Sonsoles Gonzalez has done what many marketers dream about.  After almost 3 decades in senior roles at global beauty giants-- L’Oréal and Proctor and Gamble—she created her own company. She is the Founder and CEO of Better Not Younger, the only haircare brand specifically designed for women over the age of 40.

Manos Spanos, Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing for the Yogurt Business Unit at Danone North America, believes that marketing needs to stand for positive change.  “If something is not doable,” he says, “innovate to make it doable.”  And while that sounds like a tall order, especially for these times, he has been able to demonstrate what happens when purpose and passion intersect in branding.

Sir Martin Sorrell's success has always been built on anticipating what's next for an advertising industry that must continually reinvent itself. His company, S4 Capital, has had quite a year with seven acquisitions to date since the first Covid-19 lockdown began last March. This includes two recent US acquisitions in early January: integrated media agency Decoded and marketing agency Metric Theory.

Today we’re talking with him about his views of the advertising and marketing business, new geographic balances and what’s ahead for an industry that needs to validate growth.

Whitney Fishman Zember has been helping brands and businesses understand media and communication trends, as well as technology-driven consumer-based insights, for over fifteen years. As Managing Partner, Innovation & Consumer Technology at Wavemaker US, she uncovers opportunities to harness technology to connect marketers with audiences in new and meaningful ways.  Her ability to spot trends is second to none, and she has been tracking developments at CES for years.  Whitney’s perspectives are always eye-opening.

Jonathan Barnard, Head of Forecasting and Global Intelligence at Zenith, and Brian Wieser, Global President of Business Intelligence for GroupM, have been in the business of advertising forecasting, intelligence, and trend watching for an exceptionally long time. Given their experience through numerous financial swings and business precedents, few are more likely to aptly guide the industry after a year like 2020. Jonathan joins us from London, while Brian joins us from Portland… and despite the number of time zones in between, they agree on potential outcomes for several macro issues, but often differ somewhat on a variety of specific industry concerns going forward.

ransformational Marketer, Perry Kamel, Creates New, Remarkably Purpose-Driven Company. Perry Kamel has a 30+ year track record for transforming companies—from giants like Siemens ICN and Ciena to his role as Founding Global Managing Director of Accenture Interactive.  He has extensive experience in applied innovation, as well as degrees in electrical engineering and in business. If one could apply a personal motto to Perry Kamel, it would be— “He dreams big and leads others to achieve what may have been considered impossible.”  He is no stranger to working with cutting edge technology solutions, or the organizational and operational aspects so vital to enduring success.

Adam Benaroya has always been a digitally-driven marketer.  Today, as Head of Global Media and Performance Marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, he is responsible for the global media program, as well as broader digital- and data-centric Centers of Excellence (COEs), which include audience strategy, biddable media policy and execution, adtech/martech, privacy, and analytics.

Sebastian Jespersen is an innovator, a business strategist, and a breakthrough digital thinker.  He has a provocative idea that involves our new digital world and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  In fact, it is an idea that puts marketers at the center and emphasizes how they can make a difference for a more meaningful and safe digital life.

Josh Blacksmith, Senior Director of Global Consumer Relationships and Engagement at Kimberly-Clark, is championing a relatively new endeavor for most Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) companies: global first-party data collection and how it can be used to impact meaningful, lifetime customer relationships.  This has been an area of significant focus for him from the beginning of his career.

As Kirsten Allegri Williams surveys our new marketing world of increased screen time and work from home connectivity, she passionately believes that brands will now win entirely on digital differentiation. “At this moment in history and for the foreseeable future, a brand’s digital presence makes up the entirety of how it reaches customers.”