The 2026 Main Stage Agenda
At B2B Ignite, you'll be able to choose from four main content tracks, covering demand, brand, leadership and tech. You'll find the latest expert knowledge and advice, research and campaign case studies that you need to elevate your marketing across the board. Take a look at the agenda below or download it as a PDF!
Looking for practical, hands-on sessions? Check out what's happening at the Ignite Exchange >
Revenue, Sales Alignment, and GTM
Positioning, Creative, and Differentiation
Talent, Strategy, and Operations
Artificial Intelligence,
Data, and Martech
Track: Keynotes
Over the past decade, B2B marketing has quietly crossed a line.
Teams are under more pressure than ever. Technology is accelerating change. Buyer behaviour is increasingly unpredictable. And the expectation gap between marketing and the C-suite has widened.
But the best marketing teams are winning anyway.
Drawing on exclusive insight from the B2B Marketing Awards, the Propolis Index, and new research into how CEOs perceive marketing, Richard O’Connor reveals what’s really happening inside B2B marketing teams today.
Where are marketers genuinely driving growth?
Where are they still struggling to prove value?
And what separates the teams trusted by leadership from those still fighting for credibility?
This keynote unpacks the real state of the profession — and what it means for the marketers responsible for driving business performance.
Because one thing is clear: the role of marketing is changing.
The marketers who succeed will be those who operate as commercial marketers — connecting strategy, execution and revenue, and aligning their work with how the business defines growth.
You’ll leave with insight on:
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The biggest shifts shaping what really matters for the future of B2B marketing
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Where marketing is delivering genuine commercial impact — and where it’s falling short
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What high-performing teams do differently to earn trust and influence at leadership level
Track: Keynotes
The marketers who have real influence at C-suite level aren’t just doing better marketing. They’re thinking and operating differently. But what does that actually look like from the other side of the table? Building directly on the opening keynote, this panel gives you direct access to the C-suite perspective.
Moderated by Michelle McCann, Revenue Attribution and Commercial Marketing Expert, Propolis, the panel features: Pearly Siffel, Chief Commercial Officer, Euromonitor International, Ben Wylie, Chief Finance Officer, Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and Peter Richards, Chief Executive Officer, DEEP Manufacturing alongside Brian Macreadie, Head of Marketing, Addleshaw Goddard
Learn
- What C-suite leaders genuinely value from marketing, in their own words
- Why some marketers earn trust and influence at leadership level faster than others
- The commercial language and behaviours that make the difference
- How to use these insights to strengthen your own standing with the C-suite
This panel provides you with a direct line into the C-suite mindset so you leave knowing exactly what it takes to be the marketer that leadership trusts with growth.
Track: Keynotes
The keynote before explores how marketers can take greater control of growth. This session builds directly on that conversation and goes a level deeper.
Because today, the issue isn’t usually marketing performance. It’s the go‑to‑market system that surrounds it. Across B2B, organisations are applying AI to fragmented processes, disconnected data, misaligned teams and inconsistent customer journeys. The result isn’t acceleration, it’s noise at scale, and it’s becoming exhausting.
The brands pulling ahead aren’t the ones producing the most campaigns or the most content. They’re the ones where the entire GTM model moves in sync, with marketing acting as the integrator of strategy, data, technology and activation.
In this keynote, Fiona McKenzie reveals why AI is now widening the gap between aligned and fragmented organisations, and why the next era of growth will belong to CMOs who operate as system thinkers, not functional leaders.
You’ll learn:
- Why AI makes alignment more important, not less
- The hidden breakdowns inside today’s GTM models
- How system‑thinking CMOs unify strategy, data, tech and activation
- What it takes to architect a modern, buyer‑led, AI‑ready GTM engine
- The practical steps to move from fragmented → connected → orchestrated → optimised
- Because AI won’t fix your go‑to‑market problems, but a system‑thinking CMO will.
Track: Keynotes
Marketers have had the rug pulled from under their feet. What worked in GTM last year is no longer delivering. Buying groups are the answer everyone's talking about - with good reason. But knowing you need to win a committee of eight and actually doing it are very different things.
Most teams are still trying to find what fits. AI keeps shifting the ground beneath marketing's feet. Sales is calling the wrong people at the wrong time. And the intent signals that should help? Ignored, misread, and stripped of the context that matters.
In this talk, we cut through the hype and the frustration.
Learn
- Where buying group execution breaks down
- How GTM teams from Amazon to Verizon are using intent orchestration to build real buying group alignment and drive revenue in 2026.
Track: Networking
Forget the usual mad dash for a quick coffee. This year, we’ve changed the schedule to give you a proper breather.
This extended networking break gives you the chance to spend more time with other delegates, meet the sponsors or take time to reflect on the morning's keynotes ahead of the track sessions.
Track: Leadership
For years, B2B marketers have focused on platforms, channels, and job titles—but buyers are humans first. In this session, Ryan Nelsen, CMO of StackAdapt, explores how AI is changing marketing forever by helping brands better understand and reach people wherever they spend their time: CTV, podcasts, DOOH, mobile, gaming, display, video, search, and social. Attendees will learn why the future of B2B is really B2H (Business to Human) and how marketers can build brands by earning attention, entertaining audiences, making more deposits than withdrawals, and bringing a clear point of view to an AI-powered world.
Track: Brand
For years, marketers have treated brand storytelling and account-based marketing (ABM) as two distinct forces. One lives in the world of emotion, creativity and long-term brand building. The other is driven by precision, data and commercial impact. In many organisations, they follow different playbooks, and compete for attention and budget.
But what happens when you try to bring them together?
In this session, Ryan Almond, Global ABX Director at Henkel Adhesive Technologies, will share how a 150-year-old global manufacturing powerhouse set out to challenge the assumption that Brand and ABM cannot coexist in one strategy. In fact, they discovered that when done right, they can become one of the most powerful growth engines in B2B marketing.
Drawing on Henkel’s transformation journey, Ryan will reveal how the organisation built an enterprise-wide ABM programme —while simultaneously embedding modern brand storytelling. Instead of operating in silos, the two disciplines were strategically fused into a single go-to-market engine that aligns brand, digital, sales and customer engagement around the accounts that matter most.
The result? A marketing model that delivers both emotional resonance and commercial precision—turning storytelling into a powerful driver of revenue.
This session will offer an honest look at the strategy, structure and cultural shifts required to make this integration work inside a large, global enterprise—and why the future of B2B marketing may depend on it.
In this session, you will learn:
- How a global manufacturing leader designed and launched a world-class ABM programme from the ground up
- How Henkel rebuilt its brand storytelling for the modern B2B buyer
- How both disciplines were seamlessly integrated into one strategic growth engine
- The challenges, pitfalls and lessons learned along the way
- Expect practical insights, real world examples, and a fresh perspective on how two seemingly opposite disciplines can become a match made in B2B marketing heaven.
Track: Tech
Most AI demos skip the hard bit. They show you someone typing a prompt and getting a beautiful output, and you're left wondering why yours never look like that. The difference isn't the tool. It's what happens before you open it.
In this session, Jake Bird - founder of JIM AI and a consultant who's spent four years helping B2B teams actually use AI, not just talk about it - pulls back the curtain on what good AI work really looks like. Using a live client example, he'll walk through the methodology behind effective prompting: the role definition, the format structure, the layered instructions, and crucially, the source information that most people never think to include.
You'll see the full prompt architecture before it's run, understand why each element matters, and watch the output that results. No magic, no jargon - just a repeatable framework you can take back to your desk and use on Monday. If you've ever felt like AI should be working better for you than it is, this session will show you why - and what to do about it.
Learn
- Why the quality of AI output depends almost entirely on the work done before you write the prompt
- A practical prompt architecture: role, format, instructions, and information categories
- What "prepared" looks like versus "winging it" - and the difference in results
- How to structure source information so AI actually has something useful to work with
- A repeatable framework for building prompts that deliver consistent, usable output
The prompt is the last 5% of the work - the other 95% is preparation, and that's where most marketers are falling short.
Track: Demand
Dedicated to maximising effectiveness, efficiency and ROI of your digital advertising, FunnelFuel’s CTO outlines key aspects of the evolving media ecosystem, highlighting challenges, opportunities and practical advice you can apply to improve your in-market campaign actions.
In this session, you'll learn about;
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Key aspects of the media landscape and its impact on your in-market awareness
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Real-world considerations for account-level targeting, delivery and engagement
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Opportunities for broadening your awareness, reach and brand presence
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Tips to take back to the office to improve your GTM actions
Track: Problem-Solving Circles
ELIZABETH ROOM
Marketing rarely fails because of bad ideas. It fails because of friction with sales, product, finance, operations, and leadership. Yet most of that friction isn't about personalities. It's about misaligned priorities, different KPIs, and structures that keep functions working in parallel rather than together.
This interactive workshop session helps you diagnose where cross-functional relationships are breaking down and why. Rather than offering abstract theories, it will guide participants through a structured process to: Identify the friction points that show up most in their business, examine what other functions really believe about marketing, and explore what practical behaviours build trust fastest.
You’ll learn:
- How to identify the real source of friction in a cross-functional relationship
- What other functions typically believe about marketing, and how to shift that perception
- Which behaviours build trust and credibility with stakeholders the fastest
- How to align on shared priorities, language, and KPIs at the start of a project
- Practical tools to improve working relationships and demonstrate commercial value
Better cross-functional relationships start with understanding what other teams actually need from marketing. Not just communicating more, but communicating differently.
Take-away documents:
- Message alignment template
- Consultative influence questions
- Commercial value story card
How to attend:
This is a small group session limited to 15. Places will be available to book for registered delegates a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
This is ideal for both marketing managers and leaders, looking for ways to collaborate with their peers on key marketing pain points.
Track:
Problem Solving Circles
Track: Skills Studio
DODDINGTON 2
Search is changing fast. As generative AI tools increasingly shape how buyers research, shortlist and make decisions, traditional SEO alone is no longer enough to ensure visibility. For B2B marketers, the challenge is clear: how do you stay discoverable when answers are being generated, not just ranked?
This one-hour workshop explores the shift from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and what it means in practical terms for B2B marketing teams. We’ll examine how AI-driven search experiences (including AI overviews, chat-based search and copilots) source, interpret and surface content — and why some brands are becoming “invisible” despite strong SEO foundations.
You’ll learn:
- How buyer search behaviour is changing in an AI-mediated world
- The key differences between optimising for search engines versus generative engines
- What types of content, signals and authority AI systems rely on when generating answers
- How to adapt existing SEO, content and thought-leadership strategies for AI discovery
The session will focus on practical, actionable guidance rather than theory, helping marketers assess where their current approach is at risk and where small shifts can deliver outsized impact. You’ll leave with a framework for evolving your discovery strategy so your brand remains visible, credible and influential as AI reshapes how B2B buyers find information.
Ideal for B2B marketers responsible for demand generation, content, digital performance or brand visibility who want to stay ahead of the next major shift in search.
Take-away document:
Access to a free AEO report where you can check your own progress.
How to attend:
Each workshop is for up to 30 delegates. Registered delegates can book their place on their chosen workshop(s) a week out from the event. Please note you should bring a laptop to attend this workshop,
Who should attend?:
These workshops are open to all marketers who want to build some new, practical skills.
Track:
Skills Studio
Track: Leaders' table
This small-group discussion is designed for senior marketing leaders who want to go beyond the keynote and have an honest conversation about what it really takes to drive growth today.
Following our morning keynote, Most Valuable Player? How B2B Marketers Can Take More Control of Growth, we'll discuss:
- How leading marketing teams are succeeding in challenging market conditions
- Where marketers are making the biggest impact on growth
- Why proving value remains difficult for many teams
- What separates the marketing functions trusted by leadership from those still fighting for credibility
This is where the keynote's ideas are challenged, explored, and turned into practical actions you can apply in your own organisation.
The real value comes from the room itself: a small group of senior leaders, open discussion, and the opportunity to share experiences and ask the questions you wouldn't raise in a larger audience.
Group moderator:
Robert Norum, ABM & Demand Strategy Expert, Propolis from B2B Marketing
How to attend:
This is a small group session limited to 10. Places will be available to book for registered delegates a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
This is ideal for C-level delegates and leaders looking to discuss key points from our keynote session.
Track: Brand
GRAND HALL 1
In the age of AI-assisted buying, brands must be more distinctive because AI can only recommend meaningful difference when that difference is clearly expressed. But the deepest forms of distinctiveness still come from uniquely human imagination, creativity and the discovery of a competitively differentiating human truth that a brand is able to live up to every day.
Gravity’s presentation will examine how AI is reshaping B2B decision-making, why this increases the commercial value of brand distinctiveness, and why the strongest competitive signals still originate in human insight rather than machine logic. The audience will gain a clearer understanding of how distinctive brands are created by identifying a core human truth, embedding it in strategy, culture and customer experience, and expressing it in ways that both people and AI can recognise, trust and act on. Gravity will offer a perspective on why the future belongs to brands that are AI-legible, but human-made and felt.
What will you learn?
• How, as AI reshapes B2B buying behaviour, brand positioning strategy is a key commercial weapon for vendors
• Why AI-assisted procurement increases the need for meaningful brand distinctiveness
• Why the strongest competitive signals will continue to originate from human insight, not machine logic
• How to build a brand that is AI-legible, human-made and deeply felt by buyers
Key take away for attendees
The brands that win in the age of AI are those built on a distinctive human truth - one that both people and AI can recognise, trust, and act on.
Track: Leadership
HARDWICK
When you hear ‘B2B decision maker’, - what do you picture? Maybe a lone figure in a grey office. Potentially a commute spent reading an industry publication. Or how about a ‘work wardrobe’ straight out of 1998. Here’s the thing. The majority of us are B2B decision makers. And whilst we might have decisions to make in our working day, that doesn’t mean we’re not living life in full colour - complete with all the memes, group chats, online baskets, latest episodes and ‘how do I skip this ad’ moments of the modern consumer landscape.
Deliveroo for Work has spent the past year learning about the emotions attached to workplace decisions - and to food in our working day (spoiler: we like food a lot..) In this session, you’ll hear some of these insights and learn how Deliveroo for Work has deployed them, meeting their audiences where they are with communication that simultaneously hits home and entertains, in turn driving growth for their business.
Learn
- Why B2B decision makers think just like you and me.
- The emotional drivers behind workplace purchasing decisions.
- How to create B2B communications that engage, entertain and convert.
- Practical ways to increase engagement and commercial impact. To engage your B2B audience, you must market to the human behind the job title.
Track: Tech
DODDINGTON 1
Whether your team is struggling with AI adoption, or you’re deploying cutting edge solutions, this session will help all B2B growth marketers with a framework that spans your buyer’s journey. We’ll walk through 5 real, easy-to-use AI solutions for each stage of your outbound campaign: Persona > Content > Campaign > Retargeting > Opportunity. Each example showcases a zero/low cost solution, so you can start where you are, with what you already have (no certificates or coding required). Get real AI-enabled pipeline results by learning from your peers – some of whom have already achieved 10X ROI from these methods.
Learn
- 5 quick and easy AI processes your team can implement immediately (at little to no cost).
- Strategic points in your buyer’s journey where AI can provide maximum ROI (with minimal effort).
- Best practices for implementing AI across your team, even if they’re terrified of it (they’re not, really).
Track: Demand
GRAND HALL 2
Most marketers don’t have the luxury of starting from scratch when given the brief to build a demand generation engine. Either you’re in an existing role or a new one, you have legacy processes and technology, as well as a culture that needs to be transformed. Join this session to hear about practical steps on how to address challenges, what you need to consider, how to live with imperfect solutions and more. In this practical session, you will hear examples from his experience in doing this across several companies, industries, audience types and for stages of business. You will also learn what good demand gen looks like and how to think holistically, how to get started in the process of thinking and evaluating where it makes sense automating and augmenting your team and processes using AI.
Join this session with Juan Mejia who has led marketing transformation across 8 companies during the past decade to turn them into demand generation engines that deliver measurable results.
You will learn
- How to get started with building a demand gen engine
- How to manage the complexities of transforming systems, processes and people
- Practical tips in terms of where to focus your attention and what the roadmap should be Ideas of where you can use AI and how to get started
Track: Skills Studio
DODDINGTON 2
Leadership teams are demanding clearer evidence of marketing’s direct contribution to growth - and senior marketers need the financial fluency to respond with confidence. Yet a recent Propolis poll reveals that 50% of marketers lack confidence in core financial terminology and performance metrics, putting them at a disadvantage when influencing CEOs or CFOs.
In this practical, high-energy workshop, Propolis Financial Acumen Expert Sharon Collins will equip marketers with the financial know‑how and commercial storytelling skills needed to operate as strategic business leaders.
You’ll learn how to:
- Interpret key financial statements (profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow)
- Connect marketing metrics to business performance
- Plan and defend budgets with confidence
- Define SMART KPIs that demonstrate commercial impact
- Use practical ways to feel more confident talking ‘numbers’
- Clearly articulate marketing’s commercial impact in board‑level conversations
Walk away with the tools and financial language you need to position marketing as a revenue-generating engine and elevate your influence in the decisions that matter.
Take-away document:
Cheat sheet: 10 ways marketing influences finances
How to attend:
Each workshop is for up to 50 delegates. Registered delegates can book their place on their chosen workshop(s) a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
These workshops are open to all marketers who want to build some new, practical skills.
Track:
Skills Studio
Track: Problem-Solving Circles
ELIZABETH ROOM
Learn how to connect your marketing to revenue and leave knowing exactly how to prove it
Most B2B marketing teams can’t connect their work to revenue. Not because they’re not doing good or even great marketing, but because the infrastructure underneath isn’t built for it. Tech stacks don’t talk to each other, departments operate in silos, and the only things being measured are MQLs at the top of the funnel and closed-won deals at the bottom. Everything in the middle—the influence, the journey, the commercial impact—is a black hole. You’ve not operationalized your marketing efforts…yet.
In this facilitated peer session, Michelle McCann, Revenue Attribution and Commercial Marketing Expert, will introduce The Revenue Trail—a five step sequence for connecting marketing to revenue, starting from wherever you are now. Drawing on 25+ year of experience transforming marketing in subscription, enterprise, and PE-backed B2B businesses, Michelle will help the group diagnose where their organisations currently sit, what’s broken, and what to fix first. Along the way, participants will discover that the diagnostic itself becomes the business case—because when you map what’s connected and what isn’t, the gaps make the argument for investment.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s a focused conversation where you’ll hear how peers are tackling the same infrastructure challenges, share what’s working and what isn’t, and leave with a clear view of your next step. Whether you’re starting from scratch or halfway there, you’ll leave knowing exactly what to do when you return to work. And you’ll be able to use the map to demonstrate exactly where you are and where you need to get to.
You'll learn:
• How to audit your current marketing measurement infrastructure and identify what’s broken or missing
• The five-step sequence for connecting marketing to revenue, starting from wherever you are now
• What to fix first, and how the audit trail becomes your business case for investment
• How peers in similar roles are solving the same infrastructure and attribution challenges
How to attend:
This is a small group session limited to 15. Places will be available to book for registered delegates a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
This is ideal for both marketing managers and leaders, looking for ways to collaborate with their peers on key marketing pain points.
Track:
Problem Solving Circles
Track: Tech
DODDINGTON 1
AI is opening up new possibilities in how B2B marketing operates. Recent research from HUT 3 in partnership with B2B Marketing highlights a clear gap — while AI adoption is accelerating, most organisations are still applying it in fragmented, tactical ways, limiting its impact on demand generation and ABM performance. AI on its own isn’t the answer. The real opportunity lies in orchestration. In this session, we’ll explore how connecting AI-driven capabilities across insight, activation and measurement is enabling a shift from campaign-led execution to more intelligent, adaptive demand and ABM systems.
Through three real-world use cases, we’ll demonstrate how agentic workflows are already being applied in practice — and how organisations are connecting these capabilities into more effective, intelligence-led demand models.
We’ll also explore how measurement is evolving through Agentic Business Intelligence (Agentic BI) — moving beyond reporting to inform decisions and next best actions.
This isn’t about adding more AI tools.
It’s about orchestrating them into a connected system that turns ambition into action — and creates a more effective, revenue-aligned approach to demand generation and ABM.
Why you should attend
- You want to deliver demand and ABM programmes more efficiently and effectively
- You’re looking to better connect marketing activity to revenue and sales outcomes
- You’re exploring AI, but unsure how it fits beyond tactical use cases
- You want to understand what modern, intelligence-led GTM models actually look like in practice
- You’re thinking about how to build your demand and ABM strategy for the future
What you will take away
- A practical, efficient 6-step approach to demand and ABM
- What agentic AI is — and how it aligns to real marketing challenges
- What agentic workflows look like in real-world use cases
- How to evolve measurement from reporting to decision-making with Agentic Business Intelligence (Agentic BI)
- What the next 3–5 years of demand and ABM could look like — and how to start building towards it now
Track: Brand
GRAND HALL 1
In a world where 80% of the B2B decisions happens digitally before a salesperson is even involved, your brand isn’t just a "wrapper", it’s the growth engine.
It is your most influential salesperson and your only defensible moat against a sea of algorithmic sameness and market disruptions. The biggest mistake in B2B? Thinking "old best practice" leads to growth. To get ahead today, you must stop thinking like your competition. When everyone follows the same rational playbook, the result is the "Blandness Trap" and becoming invisible.
Wayne Deakin, Chief Creative Officer, Bray Leino reveals how to move beyond outbound noise to create Inbound Gravity and a force that ensures you are the only logical choice before the first meeting even happens.
Learn
- How to use Strategic Imagination to ensure AI-driven tools amplify your brand’s soul rather than automating its' erasure.
- Building Inbound Gravity: Creating a Brand Ecosystem that works 24/7 to shortlist your business while you sleep.
- The Growth Multiplier: Fusing brand and marketing into a unified force that drives commercial impact and ensures you aren't left behind by an outdated playbook.
In his direct style Wayne doesn't talk brand fluff but about building commercial distance. Stop competing on price and start dominating through creativity.
Track: Demand
GRAND HALL 2
RIP! We come together to honour the marketing campaigns that didn't make it, the fallen, the left behind, the cancelled. Following the success of ‘The Campaign Graveyard' from Propolis, join us live on stage and hear real examples from our panel on why their campaigns failed, and how they turned failure into success.
With views from top marketers both agency and client-side, and audience interaction points join our session to hear about:
- Grave mistakes! The session reframes campaign failures as opportunities for insight, giving marketers rare, candid access to what goes wrong in real campaigns rather than polished success stories.
- Campaign killers Audiences will leave with a clearer picture of the recurring reasons campaigns fail, including misalignment across the buying group, budget constraints, and weak creative direction practical knowledge they can apply immediately.
- Telltale hearts— With speakers from both agency and client-side backgrounds, attendees get a well-rounded view of how and why campaigns collapse, making the lessons more universally applicable regardless of where they sit in the industry
Track: Leadership
HARDWICK
AI is already reshaping knowledge work — not just in marketing, but in professions like software engineering, law and other expert-heavy fields where the first waves of more agentic AI disruption are becoming clearer. In this session, Adam shares an external, cross-industry view of what those changes can teach marketing leaders now: which tasks are being augmented first, how roles are starting to shift, what skills become more valuable as AI takes on more work, and why leadership, team design and workflow redesign matter more than tool rollout. Rather than focusing on hype or isolated use cases, Adam will help leaders translate signals from the AI frontier into practical implications for their marketing teams — so they can prepare their people, operating models and capability strategies for the next phase of change.
Learn
- Which tasks in knowledge work are being augmented by AI first, and what that signals for marketing roles
- How other professions like law and software engineering are already adapting to agentic AI — and what marketing can learn from them
- Why leadership, team design and workflow redesign matter more than simply rolling out new tools
- Which skills become more valuable as AI takes on more routine and specialist work
- How to translate early signals from the AI frontier into practical capability and operating model strategies for their marketing team
Track: Networking
Don't forget - your event ticket includes a proper lunch (no dry sandwiches here!), so you have a chance to relax, refuel and prepare for the afternoon ahead.
Track: Demand
GRAND HALL 2
As AI accelerates content production, IT audiences are growing more sceptical and harder to win over. In a landscape where every brand is automating campaigns at scale, trust and credibility have become the real drivers of pipeline growth.
Utimaco knows this challenge first-hand. In this session, Philipp Harmuth, Head of Digital at Utimaco, shares how the company turned to expert-led webinars to cut through the noise, putting authentic SME voices front and centre to build genuine credibility with technical audiences.
Joined by Jon Mycroft, VP of Integrated Publishing at Informa TechTarget, Philipp will reveal how human expertise outperforms polished, AI-generated messaging, why webinars remain one of the most trusted formats in B2B demand generation, and how Utimaco has used this approach to drive stronger engagement and qualified pipeline.
If you're a B2B marketer trying to earn the trust of a sceptical IT audience, this session delivers practical, proven strategies you can apply immediately.
What will you learn?
- Why IT audiences are becoming harder to reach with traditional demand gen tactics
- How authentic SME voices build stronger trust than overly polished, automated content
- What makes webinars one of the strongest formats for credibility-driven demand generation
- How to structure expert-led content that drives real engagement and pipeline
Key takeaway: In an AI-saturated market, human expertise and authentic voices are your most powerful tools for earning IT buyer trust and generating quality pipeline.
Track: Brand
GRAND HALL 1
Your case study video isn't competing with your competitor's case study. It's competing with Netflix. When a CFO opens their laptop at 8pm, your webinar is one click away from The Bear. The brands winning attention have stopped asking "is this good for B2B?" and started asking "would someone actually choose to watch this?" They're producing documentary series, serialised podcasts, interactive games, and cinematic brand films—not content, but entertainment.
Our analysis of 1,000+ B2B campaign submissions found 23% now use consumer-grade entertainment—and these campaigns are 2.5x more likely to report record-breaking outcomes, with median pipeline of £26M versus £6.8M. The twist? Median budgets are just 20% higher, with multiple examples under £25,000. Boring is the expensive choice.
This session reveals what separates genuinely engaging B2B content from corporate messaging nobody asked for—and how any organisation can make the shift.
Learn
- Which entertainment formats deliver results—from serialised, narrative-driven podcasts to video series (83% exceed targets) to gamification (60% report record-breaking outcomes)
- Why the budget objection is a myth—and how brands are creating effective entertainment campaigns for under £25,000
- What makes entertainment actually entertaining—the storytelling principles that separate content people choose from content they skip
- How smaller companies can outperform bigger competitors—by moving faster, taking creative risks, and telling more authentic stories
- Real examples from award-winning campaigns—including a law firm that 17x'd event attendance and a travel brand that achieved 6x lead growth
Key takeaway
Entertainment-based campaigns are now mainstream in B2B, are affordable, can be used against any objective and are increasingly powerful in an AI dominated world where buyers are crying out for human and engaging messages.
Track: Leadership
HARDWICK
B2B marketing leaders are facing a new kind of organisational tension. Teams are expected to move faster, create more content, adopt AI, and prove commercial impact — often with leaner structures, fragmented workflows, and increasing pressure on governance and brand trust.
At the same time, the shape of the marketing team itself is changing.
Is it a fractional CMO leading a network of specialists?
An in-house agency supported by offshore production hubs?
A senior marketing manager orchestrating freelancers and AI agents?
Or something entirely new?
In this session, Roland explores the creative paradox of AI — why the more marketing scales through automation, the more important human judgment, creativity, and operational design become.
Drawing from enterprise marketing environments and real-world operating models, this session unpacks how CMOs are redesigning teams for agility, embedded collaboration, and scalable execution — without losing strategic alignment or the human element that builds trusted brands.
In this session, you’ll learn:
- The new shapes of modern B2B marketing teams
- Why many traditional org structures are breaking under AI pressure
- How CMOs are using embedded teams, freelancers, offshore hubs and AI together
- What scalable, human-led marketing operations actually look like
- How to improve agility without sacrificing governance or creative integrity
- Why the future of marketing may be less about headcount — and more about orchestration
Track: Tech
DODDINGTON 1
AI is no longer a future ambition — it’s a competitive advantage. But while many teams experiment, few successfully operationalise AI in a way that drives real marketing impact. In this practical session, you’ll discover how Agentic AI can transform the way marketing teams work, enabling faster activation, deeper personalisation and more confident decision‑making.
We’ll explore IBM’s experience as ‘client zero,’ using AI agents to streamline workflows, boost productivity and unlock new levels of creativity and customer engagement. If you want to move beyond the hype and make AI work inside your day‑to‑day marketing, this session is for you.
Learn
- How to shift from AI experimentation to execution, with practical steps marketers can implement immediately
- Where Agentic AI delivers the biggest productivity and creativity gains across marketing workflows
- Real examples from IBM’s AI journey, including tools, processes and use cases proving measurable impact
You’ll leave with a clear framework for embedding Agentic AI into your marketing organisation.
Track: Skills Studio
DODDINGTON 3
A session for those who want their organisation’s voice to feel more human, and their teams to feel confident showing up online.
Social platforms have become crowded (to say the least!) with recycled AI posts, generic corporate announcements, and promotional updates that fail to effectively do the one thing we’re all trying to achieve… build trust with our buyers. Audiences are looking for helpful content, authenticity, and personality. They want expert perspectives, stories, and experiences that sit within your teams.
This session explores how to nurture a culture where employees feel supported and empowered to build their personal brands, where leaders develop their own influence, and where the business benefits from authentic visibility. All in a way that effectively builds trust with your audience.
You’ll leave with practical ideas you can put into practice straight away.
You’ll learn:
- Why employee‑led content outperforms branded content on trust and engagement
- How an employee-led social strategy supports the growth of your business
- Ways to encourage influential content without monitoring posts or adding pressure
- How senior leaders can strengthen their personal brand in a natural, sustainable way
- How to use AI as a creative aid without producing generic content
- Ways to help teams find their voice and share with confidence
Take-away document:
A free maturity scorecard to pinpoint where you are, what your biggest opportunities for employee‑led influence are and what to improve first.
How to attend:
Each workshop is for up to 30 delegates. Registered delegates can book their place on their chosen workshop(s) a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
These workshops are open to all marketers who want to build some new, practical skills.
Track: Leaders' table
GREEN ROOM
This small-group discussion is designed for senior marketing leaders who want to go beyond the keynote and have an honest conversation about what it really takes to drive growth today.
Following our morning keynote, Most Valuable Player? How B2B Marketers Can Take More Control of Growth, we'll discuss:
- How leading marketing teams are succeeding in challenging market conditions
- Where marketers are making the biggest impact on growth
- Why proving value remains difficult for many teams
- What separates the marketing functions trusted by leadership from those still fighting for credibility
This is where the keynote's ideas are challenged, explored, and turned into practical actions you can apply in your own organisation.
The real value comes from the room itself: a small group of senior leaders, open discussion, and the opportunity to share experiences and ask the questions you wouldn't raise in a larger audience.
Group moderator:
Robert Norum, ABM & Demand Strategy Expert, Propolis from B2B Marketing
How to attend:
This is a small group session limited to 10. Places will be available to book for registered delegates a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
This is ideal for C-level delegates and leaders looking to discuss key points from our keynote session.
Track: Problem-Solving Circles
ELIZABETH ROOM
You'll learn how to:
- Recognise why marketing reporting becomes confusing
- Map stakeholders to the numbers they care about
- Distinguish between data, metrics, and decision-making
- Organise data for succinct summary reporting
You'll leave with:
- The Marketing Value Map - showing cause and effect thinking
- The CEO Value Target - showing metric credibility
- A clear template for reporting marketing value
How to attend:
This is a small group session limited to 15. Places will be available to book for registered delegates a week out from the event.
Who should attend?:
This is ideal for both marketing managers and leaders, looking for ways to collaborate with their peers on key marketing pain points.
Track:
Problem Solving Circles
Track: Demand
GRAND HALL 2
Feel like your channel marketing isn’t reaching champion status? Got partner-based pains you wish you could chuck in the bin (and have never return)? Need to improve the excellence of your ecosystem activation?
Then join Russ Powell, Founder/MD of Sharper B2B, and 2 heavy-hitting champions of channel marketing in this exclusive to IGNITE (and fully interactive) LIVE recording of the hit podcast: Channel Marketing Champs.
We’ll be banishing those headaches, annoyances, and pains in the proverbial from across channel, partner, and ecosystem marketing into Room 101 (whilst sharing some war stories along the way).
Everyone who comes to the live podcast recording will get a free copy of “The Partner Marketing Playbook” and one lucky attendee will win an exclusive Channel Marketing Bonanza.
Track: Brand
GRAND HALL 1
In this fireside chat, Francisca Leitao Borges, Global Social Programs Lead at Cisco, explores how B2B brands can transform complex technologies into clear, relatable stories that drive real engagement. Drawing from her experience leading Cisco's global social-first video series, Francisca shares practical frameworks for simplifying technical concepts, collaborating with subject matter experts, building inclusive narratives, and crafting content that sparks meaningful conversations.
What will the audience learn?
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How to simplify complex technical concepts into compelling, audience-friendly stories
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Practical frameworks for collaborating with internal experts to create authentic content
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Strategies for building inclusive narratives that resonate across diverse audiences
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How to craft social-first content that drives engagement and sparks conversation
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Actionable methods to elevate brand voice, improve content performance, and stand out in a crowded B2B landscape
Great tech storytelling isn't about dumbing things down — it's about finding the human truth inside the technology and leading with that. Master this, and your audience will not only understand your brand, they'll care about it.
Track: Tech
DODDINGTON 1
Artificial intelligence is no longer an experiment in B2B marketing: it's becoming operational across the buyer journey. Research from analysts such as Gartner and Forrester shows that AI is increasingly shaping how buyers research solutions, evaluate vendors, and shortlist partners. At the same time, marketing teams are under pressure to do more with less: deliver hyper-personalised experiences, generate deeper insights from data, and demonstrate clear ROI on new technology investments.
But while AI adoption is accelerating, many marketers are still asking the same practical questions: what should be automated, what should remain human, and how can AI genuinely improve engagement rather than simply add complexity?
This session brings together leading industry experts to explain how AI can transform modern B2B marketing strategies. We’ll examine how organisations are using AI to unlock insights from data, accelerate content creation, personalise nurture journeys at scale, and build measurable business impact.
If you’re evaluating where AI should sit in your marketing strategy - and how to prove its value - this session will provide practical perspectives, real-world examples, and actionable ideas for 2026 and beyond.
Learn
- How to apply AI practically across your marketing strategy to drive measurable B2B growth.
- Turn marketing data into actionable insights with AI.
- Learn what to automate (and what not to).
- Scale content creation without sacrificing quality.
- Deliver true hyper-personalization at scale.
- Measure and prove ROI from AI investments.
Track: Leadership
HARDWICK
In today’s B2B marketing landscape, the demand for more content at a faster pace is relentless. But speed often comes at the cost of creativity and quality—and team burnout is real.
This session explores practical strategies to maintain creative energy, deliver exceptional writing and design, and protect your team’s well-being while meeting aggressive deadlines.
Attendees will learn:
- How to balance velocity with originality
- How to implement processes that foster creativity
- Ways to build a culture where quality thrives even under pressure.
Attendees will leave with a checklist for sustaining creativity in high-velocity marketing
Track: Networking
Another extended refreshment break to give you more chance to catch up with other attendees.
Track: Keynotes
GRAND HALL 1&2
Last year, we introduced Marketing Experience (MX) and explored why modern B2B marketing feels overwhelming—too many tools, disconnected systems, and teams working hard just to stay afloat, often without clarity or control. But complexity isn’t the real problem. The reality is harsher: most teams are operating in environments where the risk isn’t just struggle—it’s falling behind.
This year, we return with data from one of the largest studies in this space—cutting through the noise to reveal a clearer picture of what’s really happening.
It shows that B2B marketing today is defined by three outcomes: teams that sink under the weight of complexity, those that manage to stay afloat, and a distinct group that rise above it.
Our findings challenge conventional thinking. The difference isn’t budget or headcount—it’s the ability to synthesise and harmonise data, technology, and processes into something cohesive and controllable.
We’ll share practical lessons from the teams that are rising above—those who’ve moved beyond coping to operating with clarity, coordination, and confidence. The ones who make it look effortless, while others are still fighting to stay afloat.
Because in today’s marketing landscape, survival isn’t success. The real advantage belongs to those who rise above.
- What separates teams that sink, stay afloat, or rise above in today’s MX landscape
- Why so many marketing teams are stuck just staying afloat — and how to break free
- How to unify data, technology, and processes to move from survival to growth
- Practical steps to shift from reactive execution to clarity, coordination, and control
- How to assess where you stand — and what it takes to rise above
Marketing success in 2026 comes down to this: not doing more, but orchestrating what you have to rise above.
Session Takeaway: Generate your own report using IMG's marketing experience (MX) assessment, follow the QR code in this keynote for more details.
Track: Keynotes
GRAND HALL 1&2
Behind high-performing teams is a culture where people feel they truly belong. Helen shares how empowering individuals, aligning teams around shared vision and values, and developing deep self-awareness created a team where everyone had a role - and knew it mattered. She will explore the practical tools and exercises leaders can take back to their own teams immediately: from understanding personal strengths to managing performance under pressure. Because when your people are at their best, your results follow.
Track: Networking
What a day!
Now it's time to relax and catch up with friends and colleagues at the B2B Ignite networking drinks reception, hosted by Informa TechTarget
Register your interest in attending in 2027
B2B Ignite will return on Thursday 1 July 2027 in London. Register your interest and be first to know when tickets go live.