Marketing & Branding

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Michael Solomon His textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being is the most widely adopted course text on the subject worldwide, which means the conceptual vocabulary used by a generation of marketers traces back to his work. He has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, and United Airlines on consumer psychology applied to brand, retail, and product decisions. He brings academic discipline to fast-moving commercial questions: AI consumer trust, avatar identity, metaverse engagement, and post-pandemic spending behaviour, all grounded in published research. Holder of the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University and recognised among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications. Regular Forbes.com contributor, with commentary picked up by The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, and Time, giving clients a speaker whose framing is already in market. Biography highlights Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University. Author of more than thirty books, including the global bestselling textbook Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being and The New Chameleons. Former faculty at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn University, and the University of Manchester. Forbes.com contributor; commentary in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Adweek, Time, and on Today, Good Morning America, and CNN. Cutty Sark Men’s Fashion Award recipient for research on the psychology of clothing. Client roster spanning Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, P&G, eBay, Subaru, United Airlines, Microsoft Advertising, and the U.S. Army. Biography The textbook that trained a generation of marketers in consumer behaviour, Buying, Having, and Being, sits on Michael Solomon’s CV. So does a Forbes column read by the executives who now run those marketers’ employers. That dual position, academic standard-setter and commercial commentator, is what brings serious brands to him for strategic reads on customer psychology. Solomon holds the Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair at Saint Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business, with prior faculty posts at NYU, Rutgers, Auburn, and the University of Manchester. His PhD in social psychology from UNC Chapel Hill anchors a research career that has placed him among the ten most productive scholars in advertising and marketing communications, and the fifteen most cited in behavioural sciences and fashion. The applied work is where the academic record converts into commercial value. Solomon has advised Calvin Klein, Levi Strauss, Under Armour, BMW, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Subaru, and United Airlines on questions of brand identity, customer experience, and category disruption. His current speaking work centres on consumer trust in AI and avatars, the post-pandemic spending psychology he frames as G.A.S., and the dissolution of traditional consumer categories he treats in The New Chameleons. For senior marketing, brand, and customer-experience leaders, the value is access to a thinker who can defend a claim about consumer behaviour from the underlying psychology, then translate it into a brand or product decision a board can act on. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and decision-making Brand identity and customer experience Marketing implications of AI, avatars, and the metaverse Fashion psychology and the symbolic meaning of products Post-pandemic consumer behaviour Retail disruption and category evolution Cross-cultural consumer meaning-making Ideal for CMOs and brand directors rebuilding strategy after segmentation models stop working Retail and consumer goods leadership teams confronting category disruption Customer experience and insight leads in financial services, automotive, apparel, and FMCG Boards of consumer-facing businesses assessing exposure to AI-mediated commerce Audience outcomes A sharper read on the psychology driving current consumer switching, loyalty, and category exit. Specific frameworks for thinking about AI and avatars in brand and retail experience, not generic technology commentary. Named research and case examples that senior marketers can cite internally to defend a strategic shift. A more rigorous internal vocabulary for consumer behaviour, drawn from the academic standard text in the field.

Why organisations work with Martin Lindstrom He built his reputation on primary research, not commentary. The fMRI study behind Buyology covered 2,000 consumers across five countries; the fieldwork behind Small Data covered 2,000 families across more than 70 countries. He gives senior teams a method, not a slogan. Small data is a working approach for finding the unspoken consumer signal that quantitative research routinely misses. He has advised brands across categories most consultants never touch in the same year, from Pepsi and Nestle to Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, and Disney, which means his diagnoses translate across very different commercial contexts. He treats internal bureaucracy as a brand problem. The Ministry of Common Sense names a tension every CEO recognises: the gap between what the company promises customers and what its own processes allow employees to deliver. His authority is independently signalled. TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, repeated Thinkers50 rankings, and a Wall Street Journal verdict on Brand Sense as one of the five best marketing books ever written are not bureau claims; they are matters of public record. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of Lindstrom Company, advising Fortune 500 clients including Pepsi, Nestle, Google, Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, Disney, and Unilever. Named to TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the Scientists and Thinkers category. Multiple-time Thinkers50 ranked thinker, including positions of #18, #36, and #20 in successive listings. Author of seven New York Times bestsellers, translated into roughly 60 languages, including Buyology, Brandwashed, Small Data, Brand Sense, and The Ministry of Common Sense. Columnist for TIME, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review; recurring contributor on NBC’s TODAY show. Featured in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011). Biography The fMRI study behind Buyology scanned the brains of 2,000 consumers across five countries to test what advertising and branding actually do inside the human head. Most of what the marketing industry believed about why people buy did not survive the data. That study, and the books that followed, made Martin Lindstrom one of the few branding voices senior leaders take seriously on the science of consumer decision-making. He runs Lindstrom Company, a brand and culture transformation firm whose client list reads as a cross-section of the global economy: Pepsi, Nestle, Google, Burger King, Lowe’s, LEGO, Disney, Unilever. The work is not pitch theatre. It is rebuilding brand strategy around evidence drawn from ethnographic fieldwork, neuroscience, and the unguarded behaviour of real customers in their own homes. His Small Data method came out of more than a decade visiting families in over 70 countries, looking for the small inconsistencies that point to unmet consumer needs. The thesis is direct. Big data tells you what is happening at scale. Small data tells you why, and where the next product or positioning idea actually lives. It is a working method, used inside the Lindstrom Company practice, not a publishing concept. The Ministry of Common Sense extends the same instinct inward. Lindstrom argues that most large companies have engineered themselves into a state where employees cannot do the obvious right thing for a customer without breaching a process. Strip the bureaucracy, restore common sense, and brand performance follows. Buyers who book him for the marketing thesis often find the organisational thesis is the one their executive team keeps quoting back six months later. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and consumer neuroscience Small data and ethnographic customer insight Culture transformation and corporate common sense Customer experience and behavioural decision-making Marketing effectiveness in the AI era Future of retail and physical-digital strategy Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding propositions around customer evidence rather than category convention. CEOs and COOs whose internal processes are eroding the customer experience their brand promises. Strategy, innovation, and customer insight teams looking for a working method to find unmet needs. Global leadership conferences and senior offsites where the brief is commercial reinvention. Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why current consumer research keeps producing the wrong answers, and what to use instead. A practical introduction to small data as a method for surfacing unmet customer needs. A direct view of where internal bureaucracy is quietly killing brand and commercial performance. Named examples from Fortune 500 engagements that translate into questions a leadership team can ask the next morning.

Why organisations work with Martin Glenn He has run the P&L at four large consumer businesses and a national governing body, so brand arguments arrive with operator credibility, not agency theory. The Walkers story is a working case study, not an anecdote: he took share from roughly 30 percent to over 60 percent and built the Lineker campaign that still defines the category. He has done the hard version of culture change at the FA, including a 40 percent revenue lift and a record commitment to women’s football, while the senior England teams reached the 2018 World Cup semi-final. He led the United Biscuits turnaround through to a clean exit to Yildiz Holdings in 2014, which gives boards the rare combination of brand instinct and a private-equity-grade financial outcome. He is one of the few UK CEOs to have reached the top through marketing, which makes him useful when a board needs to rewire how the marketing function is positioned and resourced. He chairs PGMOL through one of the most publicly scrutinised reform programmes in English sport, and chaired Chapel Down through its admission to AIM and 2025 strategic review. Biography highlights Former Chief Executive of The Football Association, 2015 to 2019. Former CEO of United Biscuits, Birds Eye Iglo, and President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland. Architect of the Walkers crisps growth story, including the Gary Lineker advertising campaign. Chair of Professional Game Match Officials Limited since January 2024, the body that runs every referee in English professional football; Chair of the Football Foundation since 2020. Former Chair of Chapel Down Group, England’s largest winemaker, 2020 to 2025; oversaw the company’s admission to AIM in December 2023. Author of “The Best Job in the World”; President of The Marketing Society, 2014 to 2017; PPE graduate of Merton College, Oxford. Biography Walkers was a regional crisps brand in 1992. By the time Martin Glenn finished with it, it held more than 60 percent of the UK market and the Gary Lineker campaign had become the longest running advertising property in the country. That growth story is the spine of his career and the reason boards still bring him in. He spent fifteen years at PepsiCo, ending as President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland, before moving into private equity as CEO of Birds Eye Iglo and then United Biscuits, which he sold to Yildiz Holdings in December 2014. Each role asked the same question in a different setting: how do you grow a mature consumer business when distribution is solved and the next point of share has to come from the brand. In 2015 he answered a different version of the question at The Football Association. Over four seasons he restructured the organisation, oversaw a 40 percent rise in revenue, put a record investment behind the women’s game, and worked on the culture at St George’s Park that fed England’s run to the 2018 World Cup semi-final. He left at the end of the 2018-19 season into a portfolio of board roles. As Chair of Chapel Down from 2020 to 2025 he refocused the business onto premium sparkling wine and took it through its admission to AIM in December 2023. Since January 2024 he has chaired Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the body responsible for every referee in English professional football, helping the executive modernise an organisation that operates under permanent public scrutiny. He also chairs the Football Foundation, the UK’s largest sports charity. He is a PPE graduate of Merton College, Oxford, a former President of The Marketing Society, and the author of “The Best Job in the World”, which sets out the Walkers playbook in detail. The through-line is unusual: a CEO who came up through marketing and treats brand as the operating system of the business rather than a downstream function. Key speaking topics Brand-led growth in mature consumer markets Marketing as a route to general management Turnarounds and private equity exits Culture change inside national institutions The CEO operating model for FMCG businesses Leading governance reform under public scrutiny Ideal for CMOs, CEOs and boards in FMCG, retail and consumer health weighing brand investment against margin pressure. Chairs and CEOs of sports bodies, federations and member organisations facing structural reform. Private equity portfolio companies preparing for a brand-led value creation plan or exit. Senior marketing leaders being positioned for general management or P&L roles. Audience outcomes A clear view of how brand investment shows up in market share and enterprise value, drawn from the Walkers and United Biscuits numbers. A working model for the marketer-to-CEO transition, including what marketing leaders typically have to unlearn. A candid account of leading culture change inside a national institution under public scrutiny. Specific lessons on turnaround sequencing, from cost discipline through to brand reinvestment and exit.

Why organisations work with Mark Schaefer A connected, multi-book argument about where marketing economics are actually going, from Marketing Rebellion to Belonging to the Brand to Audacious, rather than a single talk track repackaged. A working position at the front of the AI-and-marketing conversation, anchored in his Rutgers “Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing in the Age of AI” and his book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. A serious thesis on community as a marketing asset, with case work on brands like Sephora, that gives CMOs a defensible alternative to paid-media-only growth plans. Direct consulting and keynote experience with global enterprises including Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Air Force, which means examples land for both regulated and consumer-facing audiences. A teaching habit, three years studying under Peter Drucker and an active Rutgers executive education role, that shows up in how he structures sessions: argument, evidence, frameworks leaders can take into a Monday meeting. Biography highlights Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, with consulting work for Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Dell, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Air Force, and the UK Government. RBS Executive Education Lecturer at Rutgers Business School; teaches the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI and graduate marketing classes. Author of twelve best-selling marketing books, including Marketing Rebellion, Belonging to the Brand, KNOWN, The Content Code, Cumulative Advantage, Return on Influence, How AI is Changing Your Customers, and Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. Audacious launched with the first AI-driven Augmented Reality book cover and reached #1 in Amazon’s marketing category. Founder and co-host of The Marketing Companion podcast and publisher of the {grow} marketing blog. Featured commentator and contributor across The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, BBC, NPR, Wired, and Harvard Business Review. Keynote speaker at South by Southwest, the Institute for International and European Affairs, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and Social Media Week London; has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton. Named the third-most influential digital marketing authority by Brand24 in 2025. Biography The cost of reaching a customer keeps rising while the trust those impressions buy keeps falling. Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins set out the argument that built much of Mark Schaefer’s reputation, that businesses are no longer built on advertising impressions but on human impressions that help customers believe, belong, and find meaning. It is used as assigned reading at more than 70 universities and has been translated into 20 languages. That argument has continued through Belonging to the Brand, which makes the case for community as the next durable marketing strategy, and Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, which examines brands like e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon to show how creative nerve, not algorithmic optimisation, captures attention in saturated markets. Audacious reached number one in Amazon’s marketing category and launched with what the publisher described as the first AI-driven Augmented Reality book cover. His authority is grounded in operating credentials, not commentary alone. Schaefer runs Schaefer Marketing Solutions and has consulted for Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, McKinsey, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Air Force. At Rutgers Business School, he is the Executive Education lecturer behind the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI, and he has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton. He studied under Peter Drucker for three years, and the structural rigour of that lineage is visible in the way his frameworks are built. He also runs the infrastructure most marketing thinkers only write about. The Marketing Companion is one of the longer-running marketing podcasts in the field, and the {grow} blog has been a fixture in the discipline for over a decade. The result, for senior commercial audiences, is a speaker who treats marketing as a system and tests his arguments in public, every week, against an audience that includes practitioners and competitors. Key speaking topics Human-centred marketing strategy Brand community as a growth strategy AI in marketing and creative work Personal branding for executives and professionals Customer trust, loyalty, and the post-advertising buyer Content strategy and influence Cumulative advantage and competitive momentum Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and heads of marketing rebuilding strategy around community and human connection. CEOs and commercial leaders questioning the ROI of paid-media-led growth plans. Heads of customer experience and digital who need to integrate AI without losing brand distinctiveness. Communications, PR, and corporate marketing leaders in regulated industries facing trust and credibility challenges. Audience outcomes A reframed view of where marketing value now sits: human impressions, community, and creative nerve over paid reach. Concrete case examples, including Sephora, e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon, that audiences can map against their own categories. A working position on how to use AI in marketing without becoming indistinguishable from competitors using the same tools. A clearer set of questions to bring back to brand, content, and customer experience teams about what they should stop funding. A vocabulary for talking to boards about brand and community as commercial assets, not soft costs.

Why organisations work with Marcel Corstjens His research in MIT Sloan Management Review demonstrated that the largest FMCG companies (i.e. those spending over a billion dollars annually on R&D) see no appreciable sales return from that investment; only marketing spend correlates with revenue. This directly challenges how most consumer goods leadership teams allocate their growth budgets. The Mindspace and Shelfspace framework from Store Wars gives manufacturers and retailers a shared, precise language for the power dynamics that determine who controls the end consumer: still the most widely adopted conceptual map of that relationship, translated into five languages. His Harvard Business Review research showed that retail internationalisation does not reliably improve revenue or profit margins, and that home market strength is the primary driver of commercial performance: a finding that reshapes how boards evaluate international expansion decisions. His “Newtonian versus Lorenzian” innovation typology distinguishing companies that invest heavily in broad R&D from those that make small, targeted bets, gives commercial leaders a practical diagnostic for where innovation spending is being wasted at scale. He has consulted directly for Unilever, Heineken, Novartis, Roche, PepsiCo, and Cadbury Schweppes, giving him practical fluency across both FMCG and pharmaceutical commercial strategy that few academics can match. Biography highlights Emeritus Professor of Marketing and the Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, at INSEAD; visiting professor at Cornell and Stanford universities PhD, University of California, Berkeley; doctoral dissertation awarded first prize by the American Marketing Association Author of Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace (J. Wiley & Sons, 1995; second edition 1999; translated into French, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish) Co-author of “Retail Doesn’t Cross Borders” (Harvard Business Review, 2012) and “The Promise of Targeted Innovation” (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2019) Research published in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research; featured in The Economist Creator and director of the INSEAD Storewars senior executive programme for the consumer goods industries Biography The commercial relationship between consumer goods manufacturers and retailers is contested, high-stakes, and widely misread. Marcel Corstjens, Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing Emeritus at INSEAD, has spent four decades researching where that contest is actually won and lost, and his findings consistently challenge what companies believe about their own growth strategies. His book Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace, co-authored with Judith Corstjens and published by J. Wiley & Sons, introduced the Mindspace and Shelfspace framework: the idea that the strategic contest between manufacturers and retailers is a battle for control of two distinct assets, these being the consumer’s mental availability and the product’s physical presence in store. Translated into five languages and taught through the INSEAD Storewars senior executive programme he created and directed, the framework became the most widely adopted analytical tool for understanding manufacturer-retailer power dynamics in FMCG. His research has repeatedly overturned the conventional logic of large consumer goods companies. Work published in MIT Sloan Management Review with Gregory Carpenter of Kellogg and Tushmit Hasan of UT Austin showed that the biggest FMCG brands (i.e. those investing more than a billion dollars annually in R&D) see no measurable sales return from that outlay. Research published in Harvard Business Review with Rajiv Lal of Harvard Business School demonstrated that retail internationalisation does not reliably improve revenue or profit margins; home market performance is the primary driver. Both findings run counter to assumptions embedded in how most FMCG leadership teams set strategy. Corstjens holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where his doctoral dissertation received first prize from the American Marketing Association. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell and Stanford, and has consulted for Unilever, Heineken, Novartis, Roche, PepsiCo, and Cadbury Schweppes, among others. His research has appeared in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research, and has been featured in The Economist. Key speaking topics Manufacturer-Retailer Power Dynamics Marketing Strategy in FMCG Innovation Investment and Commercial Return Brand Strategy and Private Label Competition Retail Internationalisation and Global Growth Marketing Resource Allocation Marketing Strategy in the Pharmaceutical Industry Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and commercial strategy leaders in consumer goods companies Senior executive teams in FMCG and pharmaceutical businesses facing stalled revenue growth Retail leadership teams navigating the competitive dynamics of private label and supplier relationships Executive education programmes for senior FMCG, retail, or pharmaceutical audiences Audience outcomes A clear analytical framework under both Mindspace and Shelfspace for diagnosing where control of the manufacturer-retailer relationship is being lost and what to do about it Evidence-based reappraisal of whether current R&D and innovation investment is actually driving revenue, or consuming capital without commercial return Practical criteria for assessing whether a retail internationalisation strategy is likely to deliver or destroy shareholder value Sharper understanding of how private label competition is reshaping the power balance between retailers and brand manufacturers, and what manufacturers can do to respond A working distinction between “Newtonian” and “Lorenzian” approaches to innovation investment, and which is appropriate at which scale

Why organisations work with Kevin Roberts He led Saatchi and Saatchi globally for seventeen years, so brand and creative conversations land with the authority of someone who ran the network, not observed it. Lovemarks is one of the few brand frameworks from the 2000s still cited in marketing rooms; Advertising Age named it an Idea of the Decade in 2009. His operator track record covers Mary Quant, Gillette, Procter and Gamble, Pepsi-Cola and Lion Nathan, which gives commercial teams a counterpart who has run P&Ls, not only advised on them. 64 Shots gives leadership audiences a structured, opinionated playbook for operating in volatile markets, written from inside a creative business rather than a business school. Biography highlights CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi from 1997 to 2014; Chairman until 2016. CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East at 32, then President and CEO of Pepsi-Cola Canada. Chief Operating Officer and Director at Lion Nathan, the Australasian brewer, from 1989 to 1996. Author of Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, published in 18 languages, and 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World. Honorary Professor of Creative Leadership at Lancaster University, with parallel honorary chairs at the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada. Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business and the community. Biography Lovemarks reframed a question marketers had been answering badly for years. Instead of measuring respect and recognition, Kevin Roberts argued that the brands that survive are the ones customers actively love, and that emotion, not rational benefit, is the real driver of long-term commercial value. The book travelled into 18 languages and became one of the few brand frameworks from the period still in active use. The argument carries weight because of where it came from. Roberts spent seventeen years as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi and Saatchi, after running Pepsi-Cola in the Middle East and Canada, and serving as Chief Operating Officer at Lion Nathan. He has sat on the operator side of brand decisions at scale, including categories where price is brutal and differentiation is mostly emotional. 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World extended the work into leadership. The book is a set of sixty-four short, opinionated entries on running creative businesses in volatile conditions, drawn from his own career and the leaders he has worked with. It gives commercial audiences a way to talk about culture, decision-making and creative risk without the abstraction that usually surrounds those topics. Roberts now runs Red Rose Consulting and chairs My Food Bag and The Herdy Company. He holds honorary chairs in creative leadership and innovation at Lancaster University, the University of Auckland Business School and the University of Victoria in Canada, and is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business. Key speaking topics Brand strategy and emotional brand equity Creative leadership in commercial organisations Marketing transformation and customer loyalty High-performance culture Leadership in volatile markets Innovation inside legacy businesses Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding loyalty in commoditised categories CEOs and boards of consumer-facing businesses where brand is the main commercial moat Marketing, creative and customer experience leadership teams Sales and growth conferences in retail, FMCG, media and advertising Audience outcomes A working definition of what separates a brand customers respect from one they actively love, and why the second is worth more Language for talking about emotion as a commercial asset rather than a soft variable A clearer view of how creative organisations make decisions under pressure, drawn from inside one of the world’s largest networks Practical positions on culture, risk and leadership taken from 64 Shots that audiences can argue with rather than nod at

Why organisations work with Ken Hughes His Blue Dot Consumer framework gives leadership teams a named model for the modern consumer – one who places themselves at the centre of every interaction and expects brands to be instant, personal, and emotionally authentic. It replaces vague customer-centricity language with a concrete diagnostic tool. Taylormaking, his 2025 book, uses Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums as a structured analytical framework for brand intimacy – demonstrating how emotional loyalty, tribal belonging, and values-led branding operate in practice and what that requires from commercial strategy. A career spanning strategy consulting at Accenture, consumer insight at Nielsen, and 25 years as CEO of Glacier Consulting gives him a rare combination: analytical training in how consumers behave and sustained practical experience of what actually shifts in boardrooms. Named by CX Network among the Top 50 CX Leaders to Follow in 2025 and the Top 50 AI Leaders in CX to Follow in 2026, he brings an externally validated, current perspective on where consumer expectations are heading – not where they have been. His interdisciplinary base – consumer psychology, behavioural economics, digital anthropology, and cyberpsychology – lets him explain brand decisions as outcomes of human behaviour, not just marketing choices. That distinction is particularly valuable in conversations with senior leaders who have grown sceptical of CX as a function. Biography highlights CEO and founder of Glacier Consulting, a consumer insight agency whose clients include Coca-Cola, IKEA, AXA, Unilever, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal Former Strategy Consultant at Accenture and Manager of Consumer Insight at Nielsen Part-time lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at University College Cork Author of Taylormaking: A New Era of Modern Branding and Customer Connection (2025), a CX strategy book structured around Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums TEDx speaker at TEDxUniversityofNicosia; talk has received more than 100,000 online views Named by CX Network among the Top 50 Customer Experience Leaders to Follow in 2025 and Top 50 AI Leaders in CX to Follow in 2026 Biography Customer loyalty has become harder to earn as the expectations of consumers – particularly Gen Z and Gen Alpha – have shifted from satisfaction to emotional belonging. Ken Hughes built Glacier Consulting around one persistent question: why do people buy, and what does that mean for how brands should behave? After earlier careers as a strategy consultant at Accenture and a consumer insight manager at Nielsen, he has spent more than two decades embedding behavioural science into commercial practice. His named concept, the Blue Dot Consumer, gives organisations a specific model for the modern customer – one who treats themselves as the centre of every interaction, expecting brands to be instant, personal, and emotionally intelligent. That framework, rooted in consumer psychology, digital anthropology, and behavioural economics, underpins both his consultancy work and his keynote practice across five continents. His 2025 book, Taylormaking, extends that argument into a structured analysis of brand intimacy, using Taylor Swift’s 12 studio albums as a framework for understanding emotional loyalty, tribal community, and values-led leadership. It is a useful index of how Hughes works: making the mechanisms of consumer psychology legible and commercially actionable for leadership audiences well beyond the CX function. A part-time lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at University College Cork and named by CX Network among the Top 50 CX Leaders to Follow in both 2025 and 2026, Hughes speaks more than 80 times annually. His client roster – spanning Coca-Cola, Unilever, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal – reflects both the breadth of sectors in which his behavioural arguments apply and the seniority of the audiences he typically addresses. Key speaking topics Consumer psychology and shopper behaviour Customer experience strategy Brand connection and emotional loyalty Generational consumer shifts – Gen Z and Gen Alpha AI and the future of customer experience Creativity and innovation in commercial culture Ideal for CMOs and marketing leaders focused on building brand loyalty in a competitive, AI-influenced landscape Customer experience leaders navigating the shift from transactional to emotionally driven consumer relationships Senior commercial and retail leaders seeking behavioural insight into how younger consumer cohorts make brand decisions Transformation and innovation leads rethinking how brands earn and sustain connection with modern audiences Audience outcomes A named model – the Blue Dot Consumer – for diagnosing how modern consumers make brand decisions and what they expect from every brand interaction Practical understanding of how emotional loyalty differs from satisfaction, and what organisations must do differently to build it Insight into how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reshaping brand expectations and what that requires from commercial and marketing strategy Clarity on AI’s role in the future of customer experience – where automation strengthens brand connection and where it risks eroding it A framework, drawn from Taylormaking, for building tribal brand belonging through authenticity, community, and values-led leadership

Why organisations work with Julian Treasure He has run an operating consultancy, The Sound Agency, advising global brands on retail, office and public-space sound for two decades. The work has commercial outcomes attached, not theory. His TED catalogue is one of the most viewed of any speaker on any subject, which gives senior audiences a shared starting point before he steps on stage. He treats listening as a leadership capability with a teachable structure, and his book How to Be Heard sets out the model in detail. He covers the rarely combined territory of personal communication craft and the sonic design of physical workplaces, so he is credible with HR, brand and facilities audiences in the same room. Awards from Toastmasters International and the International Listening Association place him inside the formal communication and listening professions, not just the speaker circuit. Biography highlights Founder and chairman of The Sound Agency, audio branding consultancy Five TED talks; combined views above 160 million; “How to Speak So That People Want to Listen” is TED’s sixth most-viewed talk Author of Sound Business (2014), How to Be Heard (2017) and Sound Affects (2025) Toastmasters International Golden Gavel Award; International Listening Association Special Recognition Award Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Marketors Founded and sold UK customer magazine publisher TPD Group; former chairman of the UK Association of Publishing Agencies; PPA Chairman’s Award (2002) Biography Sound is the most underused operating variable in most organisations. Retailers play music chosen by the manager on shift. Offices design for visual brand and acoustic accident. Leaders speak without ever auditing how they are heard. The financial cost is real and the cultural cost is larger. The Sound Agency was built around that gap. Founded by a former publisher and musician with a Cambridge economics degree, the consultancy has spent two decades advising global brands on retail soundscapes, office acoustics and audio identity, with measurable effects on sales, wellbeing and behaviour. The argument is that sound is a commercial system, designed or accidental, and most organisations choose accidental. The communication work is the second half of the same proposition. Three books, Sound Business, How to Be Heard and Sound Affects, set out a structured model for speaking and listening as leadership skills rather than soft attributes. The TED catalogue, five talks above 160 million combined views, has made the speaking talk one of the most watched pieces of business communication content ever recorded. The Toastmasters Golden Gavel and the International Listening Association Special Recognition Award place him inside the formal disciplines, not adjacent to them. For senior teams, he offers something specific: a working theory of how attention, voice and environment shape commercial and cultural outcomes, and the operating experience to back it up. The Royal Society of Arts fellowship and the Worshipful Company of Marketors livery are part of a wider institutional footprint that signals durability rather than novelty. Key speaking topics Conscious listening as a leadership skill Powerful speaking and executive voice Audio branding and sonic identity Sound design in workplaces and retail environments Communication and engagement in distracted organisations Wellbeing effects of sound and noise Trust and credibility in senior communication Ideal for CMOs and brand leadership rethinking customer experience beyond the visual HR, internal communications and culture leads working on listening and engagement Retail, hospitality and property leadership designing customer-facing environments Senior leaders preparing for high-stakes speaking, board, investor or media Audience outcomes A working model for listening as a measurable leadership capability Specific techniques for executive voice, structure and presence in high-stakes settings A new lens on the commercial and cultural cost of accidental sound in workplaces and retail A shared vocabulary for communication quality across HR, brand and facilities functions Concrete next steps that connect personal communication craft to organisational outcomes

Why organisations work with Jonathan Gabay He writes the textbooks the field uses. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge) are professional references, not bureau-circuit titles. He reads brand crises in real time on BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Sky, which means his commercial diagnosis comes from sustained exposure to live reputational damage, not case-study retrospectives. He treats AI in marketing as a trust problem, not an automation problem, and connects ethics, prompt engineering and consumer psychology in one argument senior marketers can act on. His Saatchi & Saatchi Direct origin is creative, not academic, so the strategic frame stays tied to what actually moves a customer. Biography highlights Author of Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) and Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology (Routledge, 2024), professional textbooks used by marketing students and practitioners. Former Group Creative Head, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct. Senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering; teaching record at the London School of Economics, Management Centre Europe and Newport University. Course leader on digital psychology programmes for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. Regular media commentator on branding, political PR and AI for BBC (including Newsnight), CNN, Bloomberg, Sky, Channel 5 and ABC. Biography Most brands now compete on a question they have not faced before. Not how to reach an audience, but whether anyone still believes the message when they get it. Generative AI has industrialised marketing output and consumers have responded with a sharper, quieter scepticism that no media spend can buy past. Jonathan Gabay has spent three decades on the inside of that question. He started in creative work at Saatchi & Saatchi Direct, where he became Group Creative Head, then moved into the analytical side of the same problem. Brand Psychology (Kogan Page) sets out how social psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience explain why consumers trust some brands and abandon others, and what CEO reputation does to both. His 2024 Routledge textbook Practical Digital Marketing and AI Psychology extends the argument into the AI era. The book is used as a professional reference by marketing students and practitioners, and treats AI not as a productivity tool but as a force that changes the psychological contract between brand and buyer. He teaches the same material as a senior lecturer in crisis management and prompt engineering, with course work at the London School of Economics, the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. The commentary record matters because it is unusually current. BBC Newsnight, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky and Channel 5 use him to read live brand and political PR crises as they unfold, which is why the keynote material is closer to a working diagnostic than a finished case study. Key speaking topics Brand psychology and consumer trust AI ethics in marketing communications Digital trust and online consumer behaviour Crisis communications and brand reputation Political PR, propaganda and persuasion Prompt engineering for marketers CEO reputation and brand storytelling Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding trust under AI Communications, PR and corporate affairs leaders facing reputational risk Boards and executive teams of consumer-facing brands Marketing and brand functions integrating AI into customer-facing work Audience outcomes A working model of how consumers form trust in brands and what AI changes about it A clearer view of where AI use crosses the ethical line that customers actually punish Sharper diagnosis of brand and reputation crises drawn from live media cases A practical reading of where prompt engineering and marketing psychology meet Confidence to make defensible commercial calls on AI in marketing communications