Brands&Culture NYC

Webster Hall, Nov 5 2026

Enquiries

Past Speakers B&C NYC

Laurie Lam

Chief Brand Officer, E.l.f. Beauty

Michael Lee

EVP Executive Creative Director Oatly North America

Damon Jones

Chief Communications Officer, P&G

Jess Park

SVP, Chief of Brand & Fan Engagement, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee

Dr Marcus Collins

Advisory Chairman, Triptk

Jim Lesser

Chief Brand Officer, ServiceNow

Susan Akkad

SVP, Local & Cultural Innovation, The Estée Lauder Companies

Karen Lilley Harris

SVP Marketing, Tequila & Mezcal, Diageo North America

Josh Penny

Director of Social Impact, Hinge

Ramon Soto

SVP, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Northwell Health

Jinal Shah

GM & CMO, Zip US

Tracy Doyle

SVP, Brands in Culture, Diageo

Jessica Grigoriou

SVP Marketing, Condiments, Unilever

Jackie Widmann

VP, Head of Marketing & Commercial, BERO

Damien Escobar

Emmy-Winning Violinist & Global Chief Music Officer, Havas

Shannon Comstock

SVP of Marketing, Vacation Inc.

Ashley Levey

Senior Director, Brand Marketing Leader, LinkedIn

Rob Mayhew

Creative Director & Content Creator

Devin Colleran

Director, Global Brand Tinder

Kelly Buchanan Spillers

Global VP, Head of Digital & Social CeraVe DMI, L’Oréal

Kahlil Greene

Content Creator, Gen Z Historian

Gemma Craven

VP, Brand Marketing & Communications, Everand, Scribd, Slideshare

Jameka Pankey

Head of Experiential for Artist, Amazon Music

Shibani Potnis

CMO, Norseland

Lauren Ingerman

Sr. Consumer Insights Manager, Ads Marketing, Amazon Ads

Sam Hornsby

Founder & CEO, TRIPTK

Chloé Depiesse

Head of Havas GLP-1 Consultancy & Havas Innovation Lab, HAVAS

Carly Zipp

Global Director of Brand Marketing, Amazon Ads

Resh Sidhu

Global Director, Arcadia Creative Studio, Snap Inc.

Dan Salkey

Strategy Partner, Small World

Maeva Bambuck

Producer & Storyteller

Marc Allenby

Co-Founder & CCO, Hijinks

Sara Rezaee

Head of Creator Marketing, North America Edelman

Ana Andjelic

Author, “Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture”

Daisy Alioto

Co-Founder, Dirt Media

Roger Sho Gehrmann

VP, Integrated Partnerships, MassiveMusic

Dan Steward

Senior Cultural Strategist, Strat7 Crowd DNA

Rah Bhatt

Director, Creative Strategy (Americas), MassiveMusic

Amy Davies

Global VP of Foresight, Virtue

Ben Dietz

Founder, Rangelife

Brian Scherman

Head of Creative Production (Americas), MassiveMusic

Erica Boeke

Founder & CEO, XP Land

Christina Spoljaric Konig

Head of Client Services, North America, Big Sync Music & MassiveMusic

Jamison Duffield

Global Group Strategy Director, Virtue

Erica Chen

Head of Strategy, Media Futures Group

Casey Lewis

Gen Z Expert & Publisher, After School

Brooks Miller

Executive Vice President, Creator Marketing, Edelman

Chrysi Philalithes

Acting CEO, G Spot & G Ology

Theresa Bertrand

Head of Strategy & Planning, U.S., Zeno Group

Thomas Bunn

Global Chief Client Impact Officer, Zeno Group

Allison McClamroch

Head of Brand, U.S., Zeno Group

Kerry Flynn

Media Reporter, Axios

Chris Black

Co-Host "How Long Gone" and columnist, GQ.com

Quay Fox

Group Strategy Director, Virtue

Nii Lartey

Co-Founder & COO, Dose of Society

Kim Roxie

Founder & CEO, Lamik

Caroline Mayhew Gardner

Head of Integrated Brand Marketing & Experience, The RealReal

Islah Abdur Rahman

Content Creator & Film Maker, Directed By Islah

Genie Gurnani

Speaker / Host, Wish For Genie

Spencer Fox

Advisory Consultant, Brands&Culture

Kirsten Ludwig

Co-Founder, In Good Co

Joey Zeelen

Managing Director EMEA, Strat7 Crowd DNA

Jacquelyn Udeh

Co-Founder, WeRepresent

See all speakers

The algorithm can see you. Can people?

It's never been easier to be seen. It's never been harder to matter. Across London and Cannes, leaders from Bayer, KFC India, L'Oréal, Ancestry, Mondelēz, PepsiCo and Jet2 took a swipe at the industry's addiction to reach, speed and the next shiny cultural moment. Their point? Showing up is not the same as earning the right to be there.

The brands winning now start with a real problem, contribute something useful, and stick around long after the trend has left the building. They're building cultural memory; not collecting impressions nobody remembers by Tuesday.

At B&C NYC, senior marketing leaders will tackle the question that actually matters: how do you turn relevance, credibility and long-term trust into measurable growth? Come for the sharp insights. Leave with fewer excuses for "jumping on it."

Culture is everyone's job now.

Culture can't live in a slide deck marked "Marketing". It has to show up in the product, the customer experience, the partnerships, and in the decisions the business makes beyond the brief. And don't get us started on the ubiquitous "Make our brand pop in culture" brief...

At B&C 2026, PepsiCo, Patagonia, Yahoo, Tinder, Unilever, SharkNinja and KFC showed us what happens when cultural intelligence escapes the comms team. Social listening helped SharkNinja shape an entire category. Yahoo built its values into its product. Patagonia reminded everyone that credibility starts with how a company actually operates.

This shift from campaigns to cultural operating systems changes the CMO's job beyond belief. At B&C NYC we'll explore how to align teams, unlock local intelligence and build a business that can participate in culture continuously, not just when the content calendar demands it.

Your audience doesn't want to be "activated."

Nobody wakes up hoping to enter a brand funnel. People gather around the things that give them identity, connection and belonging.

From Spotify, Supercell and the WNBA to BBC Studios, Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Grindr, Strava and Jet2, B&C speakers showed how fandom is rewriting the economics of brand growth. The strongest brands aren't acquiring audiences; they're creating spaces people want to return to, stories people recognise themselves in and experiences communities can shape.

That takes more than borrowing a fan base for launch week. It means understanding the rituals, language and relationships already holding a community together (and accepting that the logo often doesn't matter).

At B&C NYC we'll unpack how participation becomes advocacy, how moments become momentum and how belonging builds serious value.

AI can make more. We're interested in better.

AI can generate the assets, resize the campaign and produce 300 versions before lunch. Impressive. But can anyone remember a single one of them?

Across B&C 2026, leaders from Unilever, Yahoo, Coinbase, e.l.f. Beauty, Victoria's Secret and The Ordinary kept circling the same risk: not the technology, but the sea of efficient, optimised sameness it leaves in its wake. As powerful tools become universal, advantage moves somewhere more human: towards taste, judgement, originality, courage and a point of view.

The future won't reward brands for using AI, cos nearly everyone will. It will reward the brands that know what should remain unmistakably theirs.

At B&C NYC we'll get past the breathless demos and ask the useful questions: where does AI create value, where does it erase difference, and how do you scale without becoming polished beige soup?