Global Marketer Week, the global event for brand marketers, went to Istanbul in April 2023 for four days of unparalleled insight and industry thought leadership by the Bosphorus. Watch the highlights below to relive the event!
Highlights from Global Marketer Week
WFA Global Marketer Week 2023: Highlights from Istanbul
Conny Braams & David Jones: Supercharging sustainable growth
Rupen Desai: Regenerative marketing: Biggest opportunity of our time?
Cristina Diezhandino & Ali Hanan: Progressive pathways to growth
Conference speakers include
Conference speakers
Mark AdamsMarkSenior Vice President & Global Head of Innovation, VICE Media
Mark is a serial entrepreneur and award winning global thought leader, sitting at the intersection of technology, entertainment and brand building. He has worked directly with A-list celebs to C-suite to drive brand growth and transformation and is now Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation at VICE Media Group, which has come from humble beginnings as a print magazine to become a multi billion dollar youth media empire with offices in 40 countries. He’s driven by the mission to democratise his knowledge and “digitally upskill 10 million people by 2025,” and has travelled to over 100 countries so far in pursuit of this cause. Mark's sessions are a raw, honest and often hilarious look at the state of marketing, creativity and innovation in the modern age.
Fabrice BeaulieuFabriceChief Marketing, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer, Reckitt
Conny BraamsConnyChief Digital and Commercial Officer, Unilever
As Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, Conny is a member of the Unilever Leadership Executive and responsible for the end-to-end digital transformation of Unilever and Marketing worldwide. She has held this role since January 2020. Conny’s broad international business experience and her track-record in driving change at scale, is critical to lead the transformation of Unilever into a future-fit, purpose-led, fully digitised organisation at the leading edge of consumer marketing.
Having joined Unilever as a marketing trainee in 1990, Conny has held a variety of local and international Marketing, Customer Development, Communications and General Management roles across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, Conny was the Executive Vice President, Unilever, Middle Europe and General Manager, Unilever, Benelux where she led the complete digital rewire and marketing transformation of the region.
Rupen DesaiRupenWFA Regional VP Asia-Pacific and CMO & Venture Partner, Una Terra
Ali Hanan is the founder of Creative Equals, an award-winning organisation driving what she calls the new ROI: a ‘Return on Inclusion’. She believes diversity, equity and inclusion as part of purpose and ESG strategies, impacts the planet, people, profits - and marketing excellence, seen at Cannes Lion. The team focuses on three key areas: inclusive cultures, inclusive marketing and inclusive communities, working with the world’s leading brands, including Pepsico, Reckitt, ABI In-Bev, H&M Group, McDonald’s, Mars Wrigley and more. In her former life, she worked as a creative director in the marketing sector for 18 years at its leading agencies. Since 2016, Creative Equals has been an innovative leader in the DEI space, launching the sector’s first accreditation, the Equality Standard, in 2016 and talent programmes CreativeComeback (returners) 2018 and Disabled Creatives in 2023, both funded by Diageo. Creative Equals' work is described by global clients as 'industry leading and defining'.
David JonesDavidFounder and CEO, The Brandtech Group
Brian O'KelleyBrianCo-founder and CEO, Scope3
Raja RajamannarRajaWFA President and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer and President Healthcare, Mastercard
Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, is responsible for building the Mastercard brand, driving business for its products & services and advancing sustainable competitive differentiation for the company. Raja comes to Mastercard with a history of innovation and business transformation. Before joining the company, he served as the Chief Transformation Officer of Anthem (formerly, WellPoint), a Fortune 500 health insurance company. Earlier, he was at Citigroup for 15 years holding a number of leadership roles, including Global Chief Marketing Officer, Cards and Payments, and before that he spent 7 years with Unilever in sales and product management roles. He started his career with Asian Paints in India.
Özlem SenturkÖzlemSenior Partner at Kantar’s global sustainable transformation practice
For more than 15 years Ozlem has been leading assignments across a broad range of industries in technology, services and classical FMCG- a good mix of B2C and B2B experience.
As a consultant Ozlem’s greatest passion has been to drive impact. She believes people are the biggest asset to make that impact sustainable. Over the last decade she has been focusing on transformations to bring countries and people together around an inspiring vision and enable organizations and employees to drive a focused strategy. As Kantar sustainable transformation global expert she has been a consultant to companies across the globe on their sustainable/purpose-led transformation journeys as well as driving Kantar’s thought leadership in the domain.
Before joining Kantar, Ozlem worked in broad range of roles at global, regional and local levels. She started her marketing career at Procter & Gamble in Turkey and continued with global innovation and category leadership roles within the consumer electronics sector in the Netherlands.
Ozlem has an MBA from NIMBAS Business School (University of Bradford- Top 70 in FT rankings at the time) and a BSc from the METU university – Top 3 in Turkey at the time)
Charlie ThompsonCharlieDirector, Commercial Reach & Influence, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
Charlie is Director, Commercial Reach & Influence at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Co-Convenor of its Sustainable Marketing, Media & Creative course. Charlie leads CISL’s work on the influence of the business ecosystem via the role of marketing, media and creative industries, and the opportunity this poses for sustainable change. Before joining CISL, Charlie’s industry experience specialised in digital and content marketing, strategy and transformation. She has worked for one of the largest destination marketing organisations in the world, is a former Global Manager of Digital Strategy, Capabilities & Content at American Express and co-founder of a start-up that assessed marketing and labelling claims, and promoted sustainable products, lifestyles and narratives.
Event updates
Stories
Global Marketer Week heads to Brussels
Registrations are now open for WFA Global Marketer Week 2025, which will take place in Brussels in partnership with UBA, the Belgian…
Mathias ChaillouMathiasChief Media Officer, L’Oréal
Anita DorettAnitaDirector, Investor Alliance for Human Rights
Christian FuchsChristianGlobal Senior Director of Procurement, Campari
Radha GohilRadhaData Ethics and Digital, Standards Lead, Shell
Dale GreenDaleGlobal Director, Purpose Marketing, Mars
Sinem KaynakSinemChief Growth Officer at Elida Beauty, Unilever
Catherine LautierCatherineVP, Global Head of Media, & Integrated Brand Communication, Danone
Isabel MasseyIsabelVP, Global Media, Marketing, Diageo
Rob MayhewRobComedian and TikTok creator
Ina NikovaInaGlobal marketing category procurement, Campari
Andres PeñateAndresGlobal VP Regulatory & Public Affairs, AB InBev
Karen SauderKarenPresident, Global Clients & Agency Solutions, Google
Philipp SchusterPhilippAgency & Marketing Partnerships Director, Global Strategic Marketing, Consumer Health, Bayer
Dan SouthernDanManaging partner, Contagious
Jacqui StephensonJacquiGlobal Responsible Marketing Manager, Mars
Samantha StetsonSamanthaVP Industry Trade Relations, Meta
Solitaire TownsendSolitaireCo-founder and Chief Solutionist, Futerra
Solitaire has been selling sustainability for over 20 years. As Co-founder and Chief Solutionist of Futerra she advises governments, charities and brands on making sustainability so desirable it becomes normal. With Futerra offices in London, Stockholm, New York and Mexico City she admits that making the world a better place is a damn good business plan. You can watch her TED talks online and read her in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Forbes and more often as @GreenSolitaire. Solitaire was named ‘Ethical Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2008 and more recently was Chair of the UK Green Energy Scheme. She was recently selected to join the Race To Zero working group on Scope 3 and her book The Happy Hero - How To Change Your Life By Changing The World is out now.
Gonda VanzwijgenhovenGondaGlobal Procurement Director Marketing & Media, Reckitt
Miguel Veiga-PestanaMiguelSustainability and Corporate Reputation Management Expert
Jon WilkinsJonGlobal Chief Strategy Officer, Accenture Song
WFA's Executive Committee meets quarterly to discuss the organisation's priorities and guide the WFA strategy. The Executive Committee is made up of senior corporate and national association representatives.
This session will be hybrid.
13:30 - 14:30
WFA Annual General Meeting
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The Annual General Meeting will give WFA members a review of the past year’s activities, challenges and major achievements.
19:00 - 23:00
RVD Cocktails & Welcome Dinner
Çirağan Palace
By invitation only
Show more
Join us and our hosts for an unforgettable dinner in this former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosphorus strait.
Address: Yıldız, Çırağan Cd. No:32, 34349 Beşiktaş/İstanbul, Türkiye
Wednesday, 26 April
09:00 - 14:00
CMO Forum
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The CMO Forum is an invitation-only event for global marketing leaders. The CMO Forum will focus on sustainable growth: against a challenging economic and societal backdrop, three of the world’s biggest brand owners will provide stimulus for marketing leadership roundtables. Workshops will focus on how responsible marketing frameworks can drive more effective behaviours from the marketing function and translate into positive business outcomes.
09:00 - 14:00
Sourcing Forum
Zürich room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
In this session, the Sourcing Forum will continue its transformative focus: addressing how the function can drive sustainable growth through external relationships, developing strong and long-lasting commercial structures with key partners, and ultimately becoming their agencies’ client of choice.
08:30 - 14:00
Media Forum
Neuchâtel room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
Our Media Forum provides peers the chance to discuss and tackle common media challenges and further our industry's agenda.
In this meeting, we will examine how the change called for in the new WFA Global Media Charter can be accelerated. The Media Charter identifies a number of industry issues, across a spectrum of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) themes. In the Media Forum we will hear case studies from pioneering clients who are already pushing for the change identified in the Charter, and through working sessions, we will identify how we can work with the industry to fulfil the un-met requirements that we ask the industry to collaborate with us on.
08:30 - 14:00
Policy Forum
Genève + Luzern room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The Policy Forum is for public affairs professionals. During this session, we will look at the fast-changing pressures from environmental, social and governance (ESG) perspectives, how companies need to respond, the role of policy in helping companies respond and how these translate in practice into company frameworks or policies for responsible marketing.
15:00 - 18:00
Better Marketing
Jolly Joker Private
WFA members and by invitation only
Show more
Are marketers from Mars?
Sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking marketers come from another planet.
In their efforts to stand out from the crowd, they can stretch facts, bend the truth and/or come across as simply tone deaf.
With environmental sustainability high on the consumer agenda, brands have been increasingly accused of greenwashing.
And the backlash against greenwash has led many brands to ‘greenhush’ and stay quiet about their efforts.
This interactive session will explore the thin line between getting it right and wrong and try and offer some serious perspectives for how brand marketers can get it right.
With help from our panel of experts, real-life case studies, lots of audience participation and a stand-up comedian, we hope to uncover a few lessons that will help ensure that we as marketers have our feet firmly on Planet Earth. And that our environmental efforts to help save it properly resonate with consumers.
The highly acclaimed WFA global marketer conference is back.
The global marketer conference boasts (in one CMO’s words) “the most senior, and capable, line-up of its kind in the global marketing industry”.
Against a challenging economic backdrop, our focus will be sustainable growth: exploring how the world’s biggest brand owners can be part of the solution to a sustainable future whilst delivering against shareholder, and stakeholder, expectations.
The launch of WFA & Kantar’s Sustainable Marketing 2030 report will help frame the narrative for the day. Global CMOs from Anheuser Busch InBev, Bumble, Mastercard, Reckitt, and Unilever will address the opportunities around creativity innovation and partnership. With the help of thought leaders from VICE and Scope3, they will also explore the challenges being faced around measurement and societal expectations – including a global debate around whether marketers should be focused on consumer behaviour change, or whether the priority issues to address are much closer to home.
19:00-23:00
WFA Gala Dinner
Shangri-La Bosphorus
WFA members and by invitation only
Show more
Join us for an unforgettable dinner by the Bosphorus.
Friday, 28 April
10:00 - 14:00
National Associations Council
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
National Association Council members
Show more
The National Associations Council (NAC) is the global forum for heads and representatives of national industry associations in WFA membership. It offers a unique opportunity for national associations representing the common interests of marketers to learn from each other, collaborate and share ideas, insights and success stories.
09:00 - 12:00
WFA Executive Committee
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
WFA Executive Committee members
Show more
WFA's Executive Committee meets quarterly to discuss the organisation's priorities and guide the WFA strategy. The Executive Committee is made up of senior corporate and national association representatives.
This session will be hybrid.
13:30 - 14:30
WFA Annual General Meeting
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The Annual General Meeting will give WFA members a review of the past year’s activities, challenges and major achievements.
19:00 - 23:00
RVD Cocktails & Welcome Dinner
Çirağan Palace
By invitation only
Show more
Join us and our hosts for an unforgettable dinner in this former Ottoman palace overlooking the Bosphorus strait.
Address: Yıldız, Çırağan Cd. No:32, 34349 Beşiktaş/İstanbul, Türkiye
09:00 - 14:00
CMO Forum
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The CMO Forum is an invitation-only event for global marketing leaders. The CMO Forum will focus on sustainable growth: against a challenging economic and societal backdrop, three of the world’s biggest brand owners will provide stimulus for marketing leadership roundtables. Workshops will focus on how responsible marketing frameworks can drive more effective behaviours from the marketing function and translate into positive business outcomes.
09:00 - 14:00
Sourcing Forum
Zürich room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
In this session, the Sourcing Forum will continue its transformative focus: addressing how the function can drive sustainable growth through external relationships, developing strong and long-lasting commercial structures with key partners, and ultimately becoming their agencies’ client of choice.
08:30 - 14:00
Media Forum
Neuchâtel room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
Our Media Forum provides peers the chance to discuss and tackle common media challenges and further our industry's agenda.
In this meeting, we will examine how the change called for in the new WFA Global Media Charter can be accelerated. The Media Charter identifies a number of industry issues, across a spectrum of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) themes. In the Media Forum we will hear case studies from pioneering clients who are already pushing for the change identified in the Charter, and through working sessions, we will identify how we can work with the industry to fulfil the un-met requirements that we ask the industry to collaborate with us on.
08:30 - 14:00
Policy Forum
Genève + Luzern room, Swissôtel
WFA members only
Show more
The Policy Forum is for public affairs professionals. During this session, we will look at the fast-changing pressures from environmental, social and governance (ESG) perspectives, how companies need to respond, the role of policy in helping companies respond and how these translate in practice into company frameworks or policies for responsible marketing.
15:00 - 18:00
Better Marketing
Jolly Joker Private
WFA members and by invitation only
Show more
Are marketers from Mars?
Sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking marketers come from another planet.
In their efforts to stand out from the crowd, they can stretch facts, bend the truth and/or come across as simply tone deaf.
With environmental sustainability high on the consumer agenda, brands have been increasingly accused of greenwashing.
And the backlash against greenwash has led many brands to ‘greenhush’ and stay quiet about their efforts.
This interactive session will explore the thin line between getting it right and wrong and try and offer some serious perspectives for how brand marketers can get it right.
With help from our panel of experts, real-life case studies, lots of audience participation and a stand-up comedian, we hope to uncover a few lessons that will help ensure that we as marketers have our feet firmly on Planet Earth. And that our environmental efforts to help save it properly resonate with consumers.
The highly acclaimed WFA global marketer conference is back.
The global marketer conference boasts (in one CMO’s words) “the most senior, and capable, line-up of its kind in the global marketing industry”.
Against a challenging economic backdrop, our focus will be sustainable growth: exploring how the world’s biggest brand owners can be part of the solution to a sustainable future whilst delivering against shareholder, and stakeholder, expectations.
The launch of WFA & Kantar’s Sustainable Marketing 2030 report will help frame the narrative for the day. Global CMOs from Anheuser Busch InBev, Bumble, Mastercard, Reckitt, and Unilever will address the opportunities around creativity innovation and partnership. With the help of thought leaders from VICE and Scope3, they will also explore the challenges being faced around measurement and societal expectations – including a global debate around whether marketers should be focused on consumer behaviour change, or whether the priority issues to address are much closer to home.
19:00-23:00
WFA Gala Dinner
Shangri-La Bosphorus
WFA members and by invitation only
Show more
Join us for an unforgettable dinner by the Bosphorus.
10:00 - 14:00
National Associations Council
Monte Rosa room, Swissôtel
National Association Council members
Show more
The National Associations Council (NAC) is the global forum for heads and representatives of national industry associations in WFA membership. It offers a unique opportunity for national associations representing the common interests of marketers to learn from each other, collaborate and share ideas, insights and success stories.
Global Marketer Week at your fingertips
Download our app to access the week's agenda, venue details, real-time updates and more. Look up GMW2023 in the App or Play store or scan the QR-code.
Important: please keep in mind that the Artisan Istanbul MGallery and the Marmara are about 20 minutes walking from the hub hotel.
Flights
Turkish Airlines, the official airline of Global Marketer Week, offers special discounts to all WFA delegates. Visit the Turkish Airlines promocode page and use the event code 009TKM23 under the Promotion code section. The discount will be shown at the checkout.
Location
The Global Marketer Conference will take place at the Istanbul Lutfi Kirdar International Convention & Exhibition Center (see in Maps). For a full list of all the Global Marketer Week venues, please see the Agenda section above.
Please get in touch with us should you need an invitation letter in order to apply for a visa to enter Turkey.
Sponsors
Sponsors & partners
Interested in partnership opportunities for WFA Global Marketer Week 2023? We’d love to discuss: sponsorship@wfanet.org
Mark Adams Mark Senior Vice President & Global Head of Innovation, VICE MediaMark is a serial entrepreneur and award winning global thought leader, sitting at the intersection of technology, entertainment and brand building. He has worked directly with A-list celebs to C-suite to drive brand growth and transformation and is now Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation at VICE Media Group, which has come from humble beginnings as a print magazine to become a multi billion dollar youth media empire with offices in 40 countries. He’s driven by the mission to democratise his knowledge and “digitally upskill 10 million people by 2025,” and has travelled to over 100 countries so far in pursuit of this cause. Mark's sessions are a raw, honest and often hilarious look at the state of marketing, creativity and innovation in the modern age.
Fabrice Beaulieu Fabrice Chief Marketing, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer, Reckitt
Conny Braams Conny Chief Digital and Commercial Officer, UnileverAs Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, Conny is a member of the Unilever Leadership Executive and responsible for the end-to-end digital transformation of Unilever and Marketing worldwide. She has held this role since January 2020. Conny’s broad international business experience and her track-record in driving change at scale, is critical to lead the transformation of Unilever into a future-fit, purpose-led, fully digitised organisation at the leading edge of consumer marketing. Having joined Unilever as a marketing trainee in 1990, Conny has held a variety of local and international Marketing, Customer Development, Communications and General Management roles across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, Conny was the Executive Vice President, Unilever, Middle Europe and General Manager, Unilever, Benelux where she led the complete digital rewire and marketing transformation of the region.
Rupen Desai Rupen WFA Regional VP Asia-Pacific and CMO & Venture Partner, Una Terra
Cristina Diezhandino Cristina Chief Marketing Officer, Diageo
Ali Hanan Ali Founder and CEO, Creative EqualsAli Hanan is the founder of Creative Equals, an award-winning organisation driving what she calls the new ROI: a ‘Return on Inclusion’. She believes diversity, equity and inclusion as part of purpose and ESG strategies, impacts the planet, people, profits - and marketing excellence, seen at Cannes Lion. The team focuses on three key areas: inclusive cultures, inclusive marketing and inclusive communities, working with the world’s leading brands, including Pepsico, Reckitt, ABI In-Bev, H&M Group, McDonald’s, Mars Wrigley and more. In her former life, she worked as a creative director in the marketing sector for 18 years at its leading agencies. Since 2016, Creative Equals has been an innovative leader in the DEI space, launching the sector’s first accreditation, the Equality Standard, in 2016 and talent programmes CreativeComeback (returners) 2018 and Disabled Creatives in 2023, both funded by Diageo. Creative Equals' work is described by global clients as 'industry leading and defining'.
David Jones David Founder and CEO, The Brandtech Group
Brian O'Kelley Brian Co-founder and CEO, Scope3
Raja Rajamannar Raja WFA President and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer and President Healthcare, MastercardRaja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, is responsible for building the Mastercard brand, driving business for its products & services and advancing sustainable competitive differentiation for the company. Raja comes to Mastercard with a history of innovation and business transformation. Before joining the company, he served as the Chief Transformation Officer of Anthem (formerly, WellPoint), a Fortune 500 health insurance company. Earlier, he was at Citigroup for 15 years holding a number of leadership roles, including Global Chief Marketing Officer, Cards and Payments, and before that he spent 7 years with Unilever in sales and product management roles. He started his career with Asian Paints in India.
Özlem Senturk Özlem Senior Partner at Kantar’s global sustainable transformation practiceFor more than 15 years Ozlem has been leading assignments across a broad range of industries in technology, services and classical FMCG- a good mix of B2C and B2B experience. As a consultant Ozlem’s greatest passion has been to drive impact. She believes people are the biggest asset to make that impact sustainable. Over the last decade she has been focusing on transformations to bring countries and people together around an inspiring vision and enable organizations and employees to drive a focused strategy. As Kantar sustainable transformation global expert she has been a consultant to companies across the globe on their sustainable/purpose-led transformation journeys as well as driving Kantar’s thought leadership in the domain. Before joining Kantar, Ozlem worked in broad range of roles at global, regional and local levels. She started her marketing career at Procter & Gamble in Turkey and continued with global innovation and category leadership roles within the consumer electronics sector in the Netherlands. Ozlem has an MBA from NIMBAS Business School (University of Bradford- Top 70 in FT rankings at the time) and a BSc from the METU university – Top 3 in Turkey at the time)
Charlie Thompson Charlie Director, Commercial Reach & Influence, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability LeadershipCharlie is Director, Commercial Reach & Influence at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Co-Convenor of its Sustainable Marketing, Media & Creative course. Charlie leads CISL’s work on the influence of the business ecosystem via the role of marketing, media and creative industries, and the opportunity this poses for sustainable change. Before joining CISL, Charlie’s industry experience specialised in digital and content marketing, strategy and transformation. She has worked for one of the largest destination marketing organisations in the world, is a former Global Manager of Digital Strategy, Capabilities & Content at American Express and co-founder of a start-up that assessed marketing and labelling claims, and promoted sustainable products, lifestyles and narratives.
