Prepare yourself for an unparalleled session as the brilliant Mark Ritson returns to the Festival stage. Known for his blunt and colourful approach, Marketing Week's influential columnist is set to deliver another memorable session. He will offer his unique take on a matter of concern to all marketers - positioning. With trademark frankness, join Mark as he delivers the definitive take on what's wrong with how marketers position their brands and offer a useful and original alternative.

Speaker:
Mark Ritson
Founder, Columnist & Professor
Marketing Week & Mini MBA

The renowned entrepreneur, investor, sustainable business advocate and star of Dragons Den, Meaden will offer her inimitable view on the how businesses should approach growth, and the part marketers can play.  With all the honesty, and empathy she is renowned for on the hit TV show, this is set to be an illuminating session.

What you can expect to learn:
• How marketers can pitch for investment
• The trends marketers need to watch for
• What she has learned about career and business success
• How to make sustainability part of your growth story

Speaker:
Deborah Meaden
Entrepreneur

20 years since it launched, Strictly is as popular as ever – staple of Saturday night schedules, and a brand that lives across social and events. But how the very epitome of family entertainment maintained its appeal, and how has it evolved to grow its reach and engagement.

On this panel we speak to architects behind its marketing success, and one of its brand ambassadors in front and off camera, Anton du Beke. As someone who has been a professional dancer, and now a judge for every one of its 20 years, who better to tell the Strictly brand story. 

Speaker:
Anton Du Beke
TV presenter and judge
BBC

The BBC is one of Britain’s best-known brands. Its channels and content revered by many for years. But in an age where people enjoy a huge choice of channels, and myriad means to watch, legacy will only get you so far.

Join the BBC’s chief customer officer Kerris Bright in conversation with Jon Evans, the host of the world’s biggest marketing podcast, Uncensored CMO, for this special live recording of the show. Bright will detail what she is doing to get the BBC thinking customer-first to build more value into its product and proposition, and its objective to be a more personal, less public service.

What you can expect to learn:

How to navigate and execute change in legacy organisations
How to put customer first thinking into action

Speakers
Jon Evans
Chief Customer Officer
Uncensored CMO

Kerris Bright,
Chief Customer Officer
BBC

Octopus Energy is one the business success stories of recent years. Though acquisition, and high levels of switching, in just eight years, it’s gone from challenger to the UK’s largest electricity supplier. Join Greg Jackson, Founder & CEO and Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, Chief Product and Marketing Officer to explain what has propelled its dramatic rise. From the use of effective, responsive marketing to product and service innovation, hear the inside story of its rapid rise.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to balance business and brand strategy
• Using feedback loops to increase relevant and experience
• How to balance long and short objectives
• The role of research and insight

Speakers:
Greg Jackson
Founder & CEO
Octopus Energy

Rebecca Dibb-Simkin
Chief Product and Marketing Officer
Octopus Energy

Greggs is enjoying sustained success, with sales climbing 20% in its last financial year, with performance underpinned by a strong brand. Join one of the key architects of its success, chief customer officer Hannah Squirrel as she unpicks the strategic approach that has propelled Greggs to success. From product and service innovation to meaning more to more people, the Greggs story is one of a brand doing the basics brilliantly.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to use targeted activity to improve sentiment
• Funding meaningful metrics to measure impact throughout the funnel
• The importance of brand building
• Balancing acquisition and retention

Speaker:
Hannah Squirrel
Customer and Marketing Director
Greggs

Lucky Saint is one of the brands of the moment. The Marketing Society’s Brand of the Year has fast become the leading dedicated alcohol-free beer brand in the category and growing through product innovation and creating occasions and entry points into the fast growing low and no alcohol
category.

Join Luke Boase, founder, and Kerttu Inkeroinen, Marketing and eCommerce Director
for the inside track on how Lucky Saint has become a standout challenger brand.

What you can expect to learn:
• The importance of maintaining consistency to drive effectiveness
• How to employ distinctive brand assets and tone of voice
• How CMOs and CEOs can work effectively together
• How partnerships and positioning can open up new growth opportunities

Speakers:
Luke Boase
Founder
Lucky Saint

Kerttu Inkeroinen
Marketing & E-commerce Director
Lucky Saint

It’s a perennial challenge but one that is far from being met as ever – how to gain influence with those that matter – the CEO and CFO. In this session, we gather a CMO turned CEO, a strategic finance expert and a CMO who is tasked with making the case for marketing investment to lift the lid on what’s needed to market marketing. Discover how to craft narratives that resonate with decision-makers and secure their buy-in.

What you can expect to learn:
• Learn to connect your marketing goals with overarching business objectives
• Discover how to leverage data and analytics to create powerful, evidence-based presentations
• Gain techniques for crafting engaging and persuasive stories that simplify complex marketing concepts

Speakers:
Dr. Helen Edwards
Adjunct Associate Professor of Marketing, Marketing Week columnist, Partner Passionbrand
Passionbrand & Marketing Week

Moira Creedon
INSEAD Executive Education
Associate Professor of Finance

Carol Welch
CEO
AF Blakemore & Son and NED Hammerson plc

Sonia Sudhakar
Managing Director Marketing and Digital
Royal Mail

There is no shortage of data available to marketers but that doesn’t always provide insight. For marketing to succeed and to compete, we need creativity. Not just in advertising but in marketing strategy and every lever of execution.

Join Helen Edwards for a session for this frank assessment and rallying call – how to stop being process driven and start employing breakthrough marketing thinking.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to think differently about innovation
• The limitations of data
• How to employ creative thinking for better outcomes

Speaker
Dr. Helen Edwards
Adjunct Associate Professor of Marketing, Marketing Week columnist, Partner Passionbrand
Passionbrand & Marketing Week

AI is developing at a rapid rate, customers are increasingly using AI tools, and the efficiency benefits to brands and marketers are becoming more evident. But how can AI be used to improvement the effectiveness of your marketing processes and strategy?

Join this panel to hear on-the-ground experiences of brands on their AI journey. From data management to service, optimising creative to maximising spend – they will offer their thinking on how can AI be employed and to what effect.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to manage data to get the best from AI
• Key strategic considerations when employing AI
• How to use to improve customer experience

Speakers:
Stefan Tornquist
SVP Learning and Research
Econsultancy

Lyndsay Weir
Chief Analytics and Insight
Barilla Group

Premal Desai
Head of Data & AI
The Gym Group

Marcos Angelides
Managing Director
Spark Foundry UK

Ever made a cuppa during the Coronation Street ad break? Or hit ‘skip’ on a YouTube ad? Maybe you fast-forward the sponsored reads of your favourite podcasts? Even as marketers we frequently avoid ads to get the content we want.

But many marketers are learning that affiliate partnerships provide a way to promote their brands in a way that doesn’t disrupt consumers' lives, and instead aids them in discovering products they love.

Join Awin’s Managing Director, Rosalyn Berrisford, as she takes you on a shopping journey across the funnel and beyond, sharing examples of brands that are using a wide variety of affiliate partners to reach, engage and retain their customers, without disrupting their lives.

What you can expect to learn:
• The do’s and don’ts of affiliate partnerships
• How brands are using affiliates to drive effectiveness
• What Scott Galloway’s Clock Model has to do with the marketing funnel and affiliates

Speaker:
Rosalyn Berrisford
Managing Director
Awin

Location matters. Where you live affects a lot – from the price of your home to the car you drive, and even the products stocked in your local supermarkets. But you don’t just stay where you live. You move around. When it comes to how marketers target and measure, are we all taking this into account? How can we capture our audience’s journeys for a truer picture of where customers are and whether they have seen our ads?

Join Chris Felton, Director of Data & Insights at JCDecaux and Jeremy Cartwright, Director of Customer Success at Nielsen as they launch a new piece of research. Using real brand data, overlaying location-based data and audience movement data, they unveil a new methodology that can improve the accuracy of how you measure your media. Learn how you can prove the true value of your marketing by adding location data to your measurement models.

What you can expect to learn:
• How new measurement models can demonstrate the true ROI of media
• How postcode level location data to existing models can better show which channels really work

Speakers:
Chris Felton
Director of Data & Insights
JCDecaux

Jeremy Cartwright
Director of Customer Success
Nielsen

Join Publicis CEO Niel Bornman, in discussion with Samsung Marketing and Omnichannel Director Annika Bizon to talk about how AI is transforming both their marketing approach and experiences for their customers.

While mediocre leaders sit and wait for precedented times, ambitious leaders own the future by creating the impact they want to see.

They know the power of creating positive disruption within their business and their teams. By rejecting business as usual.

Join Scott Morrison, former CMO turned entrepreneur and founder of transformation consultancy The Boom! as he calls on his vast experience to inspire you to power up your people. Lighting a fire inside of them not under them to unleash their potential.

What you can expect to learn:
• Build the simplicity of Unblock, Unlock, Unleash into how you create the impact you want to see
• Become self-aware and make the shift from a bust to the Boom! Mindset
• Six practical tools to use tomorrow that will power you up to be a better leader

Speaker:
Scott Morrison
Founder and Bringer of…
the Boom!

Raising the bar of excellence in marketing should benefit company, colleagues and customers. Defining what excellence is and embedding it a different matter.

Join this session and hear from marketing leaders who have actually taken their teams through the messy business of transformation. From assessing the critical capabilities your marketers need now and, in the future, to getting started and sustaining the change, they will tackle biggest challenges and how to address them.

What you can expect to learn:
• How organisations, big and small, can transform their marketing teams
• How you can get in buy in from colleagues and company
• How to embed a culture of learning

Speakers:
Paul Davies
Managing Partner
Econsultancy

Abi Willstead
Head of Brand Expression & Marketing Excellence
Specsavers

Radha Davies
Marketing Director (Brands, Planning, Creative)
Sainsburys, Argos, Habitat & Tu

The list of skills required of marketers is getting longer and longer. The number of new job titles to describe marketing roles growing every year. The way to reach and engage consumers is changing, while technology such as AI is evolving quickly but what does this mean for the job of marketing and the role of the marketing leader?

Join a panel of marketers at different stages of their career as they discuss the skills, capabilities and accountabilities that will define the job of marketing in the coming years.

What you can expect to learn:
•How to adapt to changing expectations of marketing
•How to develop your skills and how to help develop others
•How changes in culture and technology might impact marketing

Speaker:
Ucheora Obi-Wheeler
Senior Manager, Brand Strategy
HSBC

Naomi Walkland
Chief Marketing Officer,
Motorway

When promotion is the definition of career success, the majority of people end up disappointed about their development. The idea of a career ladder doesn't reflect everyone’s reality and can lead to unrealistic expectations about what a 'good' career looks like. Instead of defaulting to a narrow idea of a successful career, bestselling author, podcast host and former marketer Helen Tupper will share how you can create your own opportunities, explore your own definition of success and develop a squiggly career that is as unique as you are.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to manage your career choices
• How to better define career success
• How to understand your own career needs

Speaker:
Helen Tupper
Founder
Squiggly Careers

McDonald's has been on a remarkable journey, with consistent its growth over years rooted in consumer insights, creativity, and strategic fundamentals. Key to this success is its long-term partnership with Leo Burnett, which dates back four decades. Join this session as two of the key architects of the brand offer the inside growth story and the crucial role of strong partnerships and team dynamics in fostering continuous growth and collaboration.

What you can expect to learn:
•How to build enduring relationships with partners
•How to balance consistency and change to maintain a point of difference
•How to leverage distinctive assets
•How to use creativity to drive growth

Speakers:
Matt Reischauer
UK&I Marketing Director
McDonald’s

Josh Bullmore
Chief Strategy Officer
Leo Burnett

Becky McKinlay
Interim Managing Director
Oystercatchers

Gymbox launched in 2023 as an antidote to “boring gyms”. It has evolved since to deliver a user experience that continues to differentiate it in a crowded and highly competitive category. More than 20 years on from launch, Rory McEntee, its brand and marketing director, will share practical tips and framework to create a brand that stands and creates a superior experience. Using real examples from Gymbox, we'll explore the strategies behind its most successful (and not-so-successful) classes and campaigns.

What you can expect to learn:
• A step-by-step framework to build a disruptive brand
• Practical tips to avoid common mistakes and challenges faced during
brand disruption
• Evolving a brand experience over time

Speaker:
Rory McEntee
Brand & Marketing Director
Gymbox

Marketing Week columnists Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo declared recently that this was “the B2B century” with marketers perfectly placed to lead. But how?

Join one of the best known and experienced CMO's in B2B, Antonia Wade, in conversation with Marketing Week Editor-in-Chief, Russell Parsons as she gives her thoughts on what’s changing and how to tackle it. From AI to skills and capability, stakeholder engagement to developing talent this session will inspire and enable.

What you can expect to learn:
• The changing skills and capability required of B2B marketing leaders
• How to build relationships with other senior stakeholders
• How to overcome the barriers to success
• How technology will impact the job of B2B marketing

Speaker:
Antonia Wade
Global Chief Marketing Officer
PwC

Marketing wisdom has always been to 'zig while others zag' if we hope to stand out from the crowd. In professional services in particular, it is rare to find brands that truly, constantly zig.

In this fast-paced session, we'll learn how Addleshaw Goddard’s marketing team broke category conventions and delivering a slew of B2B marketing firsts on their way to being named Marketing Week's Marketing Team of the Year 2023.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to use creativity to tell your brand story
• How to be disruptive and challenge category norms
• Building mental availability

Speaker:
Brian Macreadie
Head of Marketing
Addleshaw Goddard

Securing buy-in for brand investment is crucial for driving growth and achieving long-term success. It’s also arguably a marketing leaders’ biggest challenge.

Join this panel of senior marketers from a range of B2B organisations as they explain how they have made the case – what’s worked and hasn’t. From convincing stakeholders of the value of brand investment to articulating the ROI of branding initiatives, how to make a compelling case that resonates with the c-suite will be unpicked and explained.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to articulate the return on investment (ROI) for branding initiatives
• How to ensure branding strategies are integrated with the company’s overall business goals
• How to craft a narrative that connects brand investment to the company's future success using storytelling

Speakers:
Amanda Jobbins
Global Chief Marketing Officer and Director GTM & Strategic Partnerships
Vodafone Business

Jon White
Chief Marketing Officer
RS Group plc

Allie Lawson
Marketing Director
The Access Group

Tony's Chocolonely has fast become one of the most admired brands in the UK. It has experienced rapid growth by balancing its purpose, to make the chocolate industry 100% slave-free, and its smart use of partnerships and marketing fundamentals.

Join two of the key people behind its growth in the UK, marketing lead Nicola Matthews and CEO Douglas Lamont, as they unveil how they work together to build brand value through strong branding, and a commitment to social justice, turning ethical principles into a point of difference.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to foster transparency and trust with consumers
• How marketing can work with the c-suite to power success
• How to turn ethical practices into a compelling brand story that resonates
• Insight into the creative and impactful campaigns that have propelled Tony's Chocolonely to success

Speakers:
Douglas Lamont
CEO
Tony's Chocolonely

Nicola Matthews
UKI Head of Marketing
Tony's Chocolonely

In wake of high profile business failures such as Body Shop and a cost of living crisis that has left consumers looking for cheaper options, questions have arisen about whether doing good can lead to positive business outcomes?

Join our panel of senior marketing leaders from successful brands with sustainability at their core as we delve into the challenges and opportunities of sustainability. Exploring how brands can stay true to their environmental commitments while driving growth and engaging consumers.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to ensure your brand’s sustainability efforts are authentic and impactful, avoiding greenwashing
• How to harmonise sustainability initiatives with business objectives
• Insights into cutting-edge sustainability practices and how to incorporate them into marketing strategies

Speakers:
Emily Kraftman
Managing Director
Who Gives a Crap

Georgina Holland
Head of Marketing
Abel & Cole

Lucy Squires
Marketing & DTC Director
allplants

Learn to build high-trust business partnerships with your agencies and discover how to foster a more energised, enjoyable, and productive relationship. Elevate your collaborations and drive marketing performance by becoming the client your agency needs.

Join Andy Bargery, Client Director at Oystercatchers plus senior agency leaders; as they share a wealth of experience from client service. Equip yourself with the knowledge and skills to become a better client and ensure you build long-term rewarding relationship with your agencies.

What you can expect to learn:
• How to align your agencies with your brand’s objectives, KPIs and culture
• The motivations of your agencies and what this means for your brand
• Best practice for communicating with your agencies and handling difficult conversations
• The importance of a great creative brief and briefing process

Speaker:
Andy Bargery
Client Director
Oystercatchers