Marketing & Branding speakers

Why organisations work with Simon Moore He runs a working behavioural science consultancy, IB (formerly Innovationbubble), with documented commercial case results including a 51% conversion uplift for a fashion brand and an 11% churn reduction in a banking client. He is a chartered psychologist with a PhD in psychobiological psychology, not a populariser of other people’s research, which is rare in the behavioural-economics speaker market. He won the Gold Retail Nudge Award in 2015 for retail behavioural work, a credential that maps directly to commercial decision-makers. His client list spans BBC, HSBC, Aviva, Virgin Atlantic, Pfizer, Sony, FedEx, Microsoft and the Financial Times, so the work has been pressure-tested in regulated, high-stakes commercial environments. He moves between consumer-facing strategy and internal employee behaviour, which lets the same engagement speak to a CMO and a CHRO without breaking apart. Biography highlights CEO and Partner of IB (Innovationbubble), an award-winning behavioural science consultancy applying psychology to commercial strategy. PhD in psychobiological psychology and Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. Former Academic Leader in Psychology at London Metropolitan University. Co-author of the undergraduate textbook “Complete Psychology” (first edition 2008). Winner of the Gold Retail Nudge Award (2015) for behavioural work with retail clients. Has advised commercial clients including BBC, HSBC, Aviva, Virgin Atlantic, Pfizer, Sony, FedEx, Microsoft and the Financial Times, and is a regular UK media commentator on consumer psychology. Biography Most commercial strategies are built on what people say they will do. Surveys, focus groups, stated-preference research, customer panels. The data is clean, the models are tidy, and the behaviour at the till, the renewal point, or the checkout button still surprises everyone. That gap is where Dr Simon Moore works. Moore is a Chartered Psychologist with a PhD in psychobiological psychology and CEO of IB, the behavioural science consultancy he founded as Innovationbubble. The firm uses psychological methods, not opinion, to investigate why customers and employees actually behave as they do, then translates those findings into pricing decisions, brand communications, retention design and internal change programmes. Clients have included BBC, HSBC, Aviva, Virgin Atlantic, Pfizer, Sony, FedEx, Microsoft and the Financial Times. Before founding the consultancy, he was Academic Leader in Psychology at London Metropolitan University and is co-author of the textbook “Complete Psychology”, used on undergraduate degree programmes. The academic foundation matters because most of the behavioural-economics speaker market is built on a few thin layers of summary. Moore is one of a small group of practitioners who built the underlying science before commercialising it, and the difference shows up in the specificity of what he recommends. In 2015, Innovationbubble won the Gold Retail Nudge Award for retail behavioural work. The case studies that travel with him are unusually concrete for the field: a 51% conversion uplift through reworked product descriptions in fashion, an 11% churn reduction in a banking client. He is a regular UK media voice on consumer psychology and behavioural intervention, but the booking case is operational, not editorial: he is hired by commercial leaders who have run out of conventional explanations for the numbers in front of them. Key speaking topics Behavioural science in commercial strategy Consumer decision-making and the say-do gap Psychology of brand communication and storytelling Customer loyalty, trust and retention Pricing, value perception and choice architecture Psychology of organisational change and employee behaviour The psychology of AI and human response to automated systems Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and customer experience leads are facing flat returns on conventional campaigns and CX investments Commercial directors and pricing leads working on retention, subscription and value-perception problems CHROs and change leads running internal behaviour-change programmes alongside the consumer-side work Boards and executive teams in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, telecoms) where customer trust drives commercial outcomes Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the psychological drivers behind specific commercial problems they own Concrete examples of behavioural interventions that have moved retention, conversion and trust metrics in named sectors A clear distinction between what behavioural science can credibly do and the marketing claims made on its behalf Direct prompts for re-examining pricing, messaging or CX assumptions that test well in research but underperform in market A more accurate read on how customers and employees will respond to AI-driven products, services and internal tools

Meet Sonya Barlow Sonya Barlow is an award-winning BBC Presenter, Author, Keynote Speaker, Entrepreneur, TEDxSpeaker, Content Creator and Writer. She hosts her talk show The Sonya Barlow Show where she interviews world leaders on the stories behind their success, with high-profile names such as Princess Lamia of Saudi Arabia and Footballer Gilberto Silva. In 2022, Sonya was named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Gender Diversity and her BBC show The Everyday Hustle, was The Best Radio Show in the UK. Sonya is the CEO of the Like Minded Females (LMF) Network, an inclusion consultancy and social networking platform redesigning workplace policies and professional careers to encourage diversity and inclusion. Sonya has also written the popular book “Unprepared to Entrepreneur” and won multiple awards, including Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, Marie Claire’s Future Shaper, UK Entrepreneur of the Year and Asian Women of Achievement. She is one of the youngest South Asian females to have two TEDx talks, titled “Please Come Online” and “Failure Comes Before Resilience”. Sonya’s energetic and captivating personality has seen her invited to Keynote at The House of Commons on gender diversity and delivering global keynotes on business, technology and inclusion in Germany, Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Pakistan, Amsterdam, France, the UK, Portugal and Mauritius, to name a few. Sonya’s background in technology, business and travel provides her with the unique ability to understand technical terms, share innovative solutions and advocate allyship. She has a great sense of cultural communication and is often told that her power is summarising large bits of information into notable smaller action steps that the audience can easily takeaway. She has worked with household brands such as Lloyds banking group and Capital One on their technology podcast, led campaigns for Loreal, HP, Rolls Royce, Fiverr, Logitech and Linkedin and delivered talks to high-profile stakeholders across industries such as Fintech, Technology, Finance, Hospitality, Public Sector, Higher Education, Government, Fashion, Retail and Corporate. Sonya Barlow is a neurodivergent British Pakistani woman with chronic migraines, ADHD and mental health conditions. Diversity, resilience, and neurodiversity are topics close to her heart when delivering keynotes. She is able to deliver workshops and keynotes about her own experiences of ADHD, with advice on coping mechanisms and how your neurodiversity can be an asset if channeled in the right way. Sonya has worked in the technology sector since 2015 and is currently building an app to encourage professional working women to build their networks and knowledge, whilst supporting workplaces to retain diverse talent.

Why organisations work with Stephen Attenborough He built the commercial foundation of an entirely new industry. Joining Virgin Galactic as employee number one in 2004, he created the customer journey, pricing, brand and trust architecture for a product that did not yet fly. He has held a customer base for almost two decades through delay, accident and regulatory scrutiny. Roughly 700 to 800 future astronauts from more than 50 countries committed deposits before commercial flights began. That retention pattern is unusual outside luxury and is rare in deep tech. His financial-services background, more than 15 years at Gartmore Investment Management working with sophisticated and high-net-worth clients, sits underneath the customer model at Virgin Galactic. He understands how serious buyers commit to long-horizon decisions. He saw the company through its NYSE listing in 2019, the first public commercial human spaceflight company, and through Richard Branson’s flight on Unity 22 in 2021. He can speak credibly about scaling a frontier brand inside public-market scrutiny. He now sits inside the next wave of the industry, as Strategic Advisor and European Lead at Space Perspective and Trustee of Virgin Unite US. His perspective on the commercial second space age is current, not archival. Biography highlights First full-time employee of Virgin Galactic, recruited personally by Sir Richard Branson in 2004 Commercial Director and later Chief Customer Officer, Virgin Galactic, 2004 to 2022 Built and led the team responsible for sales, marketing, customer care, PR and communications for the company’s future astronaut programme Oversaw the commercial side of Virgin Galactic’s 2019 NYSE listing, the first public commercial human spaceflight company Strategic Advisor and European Lead, Space Perspective, from October 2023 Board Member and Trustee, Virgin Unite US; Advisory Board member, Space for Humanity Earlier career: more than 15 years in investment management at Gartmore Investment Management, London, in roles serving institutional and high-net-worth clients Biography The commercial foundation of a new industry rarely gets written down. When Sir Richard Branson recruited Stephen Attenborough as the first full-time employee of Virgin Galactic in 2004, there was no product, no flight history, no regulatory category and no customer base. There was a proposition: that private individuals would one day pay to leave the atmosphere. Eighteen years later, when he left the company in 2022, Virgin Galactic was a NYSE-listed business with a deposit-paying customer base across more than fifty countries, and its founder had flown. That arc is the heart of his speaking work. As Commercial Director and then Chief Customer Officer, he led sales, marketing, customer care and communications for the future astronaut programme. The customer task was unusual. Buyers were committing significant sums for an experience that had never been delivered, would arrive years later than expected, and would be examined in detail by media and regulators every step of the way. Holding a customer base through that pattern, without losing trust, is the commercial discipline he can speak to in detail. His earlier career sits underneath that work. More than fifteen years at Gartmore Investment Management in London gave him a long apprenticeship in how sophisticated clients commit capital and what they expect from the relationship. The skill set translated cleanly: long-horizon decisions, high information asymmetry, and the need for the seller to behave as a long-term partner rather than a transactional one. He remains active in the sector. As Strategic Advisor and European Lead at Space Perspective from October 2023, and as a Trustee of Virgin Unite US and Advisory Board member of Space for Humanity, he sits inside the commercial conversation about what the second space age becomes once the novelty fades and the operating questions begin. Key speaking topics The commercial second space age Building a customer base for a category that does not yet exist Brand and trust at the frontier of technology Customer experience for high-net-worth and long-horizon buyers Sustaining entrepreneurial culture through public listing and public scrutiny Frontier innovation as a commercial discipline The Virgin Galactic story, from employee one to NYSE Ideal for CMOs, CCOs and customer experience leaders in luxury, financial services and frontier technology categories Boards and executive teams building or scaling brand-led businesses in deep tech, climate tech and space Founders and commercial leaders selling long-horizon, high-trust products to demanding customers Innovation and strategy audiences working at the edge of a new market category Audience outcomes A practical view of how to build a customer base for a product that does not yet exist A frame for keeping customers committed through delay, setback and public scrutiny Specific lessons from the commercialisation of Virgin Galactic, including the move into public markets An informed view of where the commercial second space age is heading and what it means for adjacent industries A way of thinking about brand and trust as load-bearing commercial assets in frontier categories

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

Why organisations work with Timothy Armoo He has actually sold Gen Z attention to the buyers in the room. Fanbytes ran creator campaigns for Apple, McDonald’s, Nike, Samsung, Deliveroo and the UK Government before exiting to Brainlabs. Two exits before 28 give him an operator’s view of scale-up commercial discipline that most Gen Z marketing voices cannot match. His Penguin book What’s Stopping You? gives commercial audiences a structured language for the founder mindset he is asked to transfer into corporate teams. He sits inside Brainlabs as VP Influencer Marketing, which keeps his read on creator platforms, CPMs and Gen Z behaviour current rather than retrospective. He brings a credible answer to the multigenerational question: not a generational stereotype deck, but a working view of how Gen Z employees and customers behave once incentives are on the table. Biography highlights Co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes; sold to Brainlabs in 2022 in an eight-figure deal. Sold his first business, EntrepreneurXpress, to Horizon Media at 17. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2021, Media & Marketing. Named in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 list of London’s most influential figures in advertising and media. Author of What’s Stopping You? 11 Cheatcodes to Unlock the Life You Want, published by Penguin. Currently Vice President of Influencer Marketing at Brainlabs, the global digital agency that acquired Fanbytes. Biography The hardest commercial question facing many consumer brands is no longer awareness. It is whether the under-30 customer takes them seriously at all. Influencer budgets are climbing, internal teams are stretched between TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and most boards have no operator in the room who has actually run those campaigns at scale. Fanbytes was built to sit in that gap. Co-founded by Timothy Armoo in 2017 with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya, the agency ran creator campaigns for Apple, McDonald’s, Nike, Samsung, Deliveroo, Boohoo and the UK Government. In May 2022, Brainlabs acquired the business in an eight-figure deal. Armoo was 27. He stayed on as Vice President of Influencer Marketing at Brainlabs, which keeps his commercial view of Gen Z platforms current, not retrospective. The track record was not a single lucky exit. He sold his first company, EntrepreneurXpress, to Horizon Media at 17. Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Media and Marketing in 2021. The Evening Standard Progress 1000 listed him among London’s most influential figures in advertising and media. His Penguin book What’s Stopping You? extends the same operator’s logic into a wider audience of commercial leaders and early-career professionals. For senior buyers, the value is specific. He is the rare voice on Gen Z marketing who can speak to a CMO with the discipline of a founder who had to make a P&L work, sell to a procurement team, and exit to a global agency. That is a different conversation from a panel on creator culture. Key speaking topics Gen Z consumer behaviour and brand decisions Influencer and creator-led marketing strategy Entrepreneurship and scale-up commercial discipline Building, scaling and exiting a venture-backed business The multigenerational customer and workforce Social platforms and the modern media landscape Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer marketing leadership rethinking creator and Gen Z strategy Founders, scale-up CEOs and growth leaders preparing for raise, scale or exit Boards and exec teams of consumer-facing businesses with under-30 customer exposure Talent, employer brand and graduate recruitment leads who need a sharper read on Gen Z employees Audience outcomes A clearer commercial map of how Gen Z actually decides on brand, employer and product Specific operator lessons from building, scaling and selling a creator-economy agency A framework for evaluating influencer and creator spend as a measurable channel, not a content experiment A more honest read on the gap between how senior teams talk about Gen Z and how Gen Z behave Conviction to back internal entrepreneurial bets that conventional governance tends to slow

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

Why organisations work with Tom Fishburne His Marketoonist series has run weekly since 2002 and reaches 500,000 business readers – giving him a live, continuously updated signal on where marketing and organisational thinking is currently stuck, rather than a fixed body of research. His argument is structural, not motivational: that customer engagement fails and innovation stalls for cultural reasons, and that humour is a functional tool for surfacing those reasons – not a tone choice, not entertainment. This gives leadership teams a lever that most change programmes do not include. His Marketoonist studio has built campaigns for over 200 organisations including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC – meaning every argument he makes on stage is backed by commercial execution, not only observation. He provides a shared visual vocabulary that allows cross-functional teams to discuss what is actually blocking performance – poor customer experience, idea killers, AI adoption gaps – without triggering defensiveness. As Stanford GSB’s Cartoonist-in-Residence for the course on humour in business, and a regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, his framework has academic validation alongside its commercial track record. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Marketoonist, a cartoon-led content marketing and culture change studio; 200+ campaigns for Google, Adobe, LinkedIn, DBS Bank, PwC, and Unilever Creator of the Marketoonist weekly cartoon series, published since 2002; 500,000 weekly readers; featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times; weekly contributor to MarketingWeek since 2007 Harvard Business School alumnus; Cartoonist-in-Residence and Lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business course on humour in business; regular guest lecturer at Harvard Business School Author of Your Ad Ignored Here; illustrator of three Deloitte business books – Provoke (WSJ Bestseller), Detonate (National Bestseller), and Work Disrupted Former Interim CMO at HotelTonight (acquired by Airbnb); Marketing VP at Method Products (European brand launch named Brand Launch of the Year, The Grocer); brand management at Nestlé and General Mills Speaker at TED Salon: Unconventional, TED World Theater, New York; 200+ keynotes delivered in more than 30 countries Biography Tom Fishburne started drawing cartoons on the backs of Harvard Business School cases in 2000 and has published the Marketoonist series weekly since 2002. That series now reaches 500,000 readers a week and has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and The New York Times. The reason it travels is not novelty – it is recognition. The cartoons name what people in organisations already know but rarely say aloud. His argument, developed across a marketing career at Nestlé, General Mills, Method Products, and HotelTonight, is that most marketing underperformance and most innovation failure is cultural in origin. Customer journeys break not because teams lack data, but because organisational dynamics prevent anyone from acting on it. Ideas lose momentum between brainstorm and launch not because of resource constraints, but because of unspoken idea killers that no one has named. Humour, Fishburne argues, is a functional diagnostic tool for exactly these problems – not a way to make difficult conversations comfortable, but a way to make them possible. In 2010, he expanded Marketoonist into a creative studio. The studio has since built cartoon-led content and culture change campaigns for more than 200 organisations, including Google, Adobe, DBS Bank, and PwC. He is Cartoonist-in-Residence at Stanford GSB for the course on humour in business and returns regularly to guest lecture at Harvard Business School. He illustrated three bestselling Deloitte business books – Provoke, Detonate, and Work Disrupted – and authored Your Ad Ignored Here. A senior buyer leaving his session does not leave with a framework to file. They leave with a vocabulary for conversations their team has been avoiding – and a demonstrated method for making those conversations productive. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness and customer engagement Innovation culture and idea management Humour as a strategic tool for culture change AI adoption and organisational readiness Visual communication and storytelling in business Challenger brand thinking Creative culture and overcoming idea killers Ideal for Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing leadership teams Chief People Officers and culture change leads Innovation and digital transformation leads Leadership conferences where marketing, creative culture, or organisational change is on the agenda Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic framework for identifying where marketing efforts break down and why Practical understanding of the cultural conditions that allow creative ideas to survive from brainstorm to launch A shared vocabulary for discussing organisational blockers – customer experience failures, AI adoption gaps, innovation stalls – without defensiveness Insight into humour as a repeatable strategic tool for culture change, distinct from motivation or entertainment A more honest assessment of whether technology and AI initiatives are failing for technical reasons or organisational ones

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Vicky Piria She is the first woman to have raced in the GP3 Series and the only Italian woman in the W Series, two facts that make her a credible voice on what it actually takes to enter and survive a closed industry at the top level. She speaks from a current operating reality, not a retired career. She is racing in the 2025 Italian GT Sprint Championship in a Ferrari 296 Challenge while presenting Sky Sport Italia’s Formula 1 coverage. Her perspective on team performance is grounded in the specific mechanics of a motorsport team, where pit-crew coordination, driver feedback, and engineering decisions all run on tight feedback loops under time pressure. She works in two languages and across two cultures (Italian and British), useful for European audiences who want a speaker who reads the room beyond an Anglophone default. For automotive, motorsport, broadcasting, and brand-sponsorship audiences, she brings credibility from inside the sport rather than commentary from outside it. Biography highlights First female driver in the GP3 Series, debuting with Trident Racing in 2012. Only Italian driver in the inaugural 2019 W Series, the Formula 1 feeder championship for women. Sky Sport Italia Formula 1 presenter from 2024, succeeding Federica Masolin. Italian GT Championship competitor; second in GT Cup in 2023 and three pole-to-win victories in the 2024 Endurance GT Cup Pro-Am Division 2. Confirmed driver for the 2025 Italian GT Sprint Championship with Scuderia Ghermandi by Zanasi Racing in a Ferrari 296 Challenge. Former Formula E commentator for Mediaset and presenter on Italia 1’s Drive Up automotive programme. Biography Motorsport is one of the most closed industries in professional sport. The cost of entry is high, the technical knowledge required is unforgiving, and for most of its history the cockpits and the commentary boxes have been occupied by men. Vicky Piria moved through both. She arrived in the GP3 Series in 2012 as the first female driver in its history, racing for Trident. Seven years later she became the only Italian driver in the inaugural W Series, the Formula 1 feeder championship created to give female drivers a serious competitive pathway. Those two facts position her uniquely in European motorsport. The current chapter is what makes her useful to organisations now. She races in the Italian GT Championship, taking three pole-to-win results in the 2024 Endurance GT Cup Pro-Am Division 2 and stepping into a Ferrari 296 Challenge with Scuderia Ghermandi by Zanasi Racing for the 2025 Sprint season. At the same time she fronts Formula 1 coverage on Sky Sport Italia, having replaced Federica Masolin in 2024. She works comfortably in Italian and English, in front of a camera and inside a race team. For audiences in automotive, broadcasting, brand sponsorship, and any sector trying to widen its talent pipeline beyond the obvious candidates, that combination of operating credibility and broadcast craft is genuinely uncommon. Key speaking topics Women in motorsport and male-dominated industries High-performance teamwork under time pressure Resilience in elite competitive environments Brand and sponsorship in motorsport Broadcasting, hosting, and panel moderation Career reinvention from athlete to broadcaster Ideal for Automotive, motorsport, and mobility sector audiences (manufacturers, sponsors, dealer networks). Brand and marketing leadership at organisations sponsoring sport or building presence around motorsport. Diversity, inclusion, and talent leads in technical or engineering-led organisations. Event hosts seeking a bilingual (Italian and English) moderator with motorsport authority. Audience outcomes A first-person account of what it took to enter and compete in the most male-dominated tier of professional sport. A working view of team performance inside a motorsport operation, from driver and crew dynamics to engineering feedback loops. A perspective on the W Series experiment, why it mattered, what it achieved, and what its absence now means for the pipeline. A motorsport-literate voice for sponsorship, brand activation, and event audiences who want substance behind the storytelling.

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