Adam’s seminal work, the global bestseller Eating the Big Fish, first defined and popularised the concept of Challenger Brands and, alongside subsequent works The Pirate Inside, A Beautiful Constraint, and Overthrow, provides marketers with the framework to fuel success with a Challenger approach. His consultancy eatbigfish continues to challenge conventional thinking, working with clients to bring a Challenger Mindset to problems of strategy, culture and innovation.His latest project, The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, created in collaboration with marketing effectiveness experts Peter Field, Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, Jon Evans and others, has ignited a crucial industry conversation by highlighting the real cost of mediocrity in communications. Beyond simply sounding the alarm, his podcast Let’s Make This More Interesting explores new kinds of approaches and solutions, bringing fresh insight from experts beyond our industry to examine how to engage and hold attention when it really matters.

Cherry Tian is an accomplished marketing leader with over 18 years’ experience driving brand transformation and sustainable commercial growth across consumer businesses. She has worked with FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and scale-up organisations, revitalising established brands and scaling high-growth challengers to unlock new opportunities. A sector-agnostic marketer, Cherry has experience across financial services, online marketplaces and omni-channel, multi-site businesses, including roles at eBay and NatWest Group; which have combined creativity with data and insight to deliver measurable business impact.
Currently Head of Marketing at Workspace Group, Cherry leads the entire marketing function. Under her leadership, she established the first coherent, insight-led brand and comms strategy, embedded integrated full-funnel marketing, and launched the first connected TV campaign in the industry. Prior to this, she also led major brand reboots for NatWest and Coutts, launched eBay’s first brand campaign in the UK, and relaunched the Ladbrokes brand to reshape perception – all resulting in significant business growth.

Chris Busher is a commercially driven marketing leader with 15+ years of international FMCG experience across start-ups, scale-ups, and global brands. Currently Head of Marketing at Holy Moly, he has led a full brand repositioning, built a consumer-centric strategy, and driven growth through integrated campaigns and partnerships.
Previously, as Marketing Director at Belazu, he scaled the marketing function, unified brand positioning, and delivered significant retail and D2C growth. His earlier career includes senior roles at Kraft Heinz, Monster Energy, Vita Coco, and Häagen-Dazs, where he led innovation, brand strategy, and large-scale campaigns across multiple markets.
Chris specialises in defining brand positioning, building high-performing teams, and delivering data-led growth in fast-paced environments.

Digital Marketing expert with 14 years experience at leading companies in the digital advertising space. Building deep and trusted relationships across the ecosystem, he is considered a ‘thought leader’ thanks to his pivotal role in creating new technology and processes that transformed how media was bought and sold in the UK via programmatic.

As Head of Media at ISBA, he consults with the UK largest brands daily on the merging of technology and marketing around measurement & effectiveness, digital performance and Retail Media.

Heather joined Newsworks as research and insight director in 2023. She is responsible for spearheading Newsworks’ thought leadership programme to amplify insights on news brands to media agencies and advertisers.

With previous roles focused on cultural and audience insight at Joshua G2 and Publicis Media, she champions research that identifies the trends that underpin why people behave and make the choices in the way they do.

Head of Effectiveness at AMI and Managing Director of MI Media, with 25 years’ experience spanning agencies, clients, and sectors of all sizes. Brings deep growth expertise across strategy, account management, and performance, and serves as Chair of Planning and Effectiveness for the Alliance of Media Independents.

As Business Development Director for over 14 years, Jason has led the growth in revenue of ITV’s commercial teams across the UK outside London in delivering creative business solutions through working closely in partnership with advertisers and their agencies.

He has led on a number of SME-focussed commercial initiatives including the AMI & ITV Backing Business Fund, as well as launching ITV’s award-winning GenAI creative production service for SMEs — the first TV business in Europe to do so.

Jason started his media career at Manchester Evening News in press sales, before 11 years working in media agencies — firstly as a media planner at Carat and PHD in London, before becoming Managing Director of PHD North.

Beyond his current role, Jason sits on the board for egta, the trade body for European TV businesses. He has also set up Upriser Collective (in collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi) to partner secondary schools and creative businesses across Greater Manchester, supporting greater accessibility into the creative industry regardless of students’ circumstances.

Joel is Head of Independent Agencies at Ozone, where he leads UK strategy and activation for independent agency partners. Since joining in 2019, he has grown Ozone’s independent agency partnerships from 1 to more than 80 agencies across the UK and led key initiatives, including the launch of Ozone’s Premium World proposition – delivering campaign simplicity at scale, enabling international brands and agencies to reach audiences across more than 46 markets worldwide. Prior to Ozone, Joel held agency-focused roles bringing over a decade of experience in programmatic advertising, commercial growth and agency partnerships.

Matt leads TSW’s measurement team and partners, providing a full suite of data and analytics focused solutions to help our clients understand the real business impact of their media and marketing activity.Matt is a veteran performance marketer with over 20 years’ hands-on experience delivering campaigns designed to drive measurable business growth for large scale retail, finance and travel clients.He’s used that knowledge to build a market-leading technology stack designed to solve the problems of marketers at Entrepreneurial Brands by giving them easy access to evidence and analysis they can be fully confident in, from day-to-day sales attribution to strategic marketing insights.

Michelle has been at JCDecaux for seven years, joining with a passion for the creativity that out-of-home (OOH) advertising enables, unlike any other channel.

She has enjoyed seeing the channel evolve, incorporating new technology, richer data, and increasingly advanced ways of measuring effectiveness, while continuing to drive creative innovation.

Mike is responsible for developing DCM’s award-winning research programme to help media agencies and advertisers understand the role and effectiveness of cinema advertising.

Mike has over 15 years of media research experience, having previously also worked at radio trade body Radiocentre.

Peter Field has spent 15 years as a strategic planner in advertising and since then has been a marketing consultant for over 20 years.

His pioneering work on the link between creativity and effectiveness, such as Media in Focus with Les Binet, examining the media myths and truths of the digital era, has earned Peter a global reputation as one of the Godfathers of Effectiveness.

Peter has a global reputation as an effectiveness expert and communicator and speaks and consults regularly around the world about effectiveness issues.

Pippa is an influential leader in the advertising, media and digital industry, with over 30 years’ experience driving sustainable commercial growth across both global networks and independent agencies.

A member of the leadership team that led the sale of independent agency BLM to Havas, she has held CEO roles at Starcom, Dentsu and, most recently, independent media agency Electric Glue, chaired by Sir John Hegarty.

Deeply committed to company culture and to supporting women to achieve their ambitions, Pippa is a past President of WACL, a former long-standing trustee of industry charity NABS, and Chair of timeTo, the industry initiative to end sexual harassment.

She has recently transitioned to a portfolio career; her non-executive roles include Vice Chair of mental health charity Mind UK; Chair of the English Sport Development Trust (Sport England subsidiary) overseeing campaigns such as This Girl Can; and Industry Member on the Board of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Rob Linton is the managing director at MiQ in the UK. With more than a decade of experience with MiQ, he has been instrumental in the company’s expansion outside its London headquarters, building a strong presence across the UK.

Most recently leading the regional and London independent agency strategy, he combines trading experience with commercial leadership, helping agencies and brands navigate an evolving marketing landscape, using programmatic to support the UK’s digital hubs in delivering both local and global growth.

A recognised champion of North England’s digital community and London’s independent agency ecosystem, he educates brands and agencies on digital marketing and AI-driven programmatic.

Rob is a seasoned speaker who has presented at flagship events, including Future of Media Manchester and Digital City Festival. He also serves as a judge for various local and national awards, using these platforms to spotlight innovators across the UK.

Ruth Pignal Jacquard is the Marketing Director of Hidden Hearing UK, leading the shift from a performance driven model to one that builds both long term brand demand and short term response.

Before entering hearing health, she shaped marketing strategy and effectiveness across large organisations including Barclays and Virgin Media O2, where she learned how to navigate big budgets, big data and even bigger stakeholder opinions.

A firm believer that smart spending beats big spending, Ruth is passionate about partnering with independent agencies whose bold thinking and creative ingenuity help brands with finite budgets truly pack a punch.

Shazia Ginai is a Global VP Consultant at Lumen. During her career spanning the last two decades, Shazia has worked across insight and marketing teams client side at P&G and ghd, and more recently was CEO of Neuro-Insight.

Her understanding of the needs of clients and consumers alongside her knowledge of neuroscience and attention brings a unique perspective to the challenges advertisers face today.

Suzana joined The Grove Media in September 2017 after a decade working at network agencies.

Her career spans a broad range of sectors, giving her a wide angle understanding of how effectiveness works across different categories.

With a background built on planning fundamentals and a career defined by adaptability, she brings a grounded, cross-disciplinary perspective to the challenges of modern media effectiveness.