Marketing & Branding speakers

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

Why organisations work with Kian Bakhtiari Direct primary-source insight from a live community of 2,000+ Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets, rather than the lagged trend reports most boards are working from. A published, practitioner argument on purpose-led marketing through Kogan Page’s “Marketing for Social Change”, giving commercial teams a framework for purpose that survives the backlash cycle. Strategic credibility across two registers: the agency boardroom (former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network) and the multilateral institution (WEF Agenda Contributor, UNFCCC advisor). Operating experience with consumer-facing brands that have to convert Gen-Z, including Adidas, Unilever, Diesel, L’Oreal, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands and Speedo. A Financial Times Top 50 Future Leaders listing, which gives a buyer external validation that the perspective is taken seriously by the business press. Biography highlights Founder of The People, a Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha cultural intelligence consultancy with contributors across 50+ markets. Author of “Marketing for Social Change: How to Turn Purpose Into Business and Social Impact”, Kogan Page (2024). Named in the Financial Times “Top 50 Future Leaders” for contributions to marketing. Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum; Advisor to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC). Forbes contributor on Gen-Z, brand and consumer culture; featured in Campaign, The Drum, Vogue Business and Rolling Stone. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network; TEDx Brighton speaker on imagination and innovation. Biography Marketing teams have been trying to “reach Gen-Z” with the tools of the previous cycle: panels, focus groups, agency trend decks. The cohort itself has moved on, and most of the commercial signals reaching the boardroom are already a generation late. Kian Bakhtiari built The People to close that gap, running a live network of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha contributors across 50+ markets that feeds primary cultural intelligence directly into client work. His background is unusually balanced for the field. Former Head of Strategy at Dentsu Aegis Network, he understands what the commercial brief looks like inside a holding company. As Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and Advisor to UN Climate Change, he sees how the same generational questions land in policy and multilateral settings. The Financial Times named him in its Top 50 Future Leaders for marketing, an external read on where his work sits in the discipline. His book, “Marketing for Social Change” (Kogan Page, 2024), is the practitioner argument behind the consultancy. It sets out how brands can embed purpose into the operating substance of the business rather than the campaign layer, and how to avoid the backlash that hits when the two diverge. Clients he has worked with on this terrain include Unilever, L’Oreal, Diesel, Adidas, Danone, Innocent Drinks, Pentland Brands, Speedo and the BBC. What he gives a senior team is a route into a consumer base they cannot read with their existing tools, and a defensible position on purpose that holds up when scrutinised. That sits at the centre of how commercial strategy is now being rewritten for younger consumers and workers. Key speaking topics Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumer behaviour Purpose-led marketing and brand activism Cultural intelligence and foresight Marketing for social change The future workforce and generational diversity Brand communities and the creator economy Innovation, imagination and creativity Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and consumer insight leads recalibrating their approach to Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha audiences Chief Strategy Officers and growth leads in consumer-facing categories where younger cohorts decide the next decade of revenue Boards and executive committees stress-testing purpose, ESG and brand positioning against a more sceptical, more political consumer base CHROs and culture leads working on multigenerational workforces where Gen-Z is reshaping engagement and retention Audience outcomes A sharper picture of what Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha actually want from brands, employers and institutions, drawn from a live primary-source network rather than syndicated research. A practical test for whether a brand’s purpose can survive contact with the operating business, and where it most often breaks. A view of the commercial cost of getting generational signals wrong, and the categories where that cost is already showing up. Specific examples of brands that have moved purpose from campaign to product, and what made the difference.

Why organisations work with Kim Davis Live broadcast experience that translates directly into stage presence: she presents The Travel Show on BBC News and writes regularly for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, so a panel or conference plenary in her hands feels editorially produced rather than improvised. A working marketer’s view of communication, not a theorist’s. Sarsaparilla, the consultancy she founded after moving from New York to London in 2004, operates inside campaigns, brand work and go-to-market decisions for commercial clients. Range across the unlovable formats. After-dinner, awards-night emcee, panel moderation, fireside interview and keynote, performed without the tonal mismatch that normally appears when speakers cross between them. A keynote thesis on arts-led achievement, given on the TEDxLukelyBrook stage in 2022, that gives leadership and culture audiences a route into creativity without the usual self-help register. Biography highlights Presenter, The Travel Show on BBC News. Contributing writer, CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph. Founder and CEO, Sarsaparilla Marketing, London. TEDxLukelyBrook speaker, “How The Arts Can Help You Achieve Anything”, 2022. New York native, London-based for over two decades; works across UK, US and EU markets. Stage and broadcast credits include Carnegie Hall, the O2 Arena and the TED platform (per speaker representation). Biography A live audience makes decisions about a speaker inside the first sentence. Davis was trained for that. Her day job is presenting The Travel Show on BBC News and writing for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, work that depends on getting a viewer or reader to lean in before a single fact has been delivered. That broadcast craft is what organisations are buying when they put her on stage. As a host and moderator she structures conversations the way an editor structures a segment: a clear thread, time discipline, and the ability to draw a usable answer out of an executive who would otherwise read from notes. The substantive content sits behind that. In 2004 she moved from New York to London and founded Sarsaparilla, a marketing and communications consultancy that runs campaign, brand and go-to-market work for commercial clients. Her keynote material draws from this practice and from her own performing background, including the TEDxLukelyBrook talk on arts and achievement she delivered in 2022. The combination is unusual. Most marketing speakers cannot present. Most broadcasters cannot speak credibly about commercial growth. Davis is booked when an event needs both in the same person. Key speaking topics Hosting, moderation and emcee craft Media and broadcast communication for executives Marketing and brand building Customer and audience engagement Arts-led approaches to creativity and achievement Female leadership in media, business and culture After-dinner speaking and awards-night presenting Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams looking for a working practitioner rather than a marketing academic Conference organisers and internal event leads who need a host or moderator with broadcast credibility Awards nights, gala dinners and customer events that need a confident emcee with editorial range Leadership and culture programmes wanting a session on creativity, communication and presence Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a journalist structures a story, and how to apply that discipline to a board narrative or all-hands talk Specific techniques drawn from broadcast and stage performance for holding attention in high-stakes settings A working framework for using arts and creative practice as a tool for executive communication For events: a tightly run room, a coherent through-line across sessions, and interviews that produce usable quotes rather than safe ones

Why organisations work with Kirstie Allsopp Twenty-five years of unbroken primetime presence on Channel 4 means audiences arrive already familiar with her, which shortens the warm-up phase of any event and lifts the room from the first minute. She runs her own production company, Raise the Roof, and her own product range, so she briefs as a working businesswoman rather than as talent reading lines, and questions on retail, brand and property land with substance. Property, home and consumer behaviour are the core subjects she has covered on screen since 2000, which makes her a natural fit for property, housebuilding, retail, lifestyle, charity and DIY brand audiences without needing a forced bridge. A direct, unscripted on-stage style. She is comfortable with live Q and A, off-the-cuff interviewing of executives, and the kind of room where a guarded host would stall. Sustained ambassadorship of Home-Start UK gives her credibility with charity galas and corporate-foundation audiences where a frivolous host would jar. Biography highlights Co-presenter of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location with Phil Spencer since the show’s launch in 2000. Co-founder of Raise the Roof Productions, the Glasgow-based independent television company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series. Founder in 1996 of Kirmir, a high-end home search agency operating in central and west London. Author of Kirstie’s Homemade Home, Kirstie’s Vintage Home, Kirstie Allsopp Craft and Kirstie’s Christmas Crafts, all published by Hachette. Creator and presenter of the Kirstie’s craft franchise on Channel 4, including Handmade Britain, Vintage Home, Celebrity Craft Masters and House of Craft. Long-standing ambassador for Home-Start UK. Biography Location, Location, Location launched on Channel 4 in 2000. More than two decades and forty series later, it is still on air, still presented by the same two people, and still one of the most reliable property formats in British television. Kirstie Allsopp has been one half of that pairing since the first episode. The career around it is broader than the show. She founded Kirmir, a central and west London home search agency, in 1996, four years before the cameras arrived. She co-founded Raise the Roof Productions, the independent company behind Location, Location, Location, Love It or List It UK and the Kirstie’s craft series, and sits inside the business as co-owner rather than as on-screen talent. Her published work with Hachette covers homes, vintage interiors and craft, and her Channel 4 craft franchise has run alongside the property work for more than a decade. For corporate audiences, the relevance is practical. She has spent twenty-five years interviewing buyers, sellers, retailers and small producers in front of a national audience, and she has run her own businesses across property, production and product. That gives her a working vocabulary for retail, property, brand and consumer behaviour that most television hosts do not carry. On stage she is direct, fluent without a script, and at ease with live audiences, which is the qualification that matters most when an organisation hands a host the room for an evening. She is also a sustained ambassador for Home-Start UK, the family-support charity, and her fundraising work there gives her credibility in charity-led and corporate-foundation settings where a purely entertainment host would feel mismatched. Key speaking topics Awards hosting and corporate compering After-dinner presence Property and the UK housing market Consumer behaviour in home and lifestyle British craft and small-producer retail Building a brand alongside a broadcasting career Charity event hosting Ideal for Property, housebuilding, mortgage and estate agency conferences booking a recognisable host with subject fluency Retail, lifestyle, DIY and home-furnishing brand events and awards Charity galas and corporate-foundation evenings, particularly those with a family, home or community focus After-dinner slots and awards ceremonies for senior corporate audiences who want a familiar Channel 4 face Audience outcomes A confidently paced evening where transitions, awards reads and guest interviews land cleanly Authentic engagement with property, retail and consumer-brand themes when the brief calls for them Live, unscripted interviewing of executives, winners and panellists that adds energy rather than filler Warmth and access for charity audiences where a sincere host materially affects giving and mood

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 Kudzi Chikumbu He built TikTok’s creator marketing, education, and community functions from a small U.S. team into a global operation, so he speaks from inside the engine room rather than from the outside as a commentator. He teaches the operating logic of authenticity as a brand strategy, not as a values statement, with a specific framework brands can apply to product launches, executive presence, and creator partnerships. He carries dual credibility: a senior platform operator who has also built a personal creator brand (Sir Candle Man) at meaningful scale, with coverage in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD and The Economist. His perspective on diversity and representation is grounded in what actually moves engagement and trust on platform, which makes it usable for CMOs who need substance rather than signalling. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, which gives a structured curriculum behind what could otherwise be presented as anecdote. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Creator Marketing at TikTok; longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business; current faculty at Stanford GSB. Began career as an accountant and management consultant at Deloitte. Author, Let It Burn: Illuminate Your Life with Candles & Fragrance (Chronicle Books). Creator of Sir Candle Man, featured in The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, NY Mag, The Economist, and on The Rachael Ray Show. Fortune 40 Under 40, The Hollywood Reporter Next Gen 35 Under 35, Variety’s Hollywood’s New Leaders, AdWeek Experiential Executive of the Year, ADCOLOR Innovator Award. Biography The shift in marketing power from media buyers to creators happened faster than most brand teams adjusted. The companies that responded well treated creators as an operating channel with its own logic. The ones that didn’t treated TikTok like a new ad placement and underperformed on both reach and reputation. Kudzi Chikumbu spent the years that defined that transition inside TikTok, where he built the creator marketing, education, partnerships and community functions as the platform scaled from new entrant to global infrastructure. He was the longest-serving member of TikTok’s U.S. team and rose to Global Head of Creator Marketing, working at the point where brand strategy, platform mechanics, and creator economics meet. His operating thesis is that authenticity functions as a commercial system, not a value statement. Audiences pay attention when a brand or executive shows up with a specific point of view, a clear identity, and a willingness to be legible as a person or a culture. He has tested that thesis on himself: as Sir Candle Man, he built a luxury fragrance creator brand recognised by The Hollywood Reporter, WWD, The Economist, and Chronicle Books, which published his book Let It Burn. He now teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business, the same institution where he earned his MBA after starting his career at Deloitte. The combination of platform operator, working creator, and faculty member is unusual, and gives him a vocabulary that translates between marketing teams, executive sponsors, and the creator partners they are trying to work with. Key speaking topics Creator marketing and partnerships Brand authenticity as a commercial discipline Niche communities and audience strategy The future of social platforms and digital content Diversity and representation in consumer brands Personal brand and executive presence online Career pivots and reputation strategy Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding their creator and platform strategy Communications and corporate affairs leaders preparing executives for visible digital presence Consumer brand, retail and lifestyle businesses where culture and creator influence drive purchase DEI, talent and culture leaders working on representation as a commercial, not symbolic, lever Audience outcomes A clearer model of how creator partnerships actually create commercial value, beyond reach metrics Specific tests for whether a brand’s content is platform-native or simply repurposed advertising A practical view of what authenticity means in marketing decisions, from product to executive voice Sharper understanding of how niche communities convert into durable audience relationships Renewed perspective on personal brand and online presence for senior leaders and emerging executives

Why organisations work with Lars Ulrich He has run, with three bandmates, one of the most commercially successful independent creative businesses of the last forty years, with more than 125 million albums sold and full ownership of the master recordings. He led the Napster confrontation in 2000, the first artist-led legal challenge to peer-to-peer file sharing, which set much of the licensing groundwork that streaming platforms operate on today. He speaks from inside a band whose business model has been rebuilt at least three times, from major-label act to self-owned record company to direct-to-fan operator across a 60 million-strong social following. He chairs, with his bandmates, the All Within My Hands Foundation, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog, useful only as evidence that the work has been recognised by serious institutions outside the music industry. Biography highlights Co-founder and drummer of Metallica, formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the first Danish artist to receive the honour. Ten Grammy Awards from 26 nominations, including six Best Metal Performance wins. Testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in Metallica v. Napster, 11 July 2000. Co-founder of the All Within My Hands Foundation, established 2017, supporting workforce education, food security and disaster relief. Awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2017. Biography Metallica has outsold most of the labels it has ever worked with. The band Lars Ulrich co-founded in 1981 has shipped more than 125 million records, won ten Grammy Awards, and now owns its entire master catalogue. It has done all of that without ever softening its sound to fit the commercial moment, and without ever being acquired, merged or absorbed. The interesting business question is how. Ulrich is one of the few people who can answer it from the inside. His account covers the decisions that mattered: refusing to chase trends with the Black Album, suing Napster in 2000 when the rest of the industry was paralysed, eventually buying back the masters, and rebuilding the band as its own record company, touring operation and direct-to-fan platform across more than 60 million followers. The Napster confrontation in particular is studied in business and law schools as a case in how an independent creative business defends its commercial rights against a technology shift. Ulrich’s Senate testimony in July 2000 became the artist-side argument that streaming services were eventually built around. He is candid about what the band got wrong in the public framing of that fight, and clear about what it preserved. Outside the band, he co-founded the All Within My Hands Foundation in 2017, which runs the Metallica Scholars Initiative with the American Association of Community Colleges and partners with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II in 2017, the same year the foundation launched. Key speaking topics Independent brand longevity Creative discipline at scale Business model reinvention Artist rights and the economics of digital distribution Partnership selectivity and brand integrity Philanthropy and foundation governance Team longevity and creative conflict Ideal for CEOs and founders running owner-led creative or brand-driven businesses CMOs and brand leads navigating partnership decisions and licensing Boards considering long-horizon brand strategy and succession Senior leadership offsites where the agenda is reinvention without losing identity Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a four-person creative business has stayed commercially independent for four decades. The reasoning behind Metallica’s decision to sue Napster, and what it produced for the wider industry. A clearer view of when to say no to brand partnerships, even profitable ones. A working sense of how creative conflict inside a senior team can be managed without breaking the team.

Why organisations work with Les Binet The 60:40 brand-to-activation framework he co-developed with Peter Field is the most cited effectiveness benchmark in UK marketing strategy. Organisations use it to build a defensible, evidence-based case for long-term brand investment to boards focused on quarterly ROI. His analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank covers more than 1,000 case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and over three decades of commercial data. No comparable longitudinal evidence base for marketing investment decisions exists in published form. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health and anticipating market share movements, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories using publicly available Google Trends data. Research he presented at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference showed that marketing budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite – a gap his work directly addresses. His grounding in Physics, Artificial Intelligence research and LSE econometrics makes him one of the few voices in effectiveness who can construct, interrogate and critique the statistical models organisations use to evaluate their own campaigns. Biography highlights Co-author of The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013) and four further IPA effectiveness reports; has contributed to more IPA Effectiveness Awards papers than any other individual (per the Advertising Association) Former Group Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB; joined BMP account planning in 1987 and remained across all iterations of the agency for more than three decades Recipient of the IPA President’s Medal (2014), the highest honour the UK advertising industry can award Elected IPA Honorary Fellow (2004); Convener of Judges, IPA Effectiveness Awards (2005) Board Advisor, Journal of Advertising Research; named in Campaign Magazine’s “40 over 40” (2023) MA Physics, Oxford; MPhil Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh; postgraduate Economics (Birkbeck) and Econometrics (LSE) Biography The Long and the Short of It, published by the IPA in 2013, is one of the most-cited effectiveness documents in marketing. Its co-author, Les Binet, spent three decades at adam&eveDDB building the evidence that most organisations structure their marketing investment around the wrong metrics. The research drew on 996 advertising effectiveness case studies across 700 brands, 83 sectors and more than 30 years of IPA Databank data. Its central finding of the “60:40 heuristic” recommended that most consumer brands allocate roughly 60% of marketing budget to brand building and 40% to short-term activation. The report has since been cited in over 70 academic publications and referenced across multiple languages. Binet’s subsequent work has continued to extend the evidence base. The Share of Search metric he developed gives organisations a free, predictive tool for tracking brand health using Google Trends data, validated across automotive, energy and handset categories. At the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference, he presented research with Medialab showing that budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving marketing effectiveness. Most CMOs surveyed believed the opposite. He read Physics at Oxford and completed an MPhil in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh, later adding postgraduate study in Economics at Birkbeck and Econometrics at the LSE. Elected an IPA Honorary Fellow in 2004, he received the IPA President’s Medal in 2014. He serves as a Board Advisor to the Journal of Advertising Research and consults independently through Binet Consulting. Key speaking topics Marketing effectiveness measurement Brand building versus short-term activation The 60:40 investment framework Share of Search and brand demand indicators Econometrics and advertising evaluation Media effectiveness in digital environments Evidence-based marketing investment strategy Ideal for CMOs and senior marketing leaders making significant media and brand investment decisions CFOs and finance functions reviewing marketing accountability and budget allocation Boards and executive teams evaluating the commercial return on advertising investment Strategy, planning and insight functions in organisations with major advertising spend Audience outcomes A clear, evidence-grounded framework for distinguishing short-term ROI from long-term profit growth, and why the difference matters to boards Practical understanding of the 60:40 brand-to-activation heuristic and how to adapt it by sector, brand maturity and business context A working introduction to Share of Search as a predictive brand health indicator, applicable without specialist tools or budget A stronger internal case for protecting brand investment in organisations under pressure to demonstrate immediate measurable returns Familiarity with the specific effectiveness patterns – reach, share of voice, emotional advertising – that the IPA data consistently identifies as drivers of commercial results

Why organisations work with Liv Marks A live-television-grade interviewer used to extracting a usable, broadcast-ready answer from talent like Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga inside a junket window of a few minutes. Fronts Bauer Media’s “My Life in Movies”, a long-form career interview format with figures including Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, evidence she can carry an unscripted hour as well as a red-carpet hit. Brings a built audience of women aged 25 to 35 on TikTok and Instagram, useful for organisations whose branded content needs to travel beyond the room. Track record of branded campaign work with Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio, so commercial integration is familiar territory, not new ground. A presenter who can move between film, television and stage musicals on Saturday radio, useful for organisations programming arts, culture and entertainment events. Biography highlights Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer, Bauer Media, covering film and television. Host, “My Life in Movies”, Bauer Media’s digital long-form interview series. Presenter, “Magic Musicals” Saturday radio show. Interview credits across red carpets, press junkets and premieres including Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. Branded campaign work with Bvlgari (EE BAFTA Awards), Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. BA in Broadcast Journalism, University of Leeds; earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television. Biography Press junkets are not gentle environments. A reporter has a few minutes with a major film actor, a publicist watching the clock, and a queue of competitors behind them all asking the same question. The interviewers who travel out of that format and into bigger rooms are usually the ones who can find a real conversation inside the constraint. Liv Marks is one of them. As Senior Entertainment Reporter and Content Producer at Bauer Media, Marks works across film and television, interviewing leading talent on red carpets, at premieres and in press junkets. Her interview credits include Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga. She fronts Bauer’s “My Life in Movies”, a career-spanning digital series whose guests have included Jeff Goldblum, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard, and presents “Magic Musicals” on Saturday radio, where she covers theatre and stage performance. Alongside the day job, Marks has built a sizeable digital audience as @olivialilymarks, with engagement concentrated among women aged 25 to 35. That reach is what turned her into a useful collaborator on branded campaigns for Bvlgari at the EE BAFTAs, Disney, Sky, NOW TV and Bauer Radio. The training behind it is conventional: a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Leeds and earlier reporting roles at ITN, That’s TV and Made Television, then a steady move into national entertainment journalism. For organisations, the proposition is straightforward. Marks is hired to host an evening, conduct an on-stage interview, moderate a panel or front a piece of branded content, with the craft of a working entertainment journalist behind it and an audience that will share the clip afterwards. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and on-stage interviewing Branded content presenting for film, television and lifestyle brands Red carpet, premiere and awards coverage Long-form career interviews with talent Building a digital audience around film and entertainment Musicals, theatre and stage performance Ideal for Heads of brand and marketing commissioning launch events, premieres or awards moments that need an experienced on-camera host Communications and content leads producing branded interview series or social-first video content Conference and gala organisers in arts, entertainment, lifestyle and media Audience outcomes A live event hosted with the pace and confidence of a working broadcaster On-stage interviews that get past stock answers and produce moments worth clipping Branded content that fits the host’s own audience rather than reading as an advert A bridge between mainstream media credibility and a digital audience of women aged 25 to 35

Why organisations work with Lottie Hulme A working journalist inside one of the UK’s largest entertainment newsrooms, with daily access to celebrity stories, talent and the cultural conversation brands are trying to enter. Hosting credit on The Sun’s National Television Awards Winners Room, twice, plus the YouTube franchise Strictly Secrets, which gives clients an MC with a track record on the kind of stage they are trying to reproduce. A TikTok and Instagram following built specifically around showbiz commentary, which puts brand activations in front of the audience that already watches entertainment content. A podcast host (#NoFilter) and regular talk radio contributor, useful when a brief calls for long-form interview craft rather than autocue presenting. Equally comfortable on the red carpet, in the host chair and behind a microphone at a corporate event, which removes the usual gap between a presenter who looks polished and one who can actually carry a live room. Biography highlights Senior Showbiz Reporter at The Sun, delivering celebrity exclusives across the title’s digital and video platforms. Host of Strictly Secrets on The Sun’s YouTube channel. Hosted the National Television Awards Winners Room twice on behalf of The Sun. Former Showbiz and Lifestyle Reporter at OK! Magazine. Former Deputy Editor of The Handbook, a London luxury lifestyle magazine. Host of the #NoFilter podcast and a regular entertainment contributor on talk radio, including Petrie Hosken, David Bull and Fubar Radio’s Access All Areas. Biography The fastest route to a consumer brand moment in 2026 runs through showbiz coverage and social video, not press releases. Lottie Hulme works at that intersection professionally, as Senior Showbiz Reporter at The Sun, where she delivers celebrity news and exclusive interviews across the title’s digital and video platforms. Her route into the chair was deliberate. She began at i-on, Scotland’s biggest fashion and lifestyle magazine, moved to London as Deputy Editor of The Handbook covering high-end venues and events, then joined OK! Magazine as a Showbiz and Lifestyle Reporter before her current role at The Sun. The career has been built inside the publications that set the day’s entertainment agenda. The hosting work has been built in parallel. She has fronted the National Television Awards Winners Room twice for The Sun, presents the YouTube franchise Strictly Secrets, and contributes regularly to UK talk radio. Her #NoFilter podcast brings the same interview craft to long form. For brand clients, she is bookable as MC, awards host, red carpet interviewer and panel host, all delivered with a working journalist’s instinct for the story in the room. Outside the studio, the TikTok and Instagram channels function as their own distribution. Lottie’s showbiz updates reach hundreds of thousands of viewers, which makes her one of the rare presenters who arrive at a corporate event with an existing consumer audience already paying attention. Key speaking topics Entertainment journalism and the modern celebrity story Social media and TikTok for brand audiences Red carpet hosting and awards presenting Influencer marketing and creator partnerships Interview craft for podcasts and live events Luxury lifestyle and consumer brand storytelling Ideal for Consumer brand marketing teams briefing on social-first activation Awards organisers and corporate event leads needing an experienced MC or host Media, entertainment and lifestyle conferences Internal events where a journalist-host can chair panels and conduct on-stage interviews Audience outcomes A clearer read on how entertainment stories actually travel across The Sun, TikTok and broadcast in 2026. A working journalist’s view of what makes celebrity and brand collaborations land or fail. Practical reference points on building a social following around a specific editorial niche. A live demonstration of interview and hosting craft when Lottie chairs sessions on the day.

Why organisations work with Louis Gudema He has published an award-winning framework for the order in which B2B marketing should be built. The Bullseye Marketing model, set out in a 400-page second edition that won the 2023 Goody Business Book Award for Best Marketing/Branding Book, sequences fast-payback demand programs before brand investment rather than running them in parallel. He has run the playbook himself at scale. Gudema founded Magic Hour Communications, pivoted it from services into an early SaaS business with a Web CMS product, grew it into one of the top firms in its national market, and exited in 2009, so the operating advice is tested against a P&L he owned. He has worked across roughly 200 organisations from IBM down to early-stage MIT spin-outs, which means a CMO or founder gets advice calibrated to the actual stage of their business rather than a generic enterprise template. His MIT Venture Mentoring Service work, including ten consecutive years of the MIT marketing boot camp, gives him pattern recognition on what actually moves revenue for a young technology company versus what wastes founder time. He brings a behavioural-economics layer that most B2B marketers ignore. His brain-science talk applies seven named heuristics (anchoring, authority, availability, liking, loss aversion, reciprocity, scarcity) to live sales and marketing decisions. Biography highlights Author of Bullseye Marketing: How to Grow Your B2B Business Faster, second edition 2023. 2023 Goody Business Book Award winner for Best Marketing/Branding Book; finalist at the Book Excellence Awards; named to Book Authority’s Best Marketing Plan Books of All Time. Founder and former CEO of Magic Hour Communications, an early SaaS firm with the MagicWand Web CMS, sold in 2009. Founder of Revenue & Associates, LLC, a fractional CMO practice for B2B startups and growth-stage companies. Mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and leader of the annual MIT marketing boot camp, tenth edition in 2024. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, MarketingProfs, HubSpot, VentureBeat, Content Marketing Institute, Chiefmartec, and TechTarget. Biography Most B2B marketing budgets are spent in the wrong order. Brand campaigns get funded before the demand-generation programs that would have paid for them, and the pipeline arrives late. Bullseye Marketing, the book Louis Gudema published in its second edition in 2023, exists to fix that sequencing problem. The framework is built around three concentric rings. Start with the customers and prospects already in the system, where conversion is fastest. Move outward into demand capture and active-buyer programs, search, retargeting, and review sites. Then, with cash flow funding it, invest in the brand and awareness work that compounds over the years. The book won the 2023 Goody Business Book Award for Best Marketing/Branding Book and a Book Excellence Awards finalist nod, and was named one of the Best Marketing Plan Books of All Time by Book Authority. Gudema runs the playbook for a living. He founded Magic Hour Communications, pivoted it from a marketing-services agency into an early SaaS firm built around a Web CMS product, grew it into one of the top three or four firms in its market, and exited in 2009. He now operates revenue & associates as a fractional head of marketing, and has worked with roughly 200 organisations from IBM to early-stage MIT spin-outs. The MIT connection runs deep. Gudema mentors through the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and led the tenth annual MIT marketing boot camp in 2024. His writing in Harvard Business Review, MarketingProfs, HubSpot, and VentureBeat extends the same operating thesis: B2B growth comes from disciplined sequencing of programs with measurable ROI, not from creative reinvention. Key speaking topics B2B marketing strategy and demand generation Bullseye Marketing framework Startup and scale-up growth marketing Behavioural economics in B2B sales and marketing Fractional and interim marketing leadership Account-based marketing and pipeline acceleration Ideal for CEOs and founders of B2B technology and SaaS companies under $50m in revenue CMOs and heads of marketing at growth-stage businesses need to defend program spend to a CFO Investor-backed startup cohorts and accelerator programs looking for a sequenced go-to-market playbook Sales leaders responsible for the pipeline who want to align marketing programs to revenue-cycle reality Audience outcomes A defensible order in which to run B2B marketing programs, with the fastest-payback work first A working knowledge of the three-ring Bullseye Marketing Framework and how to apply it to an existing budget Specific demand-generation tactics, search, retargeting, ABM, customer expansion, that map to short payback windows A view of how seven behavioural heuristics change conversion in real B2B sales and marketing assets A shared vocabulary for marketing, sales, and finance to evaluate program ROI on the same terms