Marketing & Branding

Why organisations work with Wayne Hemingway MBE Built one of Britain’s best-known fashion labels from a Camden Market stall and sold it to Pentland in 1999, then converted that experience into a 25-year design consultancy advising developers, local authorities, retailers, and cultural institutions. Operates across categories most speakers do not: fashion, mass-market housing, public-realm regeneration, festival creation, and second-hand retail, all anchored in delivered projects rather than commentary. Founded Festival of Thrift and Charity Super.Mkt, turning sustainability and circular consumption into commercially viable consumer experiences rather than awareness campaigns. Leads town-centre and coastal regeneration that gets delivered: HemingwayDesign’s Andover masterplan won 97% community backing and helped unlock Levelling Up funding, with current place-brand work in Fareham and prior visions for York, Lowestoft, and Kidderminster. Brings an unusually direct view on what makes places, products, and brands resonate, formed by working with Wimpey, TfL, Shelter, the National Trust, Girlguiding, the Southbank Centre, and more than forty local authorities. Biography highlights Co-founder of Red or Dead; won British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year three consecutive years, 1996 to 1998; brand sold to Pentland Group in 1999. Co-founder of HemingwayDesign, the multi-disciplinary studio behind the 760-home Staiths South Bank development in Gateshead, awarded Housing Design Awards, Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project by Building Magazine, and Building for Life. Gave evidence to House of Lords select committees on housebuilding standards, and co-designed Transport for London’s staff uniform with 16,000 employees and Girlguiding’s with more than 53,000 girls and women. Co-founder of Festival of Thrift, the UK’s first large-scale festival of sustainable living, launched in 2013 and now a permanent fixture in the North East cultural calendar. Co-founder of Charity Super.Mkt with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth; pre-loved fashion concept that launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 and has since traded in Westfield, Bond Street, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford, Bluewater, and Bristol. MBE, 2006, for services to the design and fashion industries; Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria University; honorary doctorates from Wolverhampton, Lancaster, and Stafford. Biography Red or Dead started on a Camden Market stall in the early 1980s and ended in 1999 as a Pentland Group acquisition, with three consecutive British Fashion Council Streetstyle Designer of the Year awards along the way. That trajectory, market trader to multi-million-pound exit, is the foundation Wayne Hemingway has been building on for twenty-five years. HemingwayDesign, founded with his wife and business partner Gerardine in 1999, was set up explicitly around affordable and social design. The studio’s signature project, Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, was the practical answer to Hemingway’s “Wimpeyfication and Barrattification” critique of British mass house-building. 760 homes were built with Wimpey on a Homezone model that re-thought streets, parking, and play, and the scheme won Housing Design Awards, Building Magazine’s Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project, and Building for Life. The same instinct, identify a category that has stopped trying and rebuild it with design at the centre, runs through everything that followed. Festival of Thrift, co-founded in 2013, made sustainability a free family weekend rather than a guilt trip. Charity Super.Mkt, launched at Brent Cross in January 2023 with TRAID’s Maria Chenoweth, turned charity-shop fashion into a destination format and reported £3 million in pre-loved sales inside two years. The same approach now drives HemingwayDesign’s town-centre work: the Andover masterplan won 97% community support and helped secure Levelling Up funding, with current place-brand work in Fareham and visions delivered for York, Lowestoft, and Kidderminster. For organisations the value is specific: a designer-entrepreneur with the credentials of a fashion founder and the track record of a public-realm developer, who can talk credibly to boards about brand, to operators about retail, and to leadership teams about why design-led businesses outlast design-decorated ones. He is an MBE, a Professor of Built Environment at Northumbria, and an author, but the argument is the work itself. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and design-led business building Brand and creative direction Sustainability and the circular economy Place-making, regeneration, and the future of the high street Affordable housing and mass-market design Retail futures and pre-loved consumer behaviour Festivals, culture, and community-led commercial models Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and creative directors of consumer brands. Property developers, housebuilders, and local authority leadership teams responsible for placemaking and regeneration. Retail and hospitality leaders rebuilding propositions for second-hand, sustainable, and experience-led formats. Cultural organisations, charities, and festival operators looking to commercialise purpose without losing it. Audience outcomes A working view of how Red or Dead and HemingwayDesign turned design instinct into commercial categories that lasted. A clearer sense of where sustainability becomes a viable consumer business rather than a marketing position. Specific lessons from Staiths South Bank, Festival of Thrift, and Charity Super.Mkt on building new categories from a standing start. Direct, plainly spoken provocations on brand, place, and the social value of design that audiences leave talking about.

Why organisations work with Usain Bolt The credibility here is categorical, not comparative: no other speaker has won the same event at three consecutive Olympic Games, making his perspective on repeat delivery under pressure genuinely without parallel. His career reframes the performance conversation from talent to architecture – specifically, how training structure, mental preparation, and team interdependence produce consistent output at the moment it matters most. The 4×100m relay thread in his career offers a direct organisational parallel: individual excellence that only converts to results through precise coordination and collective timing. He overcame scoliosis to break multiple world records, giving organisations a concrete, non-generic reference point for performance under physical and psychological constraint. Four Laureus World Sportsman of the Year awards and a record six World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year titles are institutional recognitions of sustained performance, not a single peak – the specific distinction that makes this relevant to leadership rather than motivation. Biography highlights Sole holder of both the 100m (9.58s) and 200m (19.19s) world records, set at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin – both remain unbroken Eight Olympic gold medals across the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Games; the only athlete to win the 100m, 200m and 4×100m relay at three consecutive Olympics Eleven World Athletics Championships gold medals – the most by any male athlete in the event’s history Four-time Laureus World Sportsman of the Year; record six-time IAAF/World Athletics Male World Athlete of the Year Long-term brand partnerships with PUMA and Hublot; founder of Tracks & Records, Champion Shave and Enertor Founder of the Usain Bolt Foundation, supporting children through education and culture in Jamaica Biography Usain Bolt ran the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds in Berlin in 2009. That record has never been broken. More than the number, it is the context that matters to organisations: he ran it in a championship final, under the weight of global expectation, after having already redefined what was thought possible at two previous Olympics. What makes Bolt’s career relevant beyond sport is the pattern, not the peak. He won the 100m, 200m and 4×100m relay at Beijing, London and Rio – three consecutive Games, the same events, progressively higher scrutiny. The architecture behind that consistency – how preparation, focus, team interdependence and mental control combine to produce results on demand – is precisely what high-performance organisations are trying to build. His record six World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year awards and four Laureus World Sportsman of the Year titles are institutional recognitions of sustained excellence. They are not lifetime achievement honours. They reflect delivery at the moment it was required, year after year, at the sport’s defining events. Bolt also overcame scoliosis throughout his career, a fact that reframes the performance story entirely – from natural gift to deliberate construction. For organisations serious about building cultures that perform under pressure, that distinction is the point. Key speaking topics Sustained elite performance and repeat delivery Mental preparation and competitive focus Performing under extreme pressure and scrutiny Team cohesion and collective execution Personal discipline and long-term conditioning Building and sustaining a global personal brand Resilience and performance under physical constraint Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams focused on sustained performance culture Sales leadership and high-performance commercial teams CHROs and people leaders building resilience and high-output team environments Global brand and sponsorship events requiring a credible, internationally recognised anchor speaker Audience outcomes A concrete, evidence-based model for what distinguishes one-off achievement from repeatable, pressure-tested excellence Clearer understanding of how individual preparation connects to collective team performance A reframed perspective on talent versus structure – and what organisations can actually control Practical reference points for maintaining focus and composure in high-stakes, high-scrutiny environments Insight into how global brand credibility is built through consistent performance rather than singular moments

Why organisations work with Tyler Brule He has built, sold, and continued to build international media brands across more than two decades, with Wallpaper* sold to Time Inc and Monocle scaled into print, radio, retail and bureaux across multiple cities. His agency Winkreative has shaped the visual and editorial identity of Swiss International Air Lines, Prada, American Express, BlackBerry, Bally and others, giving him a practitioner’s view on brand systems rather than a commentator’s. He offers a direct point of view on why print, physical retail, and curated journalism continue to command paying customers when the industry consensus says they should not. His Monocle platform reports from cities around the world on business, design, urbanism and soft power, giving senior audiences a global perspective grounded in on-the-ground reporting, not desk research. Biography highlights Founder of Wallpaper* (1996), sold to Time Inc in 1997. Founder of Winkreative (1998), a branding agency with clients including Swiss International Air Lines, Prada, American Express, Bally, Lexus, BlackBerry and Sky News. Founder, chairman and editor-in-chief of Monocle, launched in February 2007. Launched Konfekt in 2020, a Zurich-based quarterly aimed at female readers in English and German. Long-running “Fast Lane” columnist at the Financial Times Weekend. Recipient of the British Society of Magazine Editors’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Biography In 1996, a Canadian journalist recovering from a sniper injury sustained while reporting in Afghanistan took a small business loan and launched a style and design magazine. Wallpaper* became one of the defining publishing launches of the 1990s and was sold to Time Inc within a year. Most editors do this once. Brule did it twice. The second time, in 2007, the conditions were worse. Print was contracting and digital advertising was eating the industry. Monocle launched into that market as a global affairs, design and business title with high cover prices, physical retail shops, and bureaux in cities including Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong. It is now a media brand spanning print, Monocle 24 radio, online, retail, and Konfekt, a Zurich-based women’s title launched in 2020 for English and German-speaking markets. Alongside the publishing work, Winkreative has shaped the brand and editorial identity of Swiss International Air Lines after the collapse of Swissair, and worked with Prada, American Express, Bally, Lexus, BlackBerry, and others. That practitioner experience sits behind his commentary: he has actually built the kind of brand systems most speakers describe from the outside. For senior buyers, his value is a specific, contrarian point of view on where attention, loyalty, and paying audiences actually live, supported by a Monocle reporting platform that covers cities, soft power and consumer culture from bureaux on three continents. The British Society of Magazine Editors’ Lifetime Achievement Award sits in that context: recognition of a body of work in an industry that has consolidated around platforms he refused to use. Key speaking topics Brand building in saturated categories The future of media and paid content Design as commercial infrastructure Cities, soft power and the urban consumer Entrepreneurship in declining industries Editorial and customer experience Global trends and consumer culture Ideal for Boards and executive teams in consumer, luxury, media, hospitality, travel and retail Chief marketing, brand and customer officers reviewing brand identity and customer experience Founders and investors building category-defining consumer brands After-dinner and moderation work for senior international audiences Audience outcomes A practitioner’s view on what makes a brand worth paying for, drawn from Wallpaper*, Monocle and Winkreative A clearer sense of where attention and loyalty are actually building in consumer markets, not where the industry says they are A global, city-by-city read on design, retail and consumer behaviour, sourced from Monocle’s reporting bureaux A founder’s account of building media and brand businesses that run against the direction of their industry

Why organisations work with Tom Dixon A working founder and creative director, not a commentator: he runs a brand sold in more than 50 countries and speaks from inside the operating reality of product, manufacturing, and distribution A distinctive view on innovation as material experimentation, formed across four decades from welded scrap-metal pieces in the 1980s to lighting and furniture held in the V&A and MoMA Direct experience of corporate design leadership at Habitat, where he was Head of Design and then Creative Director from 1998 to 2008, alongside running his own studio Public recognition that signals durability rather than novelty: OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014, London Design Medal 2019 Candour about how the design industry actually works, including the limits of design education, the politics of large retailers, and the economics of running an independent brand at scale Biography highlights Self-taught British designer who began welding furniture from salvaged metal in the mid-1980s after working as a bass guitarist in the band Funkapolitan Head of Design then Creative Director at Habitat, 1998 to 2008 Founder and creative director of Tom Dixon, the brand established in 2002 in Kings Cross, London, with collections distributed across more than 50 countries Appointed OBE in 2001 and CBE in the 2025 New Year Honours list, both for services to British design Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet 2014; recipient of the London Design Medal 2019 Work held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Centre Pompidou Author of Dixonary, a 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013 Biography The S-Chair was made by a designer with no formal training. Tom Dixon taught himself to weld while repairing motorbike frames, and the early pieces that ended up in production at Cappellini in Milan were built from scrap metal in a London workshop. The career that followed is unusual because the self-taught starting point was never quietly dropped; it became the operating thesis of the brand. Between 1998 and 2008, Dixon ran design at Habitat, first as Head of Design and then as Creative Director. He was attempting, inside a large retailer, the same problem most consumer businesses now face: how to keep a coherent design voice while scaling distribution and managing cost. He left in 2008 to put his weight behind Tom Dixon, the brand he had founded in 2002, now a manufacturer and retailer of lighting, furniture, and accessories sold in more than 50 countries. His honours track the long arc rather than a single moment. OBE in 2001, CBE in 2025, Designer of the Year at Maison and Objet in 2014, the London Design Medal in 2019, and permanent collections at the V&A, MoMA New York, and the Centre Pompidou. Dixonary, the 614-page monograph published by Violette Editions in 2013, sets out his working method in his own words: a project, an inspiration image, and a short paragraph on the connection. For a corporate audience the value is specific. Dixon speaks as an operator who has run product, brand, and distribution at scale, who has watched several rounds of industry change from inside a manufacturing business, and who is unusually direct about what works and what does not. He treats design less as a finishing layer than as an argument the company is making, repeated across decades, about why its products exist. Key speaking topics Design as commercial strategy Brand-building from a material idea Innovation through material experimentation The founder-creative director operating model Manufacturing, distribution, and the economics of an independent design brand Lessons from forty years of British design Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and product leaders considering how design contributes to commercial advantage Founders and CEOs of consumer, lifestyle, and design-led businesses Architecture, interiors, hospitality, and retail audiences working on environments and product Innovation, R&D, and creative leadership audiences interested in long-horizon brand-building Audience outcomes A working definition of design as a strategic asset rather than a styling layer applied late A founder’s account of building and sustaining a brand across four decades of industry change A direct view on how material experimentation translates into commercial product An operator’s perspective on the trade-offs between independent design and scaled retail distribution A more candid sense of how the design and manufacturing industries actually function

Why organisations work with Simon Anholt Twenty years of direct advisory work with Presidents, Prime Ministers, monarchs and governments across more than 60 countries gives him a breadth of comparative case material that no academic or agency can match. The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, one of the largest social surveys ever conducted and running since 2005, gives his analysis a measured baseline rather than an anecdotal one. The Good Country Index reframed nation performance from domestic output to global contribution and has become a reference point for governments, NGOs and multilateral institutions. His book The Good Country Equation was described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as «a masterpiece», and his earlier books Competitive Identity, Brand America and Brand New Justice are among the standard texts on place branding and its implications. He founded the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy, anchoring him inside the academic community that now studies the field he defined. Biography highlights Independent policy advisor; Anholt & Co. has worked with governments of more than 60 countries Coined the term «nation brand» in 1998; founder of the field of place branding Founder of the Good Country Index (2014) and the Global Vote (2016) Founder of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (2005-); 300 billion+ data points analysed Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia Author of Brand New Justice, Brand America, Competitive Identity, Places and The Good Country Equation Founding and emeritus editor of the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy Biography National reputation is one of the most consequential and least-understood assets a country owns, and Simon Anholt has spent more than two decades making it measurable. He coined the term «nation brand» in 1998, founded the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index in 2005, and has since advised more than sixty governments, Presidents, Prime Ministers and monarchs on how to build the kind of international reputation that actually shifts investment, talent and political influence. His central argument is that reputation is earned through what a country does, not what it says. That thesis became the Good Country Index in 2014, an annual ranking of how much each country contributes to humanity and the planet, built from 35 indicators drawn largely from United Nations and World Bank datasets. It has since become a reference point in international policy discussions, and a rare example of a league table that leaders take seriously. The Global Vote project, which he launched in 2016, extends the same argument into electoral politics, allowing international participation in national elections on the basis of candidates’ potential contribution to humanity. His books, Brand New Justice, Brand America, Competitive Identity, Places and The Good Country Equation, set out the academic and practical foundations of the field, with the latter described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as «a masterpiece». He holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of East Anglia and founded the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy, the academic journal that now carries the field he defined. For governments, national agencies, multilateral institutions and multinationals working on the intersection of reputation, policy and global cooperation, Anholt offers a combination of comparative advisory experience, independent data and a coherent ethical frame that is difficult to find elsewhere. Key speaking topics The Good Country Index and the case for global cooperation Nation branding and place branding Reputation, policy and national competitiveness Governance and the global consequences of domestic decisions Big data and national identity Tourism, trade and investment promotion strategy Ideal for Governments, heads of state offices, ministries and national agencies working on reputation, investment and tourism Multilateral institutions, NGOs and policy forums focused on international cooperation and the SDG agenda Multinationals with significant place-branding or country-of-origin exposure International conferences on geopolitics, development and public diplomacy Audience outcomes A measurable framework for national reputation drawn from the Nation Brands Index and the Good Country Index A clearer view of the policy decisions that genuinely move international perception, versus those that do not Comparative case material from more than 60 countries advised by Anholt & Co. Reference texts in Competitive Identity and The Good Country Equation for internal and programme follow-up A framing of national strategy that integrates reputation, policy and global contribution rather than treating them as separate agendas

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 Samuel J Scott He argues the brand-versus-performance trade-off in CFO language, which is the conversation that actually decides marketing budgets in a downturn. He is a current Head of Marketing at a connected TV advertising platform, so the case studies are operating reality, not retrospective consulting. His Promotion Fix column in The Drum has run since 2017, giving senior marketers a reference point on advertising effectiveness most peers in the room already read. He holds a WARC Master of Advertising Effectiveness and Marketing Week Mini-MBAs, which is unusually formal training for a working marketer presenting to boards. He takes a public contrarian line on adtech and AI marketing hype, useful for leadership teams tired of vendor pitches dressed as keynotes. Biography highlights Head of Marketing, Adte, a connected TV advertising platform. Columnist of The Promotion Fix in The Drum since 2017; previously a contributing columnist for TechCrunch and Moz. Master of Advertising Effectiveness, WARC, UK. Mini-MBAs in Marketing and Brand Management, Marketing Week, London. 2019 juror, UK Advertising Association Young Lions, the UK Cannes Lions qualifier. Former Director of Marketing at Logz.io and Head of Marketing at Faddom in the Israeli B2B tech sector. Biography In a downturn, the marketing line is the easiest to cut and the most commonly mis-cut. Performance budgets get protected because they are measurable. Brand budgets get reduced because they are not. Within two years, the performance machine stops compounding because the brand has stopped feeding it. That is the argument Samuel J Scott has been making in The Drum’s Promotion Fix column since 2017, and in keynotes for marketing leadership teams across more than two dozen countries. He is one of the few speakers on this subject who is also a working operator, currently Head of Marketing at the connected TV advertising platform Adte, and previously a marketing director in the Israeli B2B technology sector at companies including Logz.io and Faddom. His credentials sit on the technical side of the discipline. A Master of Advertising Effectiveness from WARC, two Mini-MBAs in marketing and brand management from Marketing Week in London, and CIM certifications across marcom planning, copywriting and AI marketing tools. He served as a jury member for the UK Advertising Association’s 2019 Young Lions, the UK qualifier for Cannes. The editorial register is contrarian. Scott has built a reputation for arguing against marketing fashion, whether that is uncritical AI adoption, attribution theatre, or brand purpose campaigns that cannot survive a CFO’s scrutiny. Audiences leave with a sharper view of how to spend a marketing budget when growth gets harder, not a slide deck of trends. Key speaking topics Brand and performance advertising Marketing effectiveness and measurement Defending marketing budgets in downturns B2B marketing and brand-led growth AI in marketing communications Adtech and connected TV Marketing communications strategy Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors under pressure to justify brand spend to a CFO. B2B technology marketing leaders rebuilding a brand layer above lead-gen. Boards and executive teams reviewing marketing as a commercial function, not a cost line. Marketing communications and agency teams negotiating AI-era budget assumptions. Audience outcomes A working language for arguing brand investment in financial terms. A clearer split between what performance media can do and what only brand work delivers. A sceptic’s filter on AI marketing claims from agencies and adtech vendors. A defensible structure for marketing budgets through a downturn. Specific reference points from current B2B technology marketing practice.

Why organisations work with Rory Sutherland His Alchemy argument, that businesses leave their most valuable opportunities untapped by optimising for logic rather than psychology, is built on 30 years of commercial practice at Ogilvy, not academic research. He founded and runs a dedicated behavioural science practice inside one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, where small contextual changes have produced large, documented commercial results, including tripling a call centre’s conversion rate through script changes alone. His concept of “psycho-logic” gives commercial teams a named, usable framework for the decisions that resist rational modelling: pricing, positioning, and customer experience chief among them. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views, meaning his arguments are already part of the strategic vocabulary of many senior audiences, any conversation with him starts further ahead. He founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences – making him an institutional builder in the field, not simply a commentator on it. Biography highlights Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK; co-founder and leader of Ogilvy’s Behavioural Science Practice, established 2012 Author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense (Penguin, 2019); co-author of Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? (2021) Two TED Talks – “Life Lessons from an Ad Man” and “Sweat the Small Stuff” – with over 7 million combined views Former President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising; former Chair of Judges, Direct Jury, Cannes Lions Fortnightly “The Wiki Man” columnist, The Spectator; founder of Nudgestock, the annual behavioural sciences festival Studied Classics at Christ’s College, Cambridge; joined Ogilvy as a graduate trainee in 1988 Biography In 2012, Rory Sutherland did something unusual for an advertising agency: he built a team of psychology graduates inside Ogilvy and pointed them at commercial problems. The premise was direct. Most organisations optimise for the logical version of what customers want, not the psychological reality of how they decide. Three decades of commercial practice have made that premise difficult to argue with. His 2019 book Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense sets out the argument in full. Human decision-making, Sutherland contends, follows a “psycho-logic”, a coherent but non-rational set of rules governing what people buy, how much they’ll pay, and how satisfied they feel. Richard Thaler and Robert Cialdini both appear in its pages; Nassim Nicholas Taleb described it as “a breakthrough book.” The Behavioural Science Practice he founded at Ogilvy tests these ideas commercially. Small contextual adjustments – changes to a call centre script, a reframing of a product’s positioning, a tweak to the sequence of a customer journey – have produced measurable results. It is the kind of evidence that makes his argument practical rather than purely theoretical. He served as President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and as Chair of the Judges for Cannes Lions’ Direct Jury. His two TED talks have passed seven million combined views. He writes a fortnightly column in The Spectator and founded Nudgestock, the annual festival of behavioural sciences. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics and commercial strategy Consumer psychology and decision-making Perception, value, and pricing psychology The limits of data-driven marketing Creativity and non-rational problem-solving Behavioural design and customer experience Nudge theory in organisational contexts Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and marketing leadership teams rethinking growth strategy Commercial strategy and innovation leaders exploring alternatives to pure data-led optimisation Senior executives and boards examining how psychological insight can improve pricing, product design, and customer experience Conference audiences in financial services, retail, consumer goods, and technology where customer behaviour directly drives commercial performance Audience outcomes A named framework, “psycho-logic”, for identifying where logical optimisation is producing diminishing returns in marketing and commercial strategy Specific, documented examples of small behavioural interventions that produced large commercial results A clearer understanding of why the most effective growth moves often look counterintuitive, and how to make the internal case for them Practical grounding in behavioural economics principles applicable to pricing, customer experience, and product design A more honest audit of where data-driven approaches reach their limits and what to reach for instead

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 Reed Paget He has built a sustainability brand from a blank sheet, including the UK’s first compostable corn bottle and a working carbon neutral supply chain, so he can speak to climate ambition with operating evidence rather than slide-deck targets. He hard-wired a charitable mission into a commercial business by directing 100% of Belu’s net profits to WaterAid, a model that informs how purpose can be structured into a P&L without becoming marketing decoration. His Schwab Foundation award and UK Cabinet Office ambassadorship give him a policy-level fluency that sits behind the entrepreneur story, useful for boards balancing regulator pressure with commercial reality. Through One Earth Innovation and Ecocap, he has worked across compostable plastics, recyclable packaging, and low-energy products, so he can talk innovation portfolio rather than single-product anecdote. Biography highlights Founder of Belu Water in 2002, positioned as the UK’s most eco-friendly bottled water brand and the world’s first carbon neutral bottled water. Launched the UK’s first compostable plastic bottle made from corn in 2006. UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, awarded by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Social Enterprise Ambassador for the UK Cabinet Office between 2007 and 2010. Founder of One Earth Innovation, a green product incubator, and founder of Ecocap Ltd., which patented a more recyclable bottle cap design. Award-winning documentary maker whose film Amerikan Passport won Best Documentary at Slamdance 1999. Biography Belu was launched in 2002 as a bottled water company built around an environmental thesis the rest of the category had not yet taken seriously. The business committed 100% of net profits to clean water projects through WaterAid, made the UK’s first compostable corn-based plastic bottle in 2006, and was positioned as the world’s first carbon neutral bottled water brand. That is the kind of operating evidence boards now need behind sustainability claims. The gap between a net zero announcement and the supply chain decisions that deliver it is where most ESG narratives lose credibility, and a founder who has worked through compostable materials, packaging redesign, and a charitable profit structure is talking from inside that problem rather than around it. The wider track record stretches the same instinct across products and policy. One Earth Innovation works as a green product incubator across compostable plastics, sustainable horticulture, and eco-friendly consumer goods. Ecocap, separately, patented a more recyclable bottle cap design. Recognition from the Schwab Foundation as UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008, and a three-year Social Enterprise Ambassador role with the UK Cabinet Office, give the commercial story a policy-level frame. Before the eco-entrepreneur chapter, Paget was a journalist and filmmaker, directing Amerikan Passport, a documentary shot across war zones at the end of the Cold War that won Best Documentary at Slamdance 1999. That earlier instinct, going where most cameras did not, runs through the later environmental work. Key speaking topics Sustainable product design and packaging Carbon neutral supply chains Social enterprise business models Green consumer marketing Climate-led innovation portfolios Mission-driven fundraising and investor relations Ideal for Boards and ExCos translating ESG commitments into operating decisions Heads of Sustainability, Packaging, and Supply Chain in consumer goods and FMCG Founders and investors building or backing impact-led ventures Marketing and brand leaders working on credible green positioning Audience outcomes A clearer view of where sustainability ambitions break against product, packaging, and supply chain realities. Specific examples of how a charitable purpose can be structured inside a commercial P&L without becoming marketing varnish. A sharper read on what investors, regulators, and consumers will actually credit as substantive environmental progress. Practical reference points from a founder who has shipped first-of-kind sustainable products at commercial scale.

Why organisations work with Philippe Starck He has redefined entire categories through design, not decorated them. The Delano in Miami did not improve hotels, it created the boutique-hotel format that Ian Schrager built a global business on. The Louis Ghost chair sold over a million units by reimagining what mass-produced furniture could look like. His “democratic design” doctrine reframes design as a commercial and ethical question rather than an aesthetic one. The argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price, not the highest, is directly useful to organisations rethinking product strategy and customer access. He works at every scale a business cares about. Hospitality interiors for Royalton, Mondrian, Sanderson, Le Meurice. Industrial products for Alessi, Kartell, Microsoft, Vitra. Bathroom systems for Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Few speakers have applied a single design philosophy across that many sectors and lived to argue for it. He brings a working creator’s view of innovation, including recent collaborations on AI-designed furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, and architectural work on the Axiom space station. He speaks about where design is heading from inside the work, not from outside it. Biography highlights Designed the private apartments of President François Mitterrand at the Élysée Palace and the Café Costes in Paris, the two commissions that established his international reputation. Created the boutique-hotel category with the Delano Miami in collaboration with Ian Schrager, followed by Royalton, Paramount, Mondrian, Hudson, Sanderson, St Martin’s Lane, and Le Meurice. Iconic industrial designs include the Juicy Salif citrus reamer for Alessi, the Louis Ghost chair for Kartell (over one million units sold), the Costes chair, the Microsoft Optical Mouse, and the AXOR bathroom collections for Hansgrohe. First French speaker invited to a TED conference; his 2007 talk “Design and destiny” remains one of the platform’s most viewed design lectures. Knight of the Legion of Honour, Officer of Arts and Letters, recipient of the D&AD President’s Award, the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, and the Grand Prix National de la Création Industrielle, among more than 100 international awards. Appointed artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union in 2008, and Ambassador of Creativity and Innovation in 2009. Biography The Delano in Miami opened in 1995 and changed the economics of hospitality. Before it, hotels competed on stars, location, and service. After it, hotels competed on atmosphere and identity. The boutique-hotel category, now a global multi-billion-dollar segment, was built on a single project that Philippe Starck designed for Ian Schrager. The lesson, for any business that thinks design is a finishing layer, is that one designed space can create a market. That pattern, design that creates rather than decorates, runs through fifty years of work. The Café Costes in 1984 reinvented the Parisian café and produced a chair that sold 400,000 units. The Louis Ghost chair for Kartell sold over a million. Hospitality interiors for the Mondrian, Royalton, Sanderson, and Le Meurice. Bathroom systems with Hansgrohe AXOR since 1994. Industrial products for Alessi, Vitra, Microsoft, Emeco, and Duravit. The discipline behind these is what Starck calls democratic design: the argument that quality belongs at the lowest possible price the market can support, not the highest, and that a designer’s obligation is to make good things widely available rather than rare things expensive. This is a usable doctrine for executives, not just designers. It treats design as a commercial decision about category position, brand identity, product economics, and customer access. It rejects the binary of luxury versus mass-market and asks instead what quality at scale should look like. It is also a working philosophy, currently being applied to AI-collaborative furniture with Kartell and Autodesk, to hospitality projects from Paris to Zurich to the French Riviera, and to the Axiom commercial space station. Starck is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an Officer of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, the D&AD President’s Award, and more than 100 international honours. He was the first Frenchman invited to a TED conference and served as artistic director for the French presidency of the European Union. For organisations rethinking how they show up to customers, he offers something rarer than a topic. He offers a method that has built categories. Key speaking topics Democratic design and the economics of quality at scale Design as a driver of brand identity and category creation Hospitality and experience-led environments Product innovation and industrial design Sustainability, dematerialisation, and the future of materials Creativity, AI, and the changing role of the designer The philosophy of useful objects Ideal for Hospitality and consumer brand leadership teams reconsidering how environments and products carry brand identity CMOs, chief brand officers, and customer experience executives who need to argue for design as a commercial lever Product, R&D, and innovation leaders facing decisions about quality, materials, and category position Founders and senior leaders building businesses where design choices and brand identity are inseparable Audience outcomes A working definition of democratic design and how it applies to product strategy, brand position, and pricing decisions A clearer view of when design creates a category versus when it decorates one, with named examples from hospitality and consumer goods Direct exposure to a creator’s view of where design is heading, including AI collaboration, dematerialisation, and the post-plastic era Permission to treat design as a board-level question rather than a downstream finishing exercise

Why organisations work with Peter Guber He has built and led organizations across film, music, professional sports, and esports. The storytelling framework that runs through his work has been pressure-tested in each, and senior audiences hear it from someone who has actually used it to move boards, talent, partners, and capital. He authored the only mainstream business book on storytelling to hit #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists simultaneously. Tell to Win and his HBR cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller give audiences a portable framework they can take into their own communications work, not a collection of war stories. He speaks from current operating experience as Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment, co-executive chairman of the Golden State Warriors, and owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The material reflects problems he still has to solve every week. The same discipline has been honed across more than forty consecutive years of teaching at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, recognized in 2017 with the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor. Biography highlights Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group; former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; former Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment; former President of Columbia Pictures; co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks. Films he produced or executive produced have grossed over $3 billion worldwide and received 50 Academy Award nominations, including five Best Picture nominations and the Best Picture win for Rain Man. Other titles include Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Flashdance, Gorillas in the Mist, The Witches of Eastwick, and The Kids Are All Right. Co-Executive Chairman and co-owner of the Golden State Warriors (NBA Champions 2015, 2017, 2018); owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers (World Series winners 2020 and 2024); Owner and Executive Chairman of Los Angeles Football Club (MLS); Co-Executive Chairman of aXiomatic Gaming, owner of esports franchise Team Liquid. Author of Tell to Win (Crown Business, 2011), instant #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller; named by Fortune one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” Earlier books include Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, which became a seven-year AMC television series he hosted. Author of the Harvard Business Review cover article “The Four Truths of the Storyteller” (December 2007). Professor for more than forty years at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. UCLA Medal recipient (2017). Appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by Governor Jerry Brown (2017). Biography Sony Pictures Entertainment led the industry in domestic box office market share for four straight years after Peter Guber became Chairman and CEO in 1989. Over the same period, the studio earned 120 Academy Award nominations, the most ever recorded by any company in any four-year stretch. What ran through that work, and through the decades before it at Columbia Pictures, Polygram, and Casablanca Records, was a discipline Guber later codified. He could take a strategic intent and translate it into a story the audience he needed to move had reason to act on. He named it purposeful storytelling. The Harvard Business Review cover article The Four Truths of the Storyteller laid out the four conditions a story has to meet to do real work in a room: true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. Tell to Win, his expansion of the same thesis, hit number one simultaneously on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists in 2011. Fortune named it one of “5 Business Books You Can Really Use.” In Guber’s argument, data is the cost of entry; persuasion is the work that closes the deal. Guber still runs Mandalay Entertainment Group, co-owns the three-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors and the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers, and chairs the esports investment vehicle aXiomatic. He has taught the same craft at UCLA Anderson and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than forty consecutive years, by the Chancellor’s account never missing a year. In 2017, UCLA awarded him the UCLA Medal, its highest honor, the same year Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the University of California Board of Regents. Key speaking topics Purposeful storytelling in business Leadership communication and persuasion Leading through uncertainty and disruption Innovation and organizational culture High-performance team building across industries Storytelling for marketing and brand strategy Ideal for CEOs and executive leadership teams preparing to communicate strategic change to internal and external audiences. Chief commercial, marketing, and sales leaders rebuilding the persuasion infrastructure of their organizations. Founders and senior operators raising capital, recruiting talent, or pitching boards. Executive education clients, leadership development programs, and partner or customer summits where the centerpiece is communication craft. Audience outcomes A working test for their own communications: whether the story is true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission. A sharper distinction between informing an audience and persuading them, with a clearer view of where most leadership communication breaks down. Specific examples from film, sports, and the boardroom that they can map onto their own decisions and pitches. A method for finding and shaping the right story for a specific audience and a specific moment. Shared vocabulary they can take back to their teams and demand of communications, marketing, and IR functions.