Marketing & Branding speakers

Why organisations work with Ramon Ray He has built and exited three of his own companies and runs two active media platforms, so the advice is operator-tested, not theorised from the outside His Celebrity CEO framework gives founders a step-by-step way to build local and category authority, not generic personal-brand advice He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and President Obama, and shares platforms with Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, which gives him an unusually wide read on what works across founder archetypes He has been invited to the White House and the US Congress on small-business and personal-branding topics, which gives the work institutional weight beyond the usual marketing-conference circuit He is a high-energy event host as well as a keynote speaker, and is regularly hired by Entrepreneur magazine and similar publishers to anchor their flagship conferences Biography highlights Founder of SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media, two long-running platforms serving small-business owners Author of The Celebrity CEO, Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing (Wiley), Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses, and two further titles Conducted the first live Google Hangout interview with President Barack Obama Member of the US Delegation to India led by Ivanka Trump for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit Invited expert witness to the US Congress and speaker at the White House on personal branding Contributor to Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, Small Business Trends, and Allbusiness.com; co-founder of the Small Business Influencer Awards Biography Most small-business owners do not lose to better products. They lose to better-known competitors. The Celebrity CEO thesis takes that observation seriously and treats personal brand as a growth instrument with measurable outputs: leads, referrals, pricing power, retention. The book is the public face of two decades of work with founders trying to compete against larger rivals. The author of that thesis, Ramon Ray, is a five-time entrepreneur who has built and exited three companies, including SmallBizTechnology.com and Smart Hustle Media. He has written five books across technology, marketing, and personal brand, and his journalism appears in Inc., Entrepreneur, PC World, and Small Business Trends. His access to the top of the founder market is unusual. He conducted the first live Google Hangout with President Obama, joined the US Delegation to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and has been invited as an expert witness to Congress and as a speaker at the White House on personal branding. He has interviewed every Shark Tank investor and shared stages with Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Deepak Chopra. What makes the work commercially useful is the operator’s eye behind it. Ramon co-founded the Small Business Influencer Awards with Anita Campbell, anchors Entrepreneur magazine’s flagship conferences as host, and runs an active mastermind for founders applying the Celebrity CEO playbook. The advice is not theoretical; it is what he is doing for himself in public, in real time. Key speaking topics Personal brand as a growth engine for founders Small-business marketing and customer acquisition Community building and category authority Social media for entrepreneurs Digital tools and technology for small business Entrepreneurial mindset and resilience Ideal for Founders and CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses Franchise networks, dealer councils, and independent business associations Marketing and growth leaders inside larger organisations who serve SMB customers Diversity-in-business and youth-entrepreneurship programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of what a Celebrity CEO is, and what it takes to become one in their market A simple model for turning customer relationships into a referral and retention engine Specific tactics for showing up consistently on social platforms without burning out Renewed conviction that being visible is part of the job, not a vanity project A short list of next moves they can act on the same week

Why organisations work with Randi Zuckerberg She created Facebook Live – a verifiable, specific product decision made inside one of the most consequential platform companies in history – giving her first-hand insight into how media formats shape audience behaviour at scale that no advisory role can replicate. Pick Three (2018) provides a named, counter-intuitive framework with a specific thesis: sustainable performance – individual and organisational – comes from deliberate daily prioritisation across five competing demands, not from attempting balance across all of them simultaneously. Her knowledge of how Facebook made its foundational decisions on elections, political partnerships, and live video predates the broader public and regulatory reckoning with platform power by nearly a decade – and comes from inside the decisions, not from observing them. Her active angel investment portfolio – 53% female founders, 30% diverse founders – means her perspective on digital entrepreneurship and media ventures is commercially current, not retrospective. Multiple Tony Award wins as a Broadway co-producer alongside a technology career demonstrates a consistent and applied understanding of commercial storytelling across very different formats and audience types – directly relevant to organisations trying to build brand authority rather than brand noise. Biography highlights One of the first ten employees at Facebook (2005–2011); Director of Market Development and Spokesperson Creator of Facebook Live, now used by more than two billion people globally Emmy nomination, 2011, for the pioneering integration of television and social media in U.S. midterm election coverage Founder and CEO, Zuckerberg Media (est. 2011); clients include the United Nations, Condé Nast, Clinton Global Initiative, and Cirque du Soleil New York Times bestselling author: Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (HarperCollins, 2013) and Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day) (2018) Multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway co-producer, including Hadestown (Best Musical, 2019); also Drama Desk Award and Kidscreen Award Host, Randi Zuckerberg Means Business, SiriusXM; board member, Life360 BA in Psychology, Harvard University Biography Facebook Live was built by a team of fewer than ten people making decisions about media format, political partnerships, and audience engagement that nobody had made before. Randi Zuckerberg led that work. The choices her team made – about what live video could do for commercial storytelling, for political communication, for media partnerships – shaped how organisations and audiences interact in real time to this day. After leaving Facebook in 2011, she founded Zuckerberg Media, producing content and advisory work for organisations including the United Nations, Condé Nast, Cirque du Soleil, and the Clinton Global Initiative. The question her firm consistently addresses is strategic rather than technical: how does an organisation translate digital presence into an audience it actually owns, rather than one it rents from a platform? Her 2018 book Pick Three formalised a framework she had developed through practice. The argument is specific and deliberately counter-intuitive: sustainable performance – individual or organisational – does not come from balance across five competing demands (Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, Friends). It comes from deliberate daily prioritisation of three. That specificity is what makes the framework usable in executive development conversations, rather than aspirational. Her Tony Award wins as Broadway co-producer, her weekly SiriusXM programme, and an angel investment portfolio with a deliberate diversity mandate are not incidental to her commercial thinking. They reflect the same underlying argument – that strategic storytelling, deployed with intent and discipline across different formats, builds audiences that advertising cannot replicate. Key speaking topics Digital media strategy and platform intelligence Entrepreneurship and venture building Commercial storytelling and brand media The creator economy and audience ownership Technology and society: the platform era in retrospect Productivity and prioritisation: the Pick Three framework Women in technology and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and communications executives navigating digital media strategy and audience ownership Entrepreneurial leadership communities, founder networks, and innovation-focused executive programmes Executive teams building media presence as a commercial strategy rather than a communications function CHROs and leadership development leads running programmes on performance, prioritisation, and sustainable leadership Audience outcomes A clearer distinction between digital activity and digital strategy, grounded in how platform companies actually make decisions about media and audience Practical application of the Pick Three framework for daily prioritisation – applicable to individual performance, team leadership, and organisational resource allocation First-hand perspective on how media partnerships, content formats, and platform intelligence were developed inside Facebook during its most formative years A more operationally grounded view of the creator economy: what «owning your audience» actually requires versus what platforms provide Greater confidence in making active, deliberate trade-offs between competing strategic priorities rather than attempting to progress all of them simultaneously

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 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 Richard Shotton Translates academic behavioural science into specific marketing moves, tested against named consumer brands including Google, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays and Sky through his consultancy Astroten. Runs original field experiments rather than recycling textbook biases, giving senior marketers fresh evidence on questions like pricing, costly signalling and admitting weakness. Author of two best-selling behavioural science books, with The Choice Factory translated into 15 languages and named Best Sales and Marketing Book at the 2019 Business Book Awards. Speaks the language of working marketers, not academics, after starting his career as a media planner on Coca-Cola, Lexus and comparethemarket before turning to behavioural science. Biography highlights Founder of Astroten, a behavioural science consultancy advising Google, Facebook, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays, Sky and Santander. Author of The Choice Factory (Harriman House, 2018), available in 15 languages. Winner, Best Sales and Marketing Book, 2019 Business Book Awards; voted #1 in the BBH World Cup of Advertising Books, 2018. Author of The Illusion of Choice (Harriman House, 2023) and co-author of Hacking the Human Mind (2025). Behavioural science columnist for Marketing Week; published in Campaign, The Drum, Admap and The Independent. BA in Geography, University of Oxford; MSc in Development Studies, SOAS University of London. Biography Most marketing budgets are still allocated on what customers say they prefer. The behavioural science evidence is now overwhelming that what people say and what they actually buy are different things, and that the gap is exploitable. This is the territory Richard Shotton has spent two decades mapping. He started in the industry as a media planner on Coca-Cola, Lexus and comparethemarket, before specialising in behavioural science. In 2018, he founded Astroten, a consultancy that has since worked with Google, Facebook, Mondelez, BrewDog, Barclays, Sky and Santander on questions of pricing, advertising and customer acquisition. His first book, The Choice Factory, set out 25 cognitive biases with concrete examples for marketers. It was named Best Sales and Marketing Book at the 2019 Business Book Awards, voted #1 in the BBH World Cup of Advertising Books, and is now published in 15 languages. The Illusion of Choice followed in 2023, with Hacking the Human Mind co-authored in 2025. What sets his work apart is the mix of sources. Alongside academic studies, he runs original field experiments, then writes them up for Marketing Week, Campaign, The Drum and Admap. The result is a body of work that gives commercial leaders evidence they can act on, not theory they have to translate. Key speaking topics Behavioural economics in marketing Cognitive biases and consumer choice Pricing and willingness to pay Advertising effectiveness Brand building and distinctiveness Customer habit formation Behavioural field experimentation Ideal for CMOs and marketing directors are making advertising and pricing decisions under tightening budgets. Brand and customer teams in consumer-facing categories are rebuilding their acquisition strategy. Insight, research and strategy leads who want evidence stronger than stated preference. Agency leadership teams responsible for creative and media effectiveness. Audience outcomes A working catalogue of cognitive biases with named examples of how brands have used them commercially. Sharper questioning of stated-preference research and traditional focus group outputs. Specific tactics for pricing presentation, costly signalling, habit formation and category framing. Evidence-led arguments to defend brand investment and creative quality inside the business.

Why organisations work with Rita Clifton A board-level voice on brand, not an agency one. As Deputy Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership and former NED at Nationwide, ASOS, Bupa, and Dixons, she speaks about brand from inside the governance conversation, not across the table from it. Two decades shaping the modern discipline of brand valuation as London CEO then Chairman of Interbrand, the firm that established the methodology most large companies still use to put a number on brand equity. Author of the standard reference text Brands and Branding for The Economist, used as a teaching text on MBA programmes, alongside The Future of Brands and Love Your Imposter. Credible on sustainability and brand purpose as Chair of Forum for the Future, which separates her from brand voices who treat purpose as messaging rather than as a commercial commitment to test. Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Said Business School on corporate reputation, with media reach across BBC, Sky, and the FT that signals authority to an external audience as well as an internal one. Biography highlights Deputy Chairman, John Lewis Partnership (from February 2021); Chair of the Nominations Committee. Chair, Forum for the Future, the international sustainability non-profit founded by Jonathon Porritt and Sara Parkin. Former London CEO and Chairman of Interbrand (1997 to 2012); previously Vice Chairman and Strategy Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Visiting Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford, specialising in corporate reputation. Author of Brands and Branding (The Economist), The Future of Brands, and Love Your Imposter (Kogan Page, 2020), shortlisted at the Business Book Awards. CBE, 2014 New Year Honours, for services to the creative industries. Biography Brand is still treated, in most boardrooms, as something the marketing function owns. It sits beneath strategy in the agenda, gets the smallest share of capital, and is measured by activity rather than by enterprise value. Rita Clifton’s argument, built across thirty years at Saatchi & Saatchi, Interbrand, and BrandCap, is that this is the wrong organisational logic. Brand is what holds a company’s pricing power, customer trust, and talent magnetism in place, and in most large businesses it is the largest intangible asset on the balance sheet. She has tested the argument from both sides. As London CEO and then Chairman of Interbrand from 1997 to 2012, she helped shape the brand valuation methodology that boards now use to compare brand equity to other forms of intangible capital. As Deputy Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, alongside earlier non-executive roles at Nationwide Building Society, ASOS, Bupa, Dixons, and Ascential, she has been the person on the other side of the table, asking executive teams what their brand investment is actually buying. Her writing makes the argument durable. Brands and Branding, published by The Economist, is a standard MBA reference. Love Your Imposter, published by Kogan Page in 2020, was shortlisted at the Business Book Awards and reframes the inner experience of senior leadership through the same lens of identity and authenticity she applies to brands. The sustainability work runs in parallel and reinforces the commercial case. As Chair of Forum for the Future and a Trustee at Green Alliance, she sits inside the policy conversation on net zero and corporate purpose. That gives her something most brand voices lack: a defensible position on whether a company’s stated purpose is actually being capitalised, or is just rhetoric on a website. Key speaking topics Brand as enterprise value and board agenda item Corporate reputation under digital and AI disruption Brand purpose, sustainability, and credibility Non-executive leadership and governance Personal brand and authenticity for senior leaders Marketing and brand strategy in consumer-facing businesses Diversity in the boardroom Ideal for Boards, chairs, and NEDs reviewing brand as a strategic asset rather than a marketing budget line CMOs, CCOs, and CSOs aligning brand, sustainability, and corporate reputation CEO and ExCo offsites in consumer, retail, financial services, and partnership-model businesses Senior leadership programmes addressing personal brand, identity, and presence at the top Audience outcomes A sharper definition of what brand is doing inside their own organisation’s P&L and balance sheet A board-level vocabulary for brand investment that connects to capital allocation, not campaign spend A more honest read on whether stated purpose is commercially credible to customers, employees, and investors A practical view of personal authority for senior leaders facing scrutiny they did not have earlier in their careers

Why organisations work with Robbie Lyle He built the category. AFTV is the largest football fan channel globally, with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion views, created without external investment. Most speakers on community-led media describe the trend; he set the benchmark. He owns the commercial reality of audience-first media. GFN turns over more than £1.4 million a year on a self-financed model, which gives him a working answer to the questions boards actually ask: how do you monetise community without breaking trust, and where does the margin sit. He has taken on incumbent broadcasters and won audience share on their core territory. That is a useful perspective for any organisation watching a digital-native competitor erode a category it used to dominate. His ITV documentary Football Fans Under Their Skin and his work on representation in sport give him a serious second register on race, inclusion and who gets heard in mainstream media, beyond the entrepreneurship story. Biography highlights Founder and Group CEO of Global Fan Network, parent company of AFTV and DR Sports. Founded AFTV in October 2012, now the largest football fan channel worldwide with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion total views. Host of Channel 4’s The Real Football Fan Show, which premiered in April 2018. Subject of the 2020 ITV documentary Robbie Lyle: Football Fans Under Their Skin, on race and Black supporters in UK football. Speaker at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union. Listed in TechRound’s BAME 50 entrepreneurs. Biography Most of the people who broadcast football matches have never paid for a ticket. Robbie Lyle noticed that gap in 2012, borrowed a camera, and started filming Arsenal supporters outside the Emirates after every game. The channel he launched as Arsenal Fan TV is now AFTV: 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, more than a billion views, and the dominant fan media platform in world football. The business case is more interesting than the YouTube numbers. Lyle has never taken external investment. Global Fan Network, the parent company he founded and runs as Group CEO, now houses AFTV alongside DR Sports and a growing roster of fan-led channels, with turnover above £1.4 million reinvested back into the business. He has done what most legacy media companies are still trying to work out: build a direct relationship with an audience, hold it, and make it pay. That gives him a particular kind of authority on community-led commercial strategy. He can describe, from inside, how a fan channel competes with Sky and BT Sport for the same attention, why authenticity is a working business model rather than a marketing line, and what happens to the economics of a category when the most engaged audience decides it would rather watch other supporters than paid presenters. Channel 4 commissioned The Real Football Fan Show off the back of that argument in 2018. ITV’s Football Fans Under Their Skin, in 2020, used the same platform to examine race in English football and the experiences of Black supporters. He speaks at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union, and his TechRound BAME 50 listing reflects the entrepreneurial side of the story. The line his work draws is a useful one for any organisation thinking about audience ownership: communities that already exist are worth more than communities you try to build, and the operators who understand that tend to win the next decade of commercial media. Key speaking topics Fan-led media and audience ownership Community as a commercial model Entrepreneurship without external investment Digital disruption of incumbent broadcasters Representation and race in sports media Authentic content and brand trust Building a category-defining platform Ideal for Media, entertainment and sports businesses rethinking direct-to-audience strategy CMOs and brand leaders working on community, loyalty and creator partnerships Founders and commercial leaders scaling content businesses without venture capital DEI and culture leads programming sessions on representation in media and sport Audience outcomes A working view of how a fan-first platform takes audience share from established broadcasters A concrete commercial framework for community-led businesses that do not rely on external investment An honest read on what authenticity costs and earns inside a content business at scale Sharper questions for any organisation trying to convert audience attention into a defensible commercial position A first-hand account of representation in sport and what changes when underrepresented voices control the platform

Why organisations work with Robert Cialdini His Seven Principles of Influence – Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, Scarcity, and Unity – are the most widely referenced persuasion framework in business, grounded in peer-reviewed experimental research rather than practitioner observation. No comparable model carries equivalent scientific credibility. Pre-Suasion introduced a counterintuitive and commercially actionable argument: the moment before a message is delivered determines whether it will be received. That gives leaders, negotiators, and commercial teams a lever – the deliberate management of attention and context – that most organisations have never systematically deployed. His research has been applied across contexts from US presidential campaign strategy to national energy conservation policy, demonstrating that the principles are not industry-specific – they describe universal mechanisms of human decision-making. Influence is listed in Fortune’s “75 Smartest Business Books” and CEO Read’s “100 Best Business Books of All Time”; Pre-Suasion was a Financial Times Best Business Book of 2016. The durability of both titles means organisations are reinforcing, not introducing, a framework that their people already partially know – which accelerates adoption. The Society for Personality and Social Psychology has named a prize in his honour – a signal of the field’s verdict on the quality and societal relevance of his research, not merely its commercial reach. Biography highlights Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State University; visiting scholar at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ohio State, and the Annenberg School of Communications Author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984) and Pre-Suasion (2016) – combined sales of over seven million copies in more than 44 languages Pre-Suasion was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller; named a Financial Times Best Business Book of 2016 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018) and the National Academy of Sciences (2019) Described by Harvard Business Review as “the foremost expert on effective persuasion”; Influence listed in Fortune’s “75 Smartest Business Books” and CEO Read’s “100 Best Business Books of All Time” President and CEO of INFLUENCE AT WORK; holds honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Wroclaw), and the University of Basel Biography Robert Cialdini’s foundational research did not begin in a laboratory. He spent three years working undercover inside the professions of compliance – car dealerships, fundraising organisations, telemarketing firms – observing how influence actually operates in real commercial settings. That methodology produced Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, published in 1984. The Six Principles it identified – Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, and Scarcity – became the most applied persuasion framework in business, referenced from sales training programmes to business school curricula to the annual letters of Berkshire Hathaway. More than thirty years later, Cialdini returned with a second argument. Pre-Suasion proposed that the persuasive moment does not begin when a message is delivered – it begins before. The conditions set in the moments prior to communication determine whether an audience is receptive. Changing minds, he argued, requires changing states of mind first. Pre-Suasion became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and a Financial Times Best Business Book of 2016. It also introduced the seventh principle – Unity – based on the finding that shared identity is among the most powerful drivers of influence. The commercial applications are direct and cross-functional. Sales and marketing teams use the principles to structure offers and sequence communications. Leaders apply them to change management and stakeholder alignment. Negotiators use the Pre-Suasion concept to set the conditions before a position is stated. Harvard Business Review has described Cialdini as “the foremost expert on effective persuasion.” Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge, has said no psychologist’s research has been applied more often or more successfully. Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and has held visiting scholar appointments at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communications. He has been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Society for Personality and Social Psychology has named a prize in his honour – awarded for research that demonstrates societal relevance through field methods, which is precisely the standard his own work set. Key speaking topics The Seven Principles of Influence Pre-Suasion and the psychology of attention Ethical persuasion in leadership and negotiation Behavioural science in sales and marketing Social proof and organisational decision-making The Unity principle and collaborative alignment Science-based communication strategy Ideal for CMOs, sales directors, and commercial leadership teams seeking evidence-based frameworks for customer and stakeholder communication C-suite and board-level audiences navigating change, alignment, or strategic persuasion challenges Heads of marketing, brand, and communications responsible for message design and audience receptivity Negotiation, procurement, and business development professionals Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Seven Principles of Influence – including Unity – and how each applies in commercial, leadership, and negotiation contexts A clear grasp of the Pre-Suasion concept: how to shape audience receptivity before a message is delivered, and why this is distinct from refining the message itself A framework for distinguishing ethical influence from manipulation – and a practical understanding of why the distinction matters commercially as well as reputationally Specific, research-grounded adjustments to the sequencing, framing, and context of communication that improve persuasive effectiveness Confidence to apply the principles immediately across sales, leadership, and change management settings without requiring institutional change first

Why organisations work with Roger Dooley A 20-year published track record applying neuromarketing to commercial problems, not a recent rebrand into the topic. Friction gives commercial leaders a single operational lens for finding the small frictions that quietly suppress revenue, conversion, and loyalty. Brainfluence translates academic behavioural research into 100 specific tactics marketing and CX teams can deploy, which is why the book has been translated into eleven languages. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) gives buyers a published account of how AI is moving neuromarketing tools out of Fortune 500 research budgets and into reach of ordinary commercial teams, a shift most CX functions have not yet built a working view of. Forbes column and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in active dialogue with the field’s leading researchers, from Robert Cialdini to Dan Ariely. Biography highlights Author of Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011), translated into eleven languages. Author of Friction (McGraw Hill, 2019), named a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019 by PwC’s strategy+business. Author of The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026), on AI applied to behavioural science and neuromarketing. Forbes contributor on neuromarketing, customer experience and behavioural science. Host of the Brainfluence podcast, with guests including Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Tom Peters, Rory Sutherland, Nir Eyal and BJ Fogg. Named a Top 50 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty by Thinkers360. Biography Most marketing plans assume customers behave rationally. They do not. The gap between what a brand believes its customers are doing and what their brains are actually doing is where Roger Dooley has built his work for two decades. His 2019 book Friction (McGraw Hill) argues that the small unnecessary frictions inside a buying journey, an employee process, or a product experience are usually more powerful than the bigger strategic levers leaders prefer to discuss. PwC’s strategy+business named it a Top 3 Management Book and Best Business Book of 2019. The earlier Brainfluence (Wiley, 2011) compresses academic behavioural research into 100 marketing-grade tactics, and has been translated into eleven languages. That commercial frame is what separates Dooley from purely academic behavioural-economics voices. The Neuromarketing blog he started in 2005, his Forbes column, and 400-plus episodes of the Brainfluence podcast keep him in continuous dialogue with Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Rory Sutherland, BJ Fogg and Nir Eyal, then translated for marketing, CX, and growth teams who need to ship decisions on Monday. The Persuasion Engine (Wiley, 2026) turns to AI: how language models and behavioural analytics are pushing tools once held inside Fortune 500 research budgets into the hands of much smaller commercial teams, and the governance and customer-trust questions that follow. Key speaking topics Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience Friction in customer experience and operations Behavioural economics applied to marketing and sales AI-enabled behavioural science and persuasion Customer loyalty and brand trust Persuasion and decision architecture Ideal for CMOs and marketing leadership teams redesigning customer journeys Heads of customer experience and digital product leaders working on conversion and retention Sales leaders rebuilding playbooks around buyer psychology Growth and innovation teams testing AI-enabled behavioural tools Audience outcomes A working definition of where friction is suppressing revenue inside their own customer and employee journeys A vocabulary of behavioural mechanisms drawn from named research, not generic persuasion tropes A current read on how AI is changing the cost and access economics of behavioural research Specific, testable changes to marketing, sales or CX practice they can run inside their teams

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

Why organisations work with Roland Mouret He has lived the entire commercial cycle of a creative brand, from the global hit of the Galaxy dress to losing the rights to his own name in 2005, buying them back in 2010, and the brand entering administration in 2021. He talks about that as a practitioner, not a case study. He is one of very few designers who can describe what happens when capital structure and creative authorship come into conflict, and what a founder retains when the legal name is no longer theirs. He is the published author of “Roland Mouret: Provoke, Attract, Seduce” (Rizzoli), a monograph documenting twenty years of work, which gives audiences a clear point of entry into how his thinking on craft and identity holds up across decades. He acted as mentor to Victoria Beckham on the launch of her fashion line, a relationship he discusses publicly and which gives commercial audiences a credible view of how creative authority gets transferred between brands. He is an active voice on sustainability in luxury fashion, including the #SwitchToBlue circular hanger campaign with Arch & Hook and the British Fashion Council, and brings a designer’s view of where the industry’s environmental claims actually break down. Biography highlights British Designer of the Year, Elle Style Awards, 2002. Designer of the Galaxy dress, the defining red-carpet silhouette of the mid-2000s, worn by Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johansson, Victoria Beckham, the Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan Markle. Author of “Roland Mouret: Provoke, Attract, Seduce”, published by Rizzoli with Alexander Fury. Founder of the eponymous Roland Mouret label, sold internationally and acquired by Han Chong’s SP Collection (parent of self-portrait) in 2022. Launched the #SwitchToBlue circular hanger initiative with Arch & Hook, supported by the British Fashion Council. Mentor to Victoria Beckham at the launch of her fashion line in 2008, featured in her 2024 Netflix documentary. Biography The Galaxy dress arrived in spring 2006 and became the defining red-carpet silhouette of the decade. Vogue ran the line that for weeks you could not open a magazine without seeing it on a Hollywood A-lister. Less than two months later, its designer had walked away from the company, and lost the legal right to use his own name. That fracture is the centre of Roland Mouret’s story. He is the self-taught French designer, raised above a butcher’s shop in Lourdes, who launched his first London collection in 1998 and won British Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards in 2002. He is also the founder who spent five years getting his name back, finally buying the trademark in 2010 with backing from Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment. The work since has been a study in what a designer rebuilds when the brand has to be reassembled around the same hands. He published “Roland Mouret: Provoke, Attract, Seduce” with Rizzoli, mentored Victoria Beckham on the launch of her own line in 2008, and pushed the industry on circular packaging through the #SwitchToBlue hanger campaign with Arch & Hook and the British Fashion Council. The brand entered administration in November 2021 and was acquired by Han Chong’s SP Collection the following year. For audiences, the value is the directness of the account. He speaks about creative authorship, capital, and the moments where the two stop agreeing, from inside the experience of a designer whose name has been on the door, off the door, and back on it. Key speaking topics Creative entrepreneurship in luxury fashion Brand authorship and ownership of the founder name Sustainability and circularity in the fashion industry The economics of independent design houses Reinvention after commercial loss Mentorship and creative succession Craft, draping, and the female silhouette Ideal for Founder-led creative businesses, design studios, and luxury brands navigating capital partners or succession CMOs and brand leaders working on authorship, identity, and the commercial weight of a name Sustainability and procurement leads inside fashion, retail, and consumer goods looking at circular packaging and supply After-dinner audiences in creative industries, hospitality, and luxury where storytelling and craft are central Audience outcomes A specific account of how a creative founder loses, then recovers, control of their own brand, with the legal and commercial mechanics named. A working view of where sustainability claims in fashion hold up and where they collapse, drawn from a designer’s daily decisions on fabric, factories, and packaging. A clearer sense of how mentorship between creative founders actually functions, taken from the relationship with Victoria Beckham. A direct read on the economics of an independent luxury house, including the conditions under which one tips into administration.

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