Brands&Culture NYC

Webster Hall, Nov 5 2026

Agenda

Featured Speakers NYC 2026

Nick Tran

President & CMO, First Round (Diageo x Main Street Advisors, Cîroc & Lobos 1707)

Jay Curley

Chief Marketing Officer, Ben & Jerry's

Jessica Padula

Vice President of Marketing & Head of Sustainability, Nespresso US

Marcus Collins

Professor & Author, University of Michigan

Laurie Lam

Chief Brand Officer, E.l.f. Cosmetics

Meredith Diehn

SVP of Marketing, goodwipes

Les Green

Head of Partnership Marketing, Levi Strauss & Co.

Rachel Hardy

Director, Head of Consumer Product Marketing, Pinterest

Kelsey Newberry

Vice President of Brand Marketing, eos Products

Mary Johnson

Head of NA Creative Intelligence, Spotify’s Creative Lab

Laura Dyer

SVP of Global Marketing, SharkNinja

Matt Sutton

Sr. Vice President, Head of Marketing, Columbia Sportswear

Oyin Akiniyi

Global Brand Director, Chivas Regal

Nora Princiotti

Author & Staff Writer, The Ringer

Ahmed Iqbal

Chief Marketing Officer, Cadillac Formula 1® Team

Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel

Cultural Theorist, Author, and Social Critic

Chris Epple

Head of Marketing, Americas, HARMAN International

Jackie Widmann

SVP, Marketing & Commercial, BERO

Kerry Flynn

Media Reporter, Axios

Sly Peoples

Head of U.S. Sports & Entertainment, Burson

Alex Manderstam

Brand Strategist, Writer, Creator, On Brand

Clyde McKendrick

President, Nuevo

Kris DiMaggio

Managing Director, Annex88/Havas New York

Daniel Schloss

VP, Brand & Design, Propeller Group

Rene Federico

Head of Marketing, Primark US

Gareth Kay

Vice President, Brand, Coinbase

Laura Petro

VP of Brand & Fan Experience, Gotham FC

Lola Bakare

Inclusive Marketing Strategist, be/co

Joe Staples

VP Creative, Coinbase

Sona Iliffe-Moon

Chief Communications Officer, Yahoo

Jameka S. Pankey

Head of Events and Experiential for Artist, Amazon Music

Chris Danton

Co-Founder, IN GOOD CO

Cheryl Miller Houser

Award-winning Documentary Filmmaker, Creative Breed

Brandon Lentino

Chief Creative Officer, Viral Nation

Guilherme de Marchi Retz

Marketing VP, Heineken USA

Yasmin O’Neal

Global Brand & Impact Senior Director, DECIEM

Rob Markman

VP, Music & Content, Genius

Kirsten Ludwig

Co-Founder, IN GOOD CO

Charlotte Williams

Co-Founder & Chief Content Officer, Brands&Culture

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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?