Marketing & Branding

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

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

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Kevin Lane Keller He authored the framework most senior marketers were trained on. The Customer-Based Brand Equity model, his 1993 Journal of Marketing paper, is the reference point that brand equity conversations still anchor to. He co-authors the standard MBA marketing textbook. Marketing Management with Philip Kotler is in its 16th edition and sits on the syllabus of most top business schools, which means his vocabulary is already shared by the room. He has advised brand strategy at Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Nike, P&G, Samsung, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Google, so the case material is current rather than historical. He treats the tension between short-term performance marketing and long-term brand building as a capital allocation question, not a creative one, which lands with CFOs and CEOs as well as CMOs. He brings the academic credibility of 135+ peer-reviewed papers and a Tuck professorship without retreating into theory; the work has been pressure-tested in expert witness testimony for Amazon, Meta, Mercedes-Benz, and the NFL. Biography highlights E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. Author of Strategic Brand Management, 5th edition, co-authored with Vanitha Swaminathan, widely referred to as the “bible of branding.” Co-author with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev of Marketing Management, 16th edition. Originator of the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model, 1993 Journal of Marketing. Former Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, 2013 to 2015. Previously held tenured marketing posts at Stanford Graduate School of Business, UC Berkeley, and UNC Chapel Hill. Biography The argument over what brand investment is actually for has moved from the marketing function to the boardroom. Finance leaders want a defensible link between brand spend and enterprise value. Marketing leaders are negotiating between short-term performance metrics and the longer arc of customer preference. Keller’s work is the framework most of those conversations are still built on. His 1993 Journal of Marketing paper introduced the Customer-Based Brand Equity model, which redefined brand value as what customers know, feel, and recognise about a brand rather than as a balance-sheet residual. The CBBE pyramid remains a standard reference for measuring brand strength inside organisations like Accenture, American Express, Disney, Nike, P&G, and Samsung, all of which have drawn on his counsel. He co-authors Marketing Management with Philip Kotler and Alex Chernev, now in its 16th edition, and Strategic Brand Management with Vanitha Swaminathan, now in its 5th. Both textbooks are core curriculum at most top business schools, which means most CMOs in the room were trained inside his vocabulary. He has held tenured positions at Stanford, Berkeley, and UNC before Tuck, and served as Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute. Keller’s current work focuses on how brands hold their position when AI reshapes media buying, customer experience, and pricing simultaneously. He addresses the tension senior teams face directly: how to keep building the brand asset when every dashboard rewards the campaign. Key speaking topics Customer-based brand equity Building global power brands Brand strategy and brand architecture Integrated marketing communications The economics of brand investment AI and the future of brand management Marketing strategy at the CEO and CFO level Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders defending brand investment to boards and finance functions CEOs and CFOs evaluating how brand contributes to enterprise value Marketing leadership offsites and senior marketing development programmes Global brand and category teams in consumer, technology, and financial services Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, grounded in the CBBE framework, for discussing brand value across marketing, finance, and the executive team A clearer view of how short-term performance activity and long-term brand building reinforce or undermine each other Diagnostic tools for assessing where a brand is strong, vulnerable, or under-leveraged in current category dynamics A current perspective on what AI changes, and does not change, for brand strategy Case context from senior brand decisions inside Nike, Disney, P&G, Samsung, Google, and others

Why organisations work with Joerg Niessing He teaches inside the C-suite of the brands most boards benchmark against, Google, L’Oréal, Roche, Walmart, Marriott, Diageo and Samsung among them, and brings that pattern recognition into the room. Twenty-five years of advisory work at Prophet plus a senior INSEAD faculty role gives him both the operator’s view of transformation and the academic’s discipline. Few digital strategy speakers credibly hold both. His book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation is built around a specific argument that customer centricity, not technology stack, is the variable that separates growth from stalled programmes. The Case Centre’s 2025 Outstanding Case Teacher award recognises a rare ability to make complex transformation cases land with senior executives, which translates directly into keynote and workshop work. He co-directs INSEAD’s flagship Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy programme, so his content reflects what CMOs and CEOs are actually being taught at the frontier, not what was written eighteen months ago. Biography highlights Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, INSEAD. Former Partner, Prophet. Co-author of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation (2020) with Fred Geyer. Winner, Outstanding Case Teacher Competition 2025 (The Case Centre); previous Best Marketing Case award winner. Co-director, INSEAD executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy and Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy. Has authored 30+ executive cases on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. Biography Digital transformation programmes do not usually fail on technology. They fail because the strategy, the culture and the data operating model are not aligned, and the customer experience that results is incoherent. That gap between investment and commercial outcome is the territory Joerg Niessing has spent his career on. At INSEAD, he is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing and co-directs flagship executive programmes including Leading Digital Marketing Strategy, Leading AI and Digital Marketing Strategy and B2B Marketing Strategies. His research and teaching focus on digital customer experience, marketing analytics, brand management and the strategic implications of AI for commercial leaders. Before moving to full-time faculty work he was a Partner at Prophet, the brand and customer experience consultancy, where he led client engagements with global businesses across consumer goods, automotive, healthcare and B2B technology. That operating background sits underneath his 2020 book with Fred Geyer, The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, which argues that growth comes from prioritising customers over technology, an argument that has aged well as more transformation budgets are scrutinised. The Case Centre named him Outstanding Case Teacher in 2025, recognition of a 30-strong case portfolio on companies including Google, Jaguar Land Rover, AccorHotels, BMW Startup Garage and Majid Al Futtaim. For a senior buyer, that body of work is the substance behind the keynote: he is testing these arguments on executives from the world’s largest brands every week. Key speaking topics Customer-centric digital transformation B2B digital transformation and growth AI and digital marketing strategy Brand building in a digital and AI-driven world Data and analytics as a commercial capability Business model innovation from product to solution Culture and leadership of transformation programmes Ideal for CMOs, Chief Customer Officers and Chief Digital Officers running enterprise transformation programmes. CEOs and boards reviewing the commercial return on multi-year digital and AI investment. B2B leadership teams shifting from product-led to customer-led and solution-led growth. Senior marketing, brand and customer experience teams inside large consumer and B2B businesses. Audience outcomes A sharper view of where customer centricity, not technology, is the binding constraint on growth. A working framework for connecting strategy, culture and data inside a transformation programme. Practical reference points from named global brands, not generic case study language. A clearer commercial agenda for AI in marketing, customer experience and brand. Confidence to challenge the technology-first defaults in their own transformation plans.

Why organisations work with Kofi Smiles Brings the on-air discipline of a daily BBC Breakfast Show host to corporate stages: live timing, interview craft, and recovery when an agenda slips Steers difficult panels with humour, including conversations on inclusion, youth voice and culture, without lowering the tone Carries credibility with younger and culturally diverse audiences through his BBC No Filter work and youth broadcasting background Comfortable across formats: keynote interviewer, awards host, fireside chair, conference moderator, internal town-hall facilitator Biography highlights Host, BBC Radio Humberside Breakfast Show Presenter, BBC Radio 4 The Listening Project; has hosted Pick of the Week Selected as the BBC’s Face of Hull for UK City of Culture 2017, chosen from more than 200 candidates Co-winner, O2 Media Award for Digital Journalism (Hull 2017 coverage) Founder of BBC No Filter, a platform amplifying young voices Co-founder of CTK Media, producing political satire and pop culture content; University of Northumbria graduate Biography A live BBC Breakfast Show is unforgiving. The clock does not slip, the guests do not always show, and the host has to keep the listener with them through every link. Kofi Smiles has run that format every morning at BBC Radio Humberside, and the discipline travels into the rooms he chairs for corporate clients. He came to national attention as the BBC’s Face of Hull for the UK City of Culture 2017, chosen from more than 200 candidates and appearing across Radio 4, BBC One and the News Channel. The team coverage won an O2 Media Award for Digital Journalism. Since then he has hosted Radio 4’s The Listening Project and Pick of the Week, two formats that depend on getting a stranger to open up on tape. That interview craft is what he brings to the stage. He chairs panels, moderates leadership conversations, and hosts awards and conferences. He is comfortable with conversations about inclusion, culture and youth voice, having built BBC No Filter to amplify young people on the platform, and he can hold those conversations without flattening them. The work he does outside the BBC, including political satire and pop culture content through CTK Media, shows up in the room as range. He can switch register from a serious board panel to an evening awards host without dropping the thread. Key speaking topics Event hosting and moderation Conference and awards emcee Panel chairing on inclusion and youth voice Storytelling and broadcast interviewing Culture, media and pop culture commentary Internal town-hall and leadership Q&A facilitation Ideal for Corporate event organisers needing a credible broadcast host or moderator CHRO and DEI leads running internal events on inclusion, culture, or employee voice Brand and marketing teams hosting awards nights, customer conferences, or media launches Internal communications leads commissioning all-hands or leadership Q&A formats Audience outcomes A tighter, better-paced event with clean transitions between sessions Panels that surface a substantive point from each speaker, not just airtime Difficult topics handled with warmth, so the room stays with the conversation A host who lands the close, so the audience leaves on a note the organiser chose

Why organisations work with Max Lenderman He wrote the founding text of experiential marketing. Experience the Message (2005) put the category on the map. Twenty years on, his thinking is the underlying logic most brand-experience practice still draws from. He has run the experiential function at the agencies that shape global brand work: founder of the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, former CEO of School, current Chief Experience Officer at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing. He moves brands from broadcasting purpose to operating on it. His “invertising” approach starts inside the organisation, with employees, and makes brand purpose a commercial driver rather than a campaign line. He has been working on web3, NFTs, and the digital-physical convergence since 2021, before most CMOs had a position on any of it. His Adweek “Into the Metaverse” column is one of the longer-running serious treatments of the territory. He has built campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Absolut, and DaimlerChrysler. The case material in the room is from inside the work, not observed from outside it. Biography highlights Author of Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing Is Changing the Brand World and Brand New World: How to Reach Billions, Not Millions Chief Experience Officer at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing, the world’s largest experiential marketing agency Founder of the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky; former CEO of School (Project Worldwide) Founding member of the International Experiential Marketing Association (IXMA) Columnist for Adweek and Campaign magazines, including the “Into the Metaverse” column Speaker at SXSW, Consensus, Forbes CMO Summit, Advertising Week, and X-Prize Biography Experience the Message was published in 2005. It is the book that put the phrase “experiential marketing” into the advertising vocabulary, and the thesis behind it, that the brand is what the customer experiences, not what the brand says about itself, is now treated as common sense by most serious CMOs. The author wrote it from inside the work, not as a theorist looking on. Max Lenderman has spent the last two decades building the function he named. He launched the global experiential practice at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, served as CEO of School, the purpose-led consultancy inside Project Worldwide, and now holds the first Chief Experience Officer post at Omnicom’s GMR Marketing. The client list, Tommy Hilfiger, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Absolut, DaimlerChrysler, NASCAR Canada, gives him operating ground in categories where brand experience moves revenue. Two ideas anchor his current work with senior marketers. The first is “invertising,” the argument that brand purpose has to be operationalised through employees before it can be sold to customers, and that the financial return on purpose is measurable when treated this way. The second is the “phygital” frontier, where digital and physical experiences are designed as a single product rather than as a campaign with a digital extension. His Adweek column “Into the Metaverse” has tracked this territory since 2021. What he gives a senior marketing audience is the founding logic of the category and twenty years of inside work applying it. He cites a PwC finding that 86% of US buyers will pay more for a better brand experience, then shows what that figure actually requires of a brand operating model. Key speaking topics Customer experience and brand operating reality Experiential and “phygital” marketing Brand purpose as commercial driver Web3, NFTs, and the metaverse for marketers AI as creative amplifier in marketing Sports marketing and live brand experience Marketing innovation and emerging consumer behaviour Ideal for CMOs, CBOs, and brand directors rethinking the role of marketing in commercial strategy Customer experience and brand experience leads inside large consumer businesses Agency leaders and creative directors briefing on web3, AI, and digital-physical integration Sports, entertainment, and live-event sponsors building brand experience programmes Audience outcomes A working definition of brand experience that separates it from communications and advertising A view of brand purpose as an internal operating commitment, not a campaign theme A sharper read on where web3, NFTs, and the metaverse have commercial traction for marketers, and where they do not A direct argument for treating AI as a creative amplifier inside marketing teams Case material from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, School, and GMR Marketing applied to the audience’s own brand questions

Why organisations work with Mark Levy He built Employee Experience as a discipline inside Airbnb during the years it was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work, so the playbook he teaches is one he has actually shipped. He treats culture as something designed, instrumented, and operated, not as a values poster or a wellness programme, which gives CHROs and CEOs a concrete way to talk about it with the board. He has done the same work twice at very different scales, at Airbnb in hypergrowth and at Allbirds through global expansion, so the frameworks travel beyond one company’s circumstances. He is co-authoring the Wiley method that is becoming the reference text for EX practitioners, alongside Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, which gives his sessions a body of work rather than a personal anecdote set. He speaks fluently to the alignment between CMO and CHRO, where most internal-brand efforts break down, because he has run the function that sits between them. Biography highlights Pioneered the Employee Experience function at Airbnb, replacing the traditional HR model with an end-to-end employee journey approach. Led the people and culture work during the year Airbnb was named Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work. Most recently led Employee Experience at Allbirds during its global expansion. Co-author of Employee Experience Design (Wiley, 2026) with Dean Carter and Samantha Gadd. Earlier corporate roles at Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. Board director at First Graduate; former Gap Foundation board member; advisor to Backstage Capital and MixR. JD/MBA from the University of Colorado. Biography Airbnb hit Glassdoor’s #1 Place to Work ranking in 2016 with a people function that did not look like a people function. It had been rebuilt as Employee Experience, with culture, workplace, and social impact reporting alongside traditional HR. The person who designed that structure was Mark Levy. He came to it from a long retail and consumer career: Best Buy, Levi Strauss & Company, Gap Inc., and two years at Thomson/Technicolor in Paris. The pattern across those roles was practical, not academic. How does a company actually live its brand internally, in the systems and rituals employees experience every day, rather than in the language printed on the wall? At Airbnb he turned that question into an operating model. The result, codified now in the Wiley book he co-authored with Dean Carter of Patagonia and Samantha Gadd, treats employee experience as something you design with employees rather than for them, and instrument the way a product team would. Most recently he led the same work at Allbirds as the company scaled internationally. What organisations get from him is the rare combination of a builder who has actually run the function and a teacher with a published method. The audience he is sharpest with is the CHRO who needs to translate culture into board-readable substance, and the CEO and CMO who want the company their customers experience to match the company their employees work in. Key speaking topics Employee Experience design Belonging and the internal brand Culture during hypergrowth and global expansion The shift from HR to end-to-end employee journey CMO and CHRO alignment on brand Hybrid and distributed work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning the HR operating model. CEOs and founder-led companies in scale-up where culture is starting to fragment. CMOs and brand leaders working with people teams on internal brand and employer brand. Boards and executive committees treating culture as a governance topic, not an HR topic. Audience outcomes A clear distinction between Employee Experience as a discipline and HR as a function, with the structural implications of each. A practical model for designing employee journeys the way product teams design customer journeys. A working language for the CMO and CHRO to align internal and external brand. Specific examples from Airbnb and Allbirds of what design-led culture looks like when it is built and instrumented. A reference point in the Wiley method, including how Patagonia, Airbnb, and other companies have made it operational.

Why organisations work with Kanika Chadda Gupta A live interviewer who can carry a senior-leader fireside, a customer panel and an all-hands Q&A inside the same event, with the journalistic preparation of a network anchor rather than a generalist host. A working-parent and caregiver lens grounded in years of conversations with the audience itself, through the That’s Total Mom Sense podcast and its named guests including Chelsea Clinton, Kelly Rowland and America Ferrera. AAPI and South Asian heritage programming led by someone with cultural authority, not a borrowed brief, useful for Heritage Month moments where credibility is what makes the session land. Recognised by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women as a 2023 100 Women to KNOW Across America honouree, which travels well with internal sponsors who want a credentialled external voice on women’s progression. A second business as founder of Kronologie Agency, so brand, storytelling and marketing-to-mothers content is delivered with operator credibility, not theory. Biography highlights Former television journalist and anchor, with CNN India reporting credits including coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Host of That’s Total Mom Sense, featured in Forbes and on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and Cheddar. 2023 honouree, 100 Women to KNOW Across America, presented by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women. Director for Women in Media at HeyMama; Official Podcast Partner of Mom 2.0 with Everyday Health and BabyCenter. Founder and CEO of Kronologie Agency, a New York digital marketing and branding firm. Trained Kuchipudi classical dancer and Hindustani vocalist; former Miss India Maryland and Miss India East Coast. Biography Working parents are the silent majority inside most large employers, yet leave, benefits and culture programmes still treat them as a special case. That mismatch is where Kanika Chadda Gupta does her most useful work. Her years interviewing CEOs, founders and public figures on That’s Total Mom Sense gave her a clear view of what working parents actually need from their employer, and what they quietly resent. The journalism credential is not decoration. She trained as a broadcast journalist and anchored at CNN, including coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, before moving into long-form interviewing. On stage that shows up as preparation: she reads in, asks the question the audience wanted asked, and does not let a panel drift. Forbes, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and Cheddar have all featured the podcast and her guest list runs from Chelsea Clinton to Kelly Rowland to America Ferrera. Her topical authority sits on three tracks. Working-parent and caregiver policy, anchored in interview evidence and her role as Director for Women in Media at HeyMama. Women’s progression, recognised by JPMorgan Chase, Industrious and KNOW Women in their 2023 100 Women to KNOW Across America cohort. And AAPI and South Asian heritage, delivered with the cultural authority of someone trained in Kuchipudi classical dance and Hindustani vocal music since childhood. She also runs Kronologie Agency, a New York branding and digital marketing firm, which gives her a second register: marketing-to-mothers content delivered by an operator who has built campaigns, not just talked about them. Employers booking her for a Heritage Month moment, a working-parent ERG event or a customer fireside get a host who has done the reading and a topical voice who has done the work. Key speaking topics Working parents and caregivers in corporate culture Women’s progression and leadership development AAPI and South Asian heritage programming Marketing and brand storytelling for mother-led households Interview craft and on-stage moderation Storytelling for television, podcast and new media Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and ERG sponsors designing working-parent, women’s and AAPI heritage programming CMOs and brand teams targeting mother-led household decision-making Internal communications and event leads booking a fireside, customer panel or all-hands moderator Heads of talent and culture running employee summits where journalistic interview craft matters more than a keynote Audience outcomes A clearer read on where current working-parent policy is failing in practice and which fixes employees actually value Specific language for sponsoring women’s progression and AAPI heritage moments without slipping into compliance theatre A marketing perspective on mother-led households that goes beyond demographic data A session moderated or hosted with network-journalist preparation, not generalist host energy Direct exposure to interview-based insight from named senior figures the audience would recognise

Why organisations work with Courtney Caldwell She has run demand generation at both ends of the company lifecycle: inside Oracle’s worldwide digital marketing group and at RightNow Technologies before its $1.45B sale, and again from zero at ShearShare. Few speakers can argue commercial strategy with that lived range. She built and exited a two-sided marketplace in a $500B services category that most enterprise marketers never touch. Beauty and barbering is not adjacent to enterprise SaaS, and her cross-vertical fluency makes her useful to leaders whose growth playbook is too narrow. She is a credible voice on founder economics from the inside, including raising venture capital as a Black woman, scaling through Google Demo Day, YC Fellowship and 500 Startups, and selling under financial pressure. The exit was not a clean Silicon Valley story. One of a small number of speakers who can move a room from enterprise SaaS marketing to gig-economy workforce dynamics in the same talk, because she has operated in both. Biography highlights Cofounder and former CEO of ShearShare, acquired in November 2024 after scaling to over 1,000 cities. Former global director of Oracle’s Worldwide Digital Marketing Strategy & Innovations Group. Former head of digital demand generation and JAPAC field marketing at RightNow Technologies, acquired by Oracle for $1.45B. Inc. magazine 2019 Female Founders 100 honoree; 2019 Ada Lovelace Female Tech Founder of the Year; 2017 L’Oreal USA Women in Digital NEXT Generation Award finalist. 2024 EY Entrepreneurs Access Network cohort member. BBA, SMU Cox School of Business; MBA in Marketing, UT Dallas. Biography Most enterprise marketers have never had to build supply. Inside a mature SaaS business, the funnel exists, the segments are mapped, and the work is to compound what is already there. Building a two-sided marketplace from zero asks for a different skill: acquiring two customers at once, in different verticals, with different motivations, before either side trusts the platform. Courtney Caldwell has done both. At Oracle she was global director of the Worldwide Digital Marketing Strategy and Innovations Group. Before that, she ran digital demand generation and JAPAC field marketing at RightNow Technologies in the run-up to its $1.45B acquisition by Oracle. The discipline she carried out of enterprise software was demand-gen rigour at scale: segmentation, attribution, funnel ownership. She then applied that discipline to a $500B services category that enterprise marketing usually ignores. ShearShare, the salon and barbershop booth rental marketplace she cofounded with Dr. Tye Caldwell, reached more than 1,000 cities and over 70,000 small businesses before being acquired in November 2024. The platform was a Google Demo Day winner, a YC Fellowship and 500 Startups alum, and a 2022 Fast Company World-Changing Ideas honoree. The exit was not the textbook version. ShearShare was sold to a strategic buyer under financial pressure during a dispute with M&T Bank. Caldwell speaks publicly about both halves of the journey, the recognition lists (Inc. Female Founders 100, Ada Lovelace Founder of the Year, L’Oreal Women in Digital, EY Entrepreneurs Access Network) and the harder economics underneath. That candour, paired with a Fortune 500 marketing pedigree, is the unusual combination she brings to a room. Key speaking topics Marketplace growth and two-sided customer acquisition Demand generation and digital marketing at scale Founder economics and venture-backed scale-up Future of work in the experience and gig economy Black women in technology and founder mental health Local startup ecosystems outside Silicon Valley Partnership, parenthood and entrepreneurship Ideal for CMOs and heads of growth at SaaS and consumer platforms reassessing demand-generation discipline. Founders, CEOs and operating partners building or backing two-sided marketplaces and scale-ups. Corporate innovation leads exploring services-vertical platform opportunities outside core tech. Diversity, leadership and ERG programmes commissioning substantive Black-women-in-tech content rather than generic representation talks. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where enterprise demand-gen discipline applies to early-stage marketplace growth, and where it does not. Specific tactics from inside Google Demo Day, YC Fellowship and 500 Startups that translate to corporate venture and intrapreneurship programmes. A frank account of what scaling and exiting a marketplace looks like when the cap table and operating economics are under pressure. A sharper read on the gig and experience economy from someone who operated a platform inside it, not just analysed it.