather than competing priorities A framework for evaluating creative effectiveness across fragmented, platform-native media environments Practical thinking on what AI-mediated search and discovery means for brand visibility (Share of Model) Language and commercial evidence to make the case for brand investment to boards and finance leadership