Marketing on the Edge: Proof, Purpose, Power.
The CMO Europe Summit convenes senior marketing leaders from across the region to address the forces reshaping the industry. In a climate defined by economic scrutiny, rapid advances in AI, shifting regulations, and increasingly value-driven consumers, CMOs are being asked to prove impact faster while still protecting and growing their brands.
Across two days of immersive keynotes, dynamic panels, hands-on masterclasses, and interactive roundtable discussions we will unpack how marketers can adapt strategies, harness technology, and engage customers in ways that drive measurable growth and long-term trust. Attendees will leave with practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable ideas to navigate uncertainty and seize the opportunities of the year ahead.
Core Themes
Brand Resilience and Engagement in a Cautious Market
How European CMOs are strengthening brand identity and creating meaningful consumer connections despite economic and budgetary constraints. Sessions will explore engagement strategies, brand ambassadorship, and balancing short-term visibility with long-term equity.
AI-Powered Marketing and Personalization
AI is no longer an experiment but a driver of competitive advantage. Leaders will share how they are embedding AI into content creation, personalization, advertising, and measurement — while overcoming skills gaps, compliance, and ROI challenges.
Compliance, Trust, and Sustainable Growth
The phase-out of third-party cookies, new EU and UK data regulations, and heightened consumer expectations are reshaping how marketers connect with their audiences. In this new environment, trust is no longer a soft metric but a business-critical asset.
The Omnichannel Future
Marketing is moving toward fully integrated experiences across platforms and touchpoints. This theme highlights how CMOs are orchestrating advertising, content, and data strategies to deliver seamless consumer journeys and measurable acquisition outcomes.
Speakers
Darragh McGinley
Marek Tomalak
Stijn Bannier
Becky Owen
Omar Karim
Charles Kaplan
Mark Vile
Matej Raspet
Federica Maritano
Mahbir Thukral
Michael Vlastarakis
Theirry Campet
Freddie Rosslyn-Smith
Duccio Manetti
Max Lucas
Vasco Neffe
Lindsay Hong
Csaba Szabo
Agenda
12:00pm - 12:45am
Networking Lunch
1:10pm - 1:35pm
Opening Independent Keynote
Building Brands That Build People
What if your brand wasn’t just something people buy, but something they become? Marek Tomalak, Global CMO, SodaStream by PepsiCo shares how SodaStream shifted from provocation to empowerment, helping customers feel proud of sustainable choices. Using psychology, industry examples, and real-world results, he reveals how brands can move beyond transactions to build loyalty, identity, and movements.
1:40pm - 2:20pm
Panel
Content, Personalization, and the New Advertising Playbook
AI is reshaping every part of marketing’s playbook, from how content is created to how it’s discovered. Generative AI can speed up production and personalization, but AI-powered search is rewriting the rules of distribution and visibility. Instead of ranking on traditional SERPs alone, brands now need content that surfaces in answer engines, chat results, and retail search. This panel explores how marketers can prepare for AI-powered search while keeping content culturally relevant, compliant, and on brand.
Key Takeaways
- Preparing for AI-powered search: Structure content so machines can understand it (schema, entities, metadata, FAQs, product feeds) while ensuring it resonates with people.
- Authority and trust signals: Use reviews, experts, UGC, and transparent sourcing to strengthen credibility in AI-driven rankings.
- Balancing GenAI scale with creativity: Guardrails and brand voice systems that keep automated output culturally nuanced and original.
- Personalization that works with compliance: First-party data and consent-driven targeting embedded into AI content strategies.
- New search surfaces to prioritize: Retail media, marketplace assistants, in-app search, and social search alongside traditional engines.
- Measuring influence beyond clicks: Attribution models and blended metrics that account for zero-click answers and AI-curated results.
- Closing the loop from discovery to loyalty: Linking AI search visibility with CRM/CDP systems so discovery becomes conversion and retention.
2:20pm - 2:45pm
Keynote
From Repositioning and Rebranding to Transformation and Social Purpose
When crisis strikes, brands face a choice: retreat and survive, or reimagine and lead. Michalis Vlastarakis will share how his organization transformed one of Greece’s hardest financial chapters into a story of resilience and renewed trust. The journey spans a bold rebrand, purpose-driven social responsibility initiatives, and the design of a “phygital” service model that balances human connection with cutting-edge digital and AI solutions.
At the heart of this transformation was a decision to take on one of Greece’s most pressing societal challenges: demographics. By championing family support, fertility access, and entrepreneurship in remote communities, the bank reframed its role in society, from institution to change agent. This keynote offers a case study in how brands can turn national crises into long-term missions that strengthen reputation, restore stakeholder confidence, and prove that business can be both profitable and purposeful.
3:00pm - 4:00pm
Roundtables
Track 1: Creative + Media Reunited: Building Campaigns That Truly Cut Through
The divide between creative and media is holding brands back. This roundtable explores what the blockers are, what to do about it and how analytics can unlock stronger, more impactful campaigns that resonate across every platform.
Track 2: One Experience, Every Channel: Personalization that Lasts
Today’s customers don’t just interact with brands, they experience them across countless touchpoints, expecting them all to feel consistent, personal, and meaningful. Delivering that level of connected, omnichannel personalization is now the difference between fleeting attention and lasting loyalty.
In this roundtable session, we will join forces to explore how data, AI, and automation are transforming how brands engage customers across channels - email, mobile, social, web, and beyond. Together, we’ll uncover how leading marketers are:
• Unifying customer data to understand behaviors in real time.
• Using AI-driven personalization to create relevant, dynamic experiences at every touchpoint.
• Building loyalty through consistent, emotionally intelligent engagement.
• Measuring and scaling ROI from connected customer journeys.
We’ll also highlight the latest innovations in cross-channel orchestration and predictive personalization, designed to help marketers turn every interaction into a moment of value…and every moment into loyalty.
This session is for Marketers ready to close the gap between personalization strategy and omnichannel execution, transforming customer engagement into long-term growth.
Track 3: ROI Under Pressure: How CMOs Will Maximise Impact in 2026
As CMOs across EMEA plan for 2026, the mandate is clear: deliver measurable growth with leaner budgets without
compromising creativity, brand integrity, or long-term value. Marketers are awash with signals and data from an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem, yet the real challenge lies in transforming that noise into meaningful, measurable impact. This roundtable will explore how AI, data, and premium media environments are reshaping how to drive meaningful efficiency and effectiveness and how to maximise performance without losing the essence of your brand.
Key Discussion Areas:
•Turning complex, fragmented signals into actionable insights that drive growth and creativity
•Where CMOs are realising the biggest efficiency and effectiveness gains in 2026 planning
•Leveraging high-quality media to fuel ROI and brand trust
•Unlocking scale and short-term performance without sacrificing long-term brand equity
3:00pm - 6:30pm
1:1 Meetings
4:10pm - 4:40pm
Masterclass
Thinking Global, Acting Local - Crafting Brand Love Through a Connected Experience
In an era where personalisation defines brand loyalty, adidas has cracked the code on delivering tailored customer experiences across multiple markets. By balancing a global strategy with local precision, the brand has mastered the art of scaling personalisation without losing regional relevance.
4:45pm - 5:15pm
Workshop
Hey CMOs, Your Content Strategy is Stuck in Text
The internet isn't a library anymore; it's a movie theater, and 82% of all content consumed today is video. Your audience is watching, but are you there? The data is crystal clear:
● Retention Power: Viewers remember 95% of a message from a video, but only 10% from reading text.
● Conversion Fuel: A staggering 84% of shoppers have been convinced to buy something just by watching a brand's video.
Yet, nearly 60% of businesses are still fumbling without a cohesive video strategy. This results in content chaos—think multiple platforms and a crushing "signal to noise crisis" that's silencing your brand.
The game is changing again, thanks to AI. But here's the good news: this isn't a threat; it's your biggest opportunity. Marketing leaders have a clear, high-impact path forward: embrace the video revolution to become a true revenue engine.
In this session, we're cutting through the noise to show what’s next in the age of exponential video growth, how to start shaping your video strategy, and enjoy the process- because it’s video, and it should be fun.
5:15pm - 5:45pm
Keynote
6:30pm - 7:20pm
Networking Reception
7:20pm - 9:30pm
Gala Dinner
8:00am - 8:40am
Panel
Building the Marketing Team of the Future
Technology is moving faster than most organizations can adapt, and CMOs are under pressure to close skill gaps, redesign workflows, and retain top talent. Marketing is no longer a silo, it’s a hub of strategists, technologists, creatives, and data translators. This panel explores how leaders are rethinking team design, culture, and capabilities to compete in 2026 and beyond.
Key takeaways
- The hybrid hub: how marketing is evolving into a cross-functional engine connecting brand, product, and data
- Closing the AI and analytics skills gap: upskilling programs and new role definitions
- Competing in the war for talent: strategies to attract and retain the next generation of marketing leaders
- Creating cultures that foster innovation and resilience in uncertain economic conditions
- Leadership “superpowers” CMOs need to develop: analytical fluency, creative direction, and consumer empathy
8:35am - 9:10am
Keynote
The Good, the Bad, the Sloppy: Unlocking the Next Wave of Creativity in the AI Era
AI has supercharged the creator economy, but also fractured it. Marketers are chasing speed and efficiency, creators are racing to adapt, and consumers are weary of the AI Slop and now expect more than novelty.
The result? A flood of sameness, but also new creative potential. The issue isn’t with AI itself but the lazy use of it.
This session unpacks the myths and realities of how AI-generated creativity can strengthen brand differentiation rather than dilute it. Through our new research of 6,000 marketers, consumers and creators, we explore how brand leaders can turn AI into a creative advantage in an increasingly automated landscape.
9:20am - 12:10pm
1:1 Meetings
9:20am - 10:20am
Roundtables
Track 1: Creative + Media Reunited: Building Campaigns That Truly Cut Through
The divide between creative and media is holding brands back. This roundtable explores how unifying storytelling, media strategy, and analytics can unlock stronger, more impactful campaigns that resonate across every platform.
Track 2: The Creator Economy Playbook
Influencers and creators are no longer a side channel, they’re central to how consumers discover, trust, and engage with brands. This roundtable explores how CMOs are partnering with creators to deliver authentic, personalized storytelling at scale. We’ll discuss what’s working in Europe’s fast-evolving creator economy, from micro-influencer campaigns to AI tools for content matchmaking, while tackling challenges like measurement, brand safety, and long-term ROI.
Track 3: The Authenticity Algorithm
AI brings unmatched efficiency to marketing, but can it truly capture what makes a brand unique? This roundtable explores how leaders are blending machine-driven insights with human creativity to deliver campaigns that feel both scalable and authentic. Attendees will examine how to safeguard brand voice, ensure ethical use of AI, and prevent content from slipping into generic or biased territory — all while proving that efficiency and originality can coexist.
10:30am - 11:00am
Masterclass
Labubu Meets LinkedIn: Transforming Complex B2B Know-How into Industry Social Media Influence
Being technically brilliant isn’t enough if nobody remembers your story. In B2B, the real challenge is turning complex technical details into narratives that spark attention, build trust, and stay top of mind. This workshop pulls lessons from viral social media posts (Labubu, LinkedIn best practices, TikTok trends, B2C approaches) and applies them to practical tips for your B2B. In this highly interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to translate expertise into stories that cut through the noise, connect emotionally, and influence buying journeys whether you’re applying them on your company’s social media pages, or your own to strengthen your personal brand.
• Learn how to turn complex technical details into simple, memorable stories decision-makers will act on.
• Use social media-inspired techniques to humanise your brand and spark emotional connection.
• Apply a storytelling framework mapped to drive faster engagement and conversions.
11:05am - 11:35am
Sponsor Workshop
From Regulation to Revenue: How Privacy Powers the Next Era of Marketing
12:00pm - 12:45pm
Networking Lunch
12:35pm - 12:55pm
Fireside chat
Driving Relevance: The Social Strategies You Can’t Afford to Miss
Don’t miss Darragh McGinley, Head of Social Media, EMEA at Indeed, one of the most influential voices in global social strategy. In this fireside chat, Darragh shares how leading brands stay relevant and drive real-world business impact through social storytelling, influencer partnerships, and major sporting sponsorships. Drawing on his experience leading multi-market campaigns and shaping global social trends, he delivers actionable insights that will change how you connect with audiences in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
1:05pm - 2:10pm
1:1 Meetings
1:00pm - 2:10pm
Networking Break
2:15pm - 2:30pm
Roundtable Reflections
Why attend?
Connect with like-minded senior leaders for a curated agenda, focused on tackling your current business critical challenges and driving industry forward.
Be a part of exclusive shared learning, horizon scanning and actionable insights enabling organizations to deliver transformative strategies.
Build meaningful relationships with solution providers matched to your business priorities to help accelerate your projects and deliver your objectives.
Who attends
