As AI reshapes marketing delivery, the real question isn’t what tools we use, but what makes us valuable.

Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, half of global organisations will require “AI-free” skills assessments as critical thinking declines among heavy AI users. That raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for marketers: which muscles are we no longer training—and what happens when the brief, the boardroom challenge, or the brand crisis lands and the model can’t help?

At the same time, the campaign era is closing. Consumer behaviour, channel algorithms, and AI capabilities are shifting faster than any quarterly plan can absorb. The marketers thriving in this environment are no longer designing campaigns—they’re designing systems: feedback loops, decision rules, governance structures, and team rituals that respond intelligently to constant change.

But systems are only as good as the people interpreting them.

The capabilities that now define high-performing marketers are the ones that don’t scale easily with AI: critical thinking, pattern recognition, brand instinct, audience empathy, and the judgment to know when the data is right, but the answer is wrong. 

In a world where execution is increasingly commoditised, advantage comes from what you choose not to do, as much as what you produce.

This panel brings together marketing leaders to explore how roles, skills, and ways of working are evolving in response. They discuss:

  • How to prevent capability decay as AI takes on more execution
  • The shift from campaign thinking to systems thinking
  • Where to draw the line between human and AI contribution
  • The skills that will define employability in the next generation of marketing
  • How Agile ways of working can help teams continuously adapt and stay relevant

Expect a candid, practical conversation on how to build, and retain, the capabilities that matter when everything else is accelerating.

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Panel and Steering Group

  • A black and white headshot image of Katie Langdon

    Katie Langdon is Founder and Creative Director of Skin and Blister Healthcare Communications. Skin and Blister exists so that nobody feels lost in healthcare. Born from shared frustrations, Katie and her sister, Fi Edwards, set up on a mission to put the care back into healthcare communications. With a name derived from London cockney rhyming slang for sister, Skin and Blister creates strategic and creative pharma content for humans, animals and the future of medicine. 

    As an early generative AI adopter, Katie encouraged the whole agency to embrace it for creative, process-driven and responsible uses. Upskilling every team member and baking generative AI into team culture has presented challenges, concerns and opportunities along the way for both team and clients. Based in London, Katie is an explorer of inspirational spaces, on land and sea, and happiest underwater.

  • A black and white headshot image of Kirsten Dixon

    Kirsten Dixon is Marketing Performance Director at Informa Markets, where she leads marketing transformation across EMEA and India, with a focus on Agile ways of working, capability building and AI adoption. She works across diverse international portfolios to help marketing teams move beyond campaign delivery toward more adaptive, data-informed and human-led operating models.

    Kirsten is passionate about the future of marketing capability and believes that as AI accelerates execution, the real value of marketers will come from judgment, creativity, critical thinking and the ability to design systems that respond to change. Her work focuses on helping teams build the confidence, structure and skills needed to stay commercially effective in a fast-moving environment.

  • A black and white headshot image of Merisha Moodley

    Merisha Moodley is Head of Marketing for Discovery Life and a Chartered Marketer, leading the strategy and execution of brand, digital, and adviser-led marketing across one of South Africa’s leading life insurers. She specialises in driving growth through data-led marketing, consumer segmentation, and integrated channel strategies, with a particular focus on closing the gap in the underinsured South African market by leveraging a mix of digital, direct, and adviser-driven channels.

    With an MBA from Henley Business School and over a decade of experience at Discovery, Merisha is passionate about creating more personalised, relevant customer experiences and reducing friction across the path to purchase. She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies are reshaping customer engagement and marketing effectiveness.

  • Headshot image of Elizabeth Venter-Botha

    Elizabeth works with leaders and organizations on the part of transformation that most consultants leave unaddressed: the human reality inside the system. Her thinking about change was forged across a decade of Agile Transformations, and it shows up today in how she approaches leadership, systems, and the human side of AI adoption.

    After nearly two decades leading large-scale change across global, US, and South African markets, she brings systems thinking, human-centered change design, and AI adoption expertise to organizations navigating rapid, continuous change.

  • A headshot image of George Lellis

    George Lellis is a global marketing leader and transformation consultant with over 20 years of experience solving business challenges on multiple fronts in consumer goods, FMCG, retail, pharma and medtech across mainly EMEA and Americas.

    He currently advises AI-first startups on growth, go-to-market and product management in the life sciences sector. As a former head of marketing excellence leading cross-functional and complex value streams, he specialises in marketing strategy coupled with digital and AI/ML, data-driven strategic management, international business, change management and transformational leadership, advising CMOs, company founders/CEOs, and executives at prominent organizations.

    His in-house experience spans portfolio strategy, digital innovation, brand strategy, market entry and channel activation underpinned by strategic value proposition design and organizational communications. As an advocate for continuing professional development, he also supports various Professors for MBA programmes at the University of London as an adjunct module leader, equipping executives with the needed strategic frameworks and critical perspectives to lead marketing strategy, entrepreneurial growth, and commercial tech-led transformation.

  • A black and white headshot image of Zoe Merchant

    Zoe Merchant has over 30 years of experience and works with CMOs and senior marketers to transform strategy, streamline operations and drive measurable performance through agile, data-driven marketing.

    She’s been recognised as a top 10 female leader, a 3x #40OverForty marketing honouree, and a Cannes Lions Creative B2B juror. Zoe is also a certified Agility in Marketing professional.

    Zoe speaks and advises on marketing effectiveness and proving impact, agile operating models and ways of working, using AI to scale personalisation and efficiency and building high-performing, adaptable teams.

    She gives marketing leaders the mindset, methods and momentum to deliver marketing that performs, enabling organisations to embed agile ways of working, unlock the power of martech, data and AI, and deliver marketing that drives commercial outcomes.

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