Variety’s Future of Brand Summit, presented by Acxiom, gathered the industry’s top executives, marketers, creatives and cultural leaders on Wednesday in New York for an event that explored how companies are fueling their brands with creativity, culture and community.
The program featured panel discussions and keynote conversations with leaders across entertainment, marketing, tech, design, as well as industry insiders from the NFL, JPMorganChase, PepsiCo Beverages, FCB, Hello Products and more. Throughout the day, the industry’s most influential voices shared their insights on brand storytelling, consumer engagement and cultural impact.
Read below for a few of the key takeaways from the 2025 Future of Brand Summit.
Keynote Conversation with Michael Strahan and Jose Diaz
Michael Strahan and Jose Diaz kicked off the event with a keynote conversation moderated by Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton. They talked about their respective roles as co-founder and vice president of partnerships and communications at SMAC Entertainment, and the company’s work at the intersections of branding, marketing and creative partnerships.
Diaz stressed that “the days of just having a passive ambassador show up on your commercials, those days are gone. Now, it’s how more can you and how deeper can you dive in with your brand partners?” Accordingly, the company represents various public figures forging brand partnerships that feel earnest to their values and personalities.
“The most exciting thing is to have clients who are really engaged in the brand that they’re involved in,” added Strahan, “because authenticity is always the most important thing to us.”
Brand Visionaries Roundtable
In another conversation led by Littleton, five marketing leaders discussed the future of their respective industries, and what the future looks like for branding. With the rise of social media and digital marketing, companies are discussing how to appeal to audiences across the world and what techniques are necessary.
“Old school and new school are colliding a little bit with what’s happening in [the] social and digital [world], but also the importance of real-life experiences,” said Mark Kirkham, CMO of PepsiCo Beverages in North America. “We live in a world where all of a sudden sampling is actually content creation. The intersection and the combination of traditional old school marketing and new school consumer engagement, it’s all one and the same.”
Laurie Lam, Chief Brand Officer of e.l.f. Beauty, spoke about the importance of using apps like TikTok and how it has helped boost e.l.f.’s products, continuing to shape the way the company engages with influencers and regular customers. “Sometimes you find that the best trends are not going to be driven by people who are your paid creators and these big names with big followings or mid-tier [followings], but by talking to your community and finding out what they’re interested in. It’s leveraging on something that was already happening and capitalizing on it.”
“If your partners truly understand your business, you can start to predict where we need to spend our money,” said Kirkham. “If you’ve got a piece of content that’s working, you’ll know that’s where you want to boost it. If you’ve got a big game that’s airing after a specific cohort, you’ll know that’s where [to do] a specific media mix. We need that kind of flexibility in how we execute, but more importantly, that close collaboration in all the planning.”
Creativity x Connected Data
Executive leaders from Acxiom, FCB and Hello Products dived deep into the intersection of AI and creativity and how it has become critical to elevate their brands and deliver relevant consumer experiences.
Andrés Ordóñez, global chief creative officer at FCB, talked about how he’s leveraged AI within his company workflow to make the ideation to execution process more seamless.
“It gives us more time to focus on what matters, which is the idea behind versus the making of trying to sell the idea,” Ordóñez said. “I found the process became faster on producing the idea to sell it to or to take it to our clients and giving us time to do what we love. And it’s about creating work.”
He continued, “AI without creativity, it’s just an empty prompt. With great creativity, it’s an incredible machine. If you put a focus on that, the output is incredible.”
Although the use of AI has infiltrated their industry and many others, Diana Haussling, CEO of Hello Products, emphasized the importance of maintaining a human element and understanding different cultures.
“Getting ahead of what’s coming requires you to have not only that gut, but a real understanding of environments, worlds and bubbles that you don’t exist in,” she said. “When you’re on that road and creative is coming your way, it’s about having that spidey sense that says, ‘This doesn’t feel right’ or ‘This feels right’, we’re gonna go in this direction.”
She continued, “And giving your teams that bandwidth to fail also is a way for you to help influence and train the data so it can help you make those decisions better going forward.”
Moments That Matter: NBCU Fueling Connection and Communities Through Shared Experiences
NBCUniversal global advertising and partnerships chairman Mark Marshall, “Sunday Today” and “Morning Joe” host Willie Geist, “Southern Charm” cast member, entrepreneur and author Craig Conover and “Football Night in America” host Maria Taylor took the stage for a panel about connection and community through shared experiences from BravoCon to the Olympics.
“People have this craving for connection,” Conover said, noting the masses of avid fans that attend NBC’s BravoCon from around the world. Marshall elaborated that “people will do anything for these in-person experiences” because they allow them to interact with and share space with figures from their favorite shows.
Taylor noted that live sports are emblematic of this effect, stating “fandom is irrational,” but “sports are the last place that really you do have to join the action live or you’ll miss it.” This, according to Taylor, is why sports viewership remains so high, as the unpredictable live moments provide serendipitous occasions for connection.
As an on-camera figure, Geist concurred that the energy of live events goes two ways. “To actually see those faces, hear their stories, see what the show means to them, and hear where they came from just to be in a room with us, I love that from my side of it,” he said, “It’s been a highlight of my career doing these live events.”
Fireside Chat With Denise Persson: CMO of the Future
Denise Persson, chief marketing officer of Snowflake, talked about what has changed for CMOs in the last decade, the importance of partnerships and which skills are the most valuable for future execs.
Persson talked about the evolution of CMOs with Acxiom’s Courtney Keating, noting how the biggest shift has been taking on multiple roles at once.
“We have to be the customer champion,” she began. “We have to do storytelling, be the growth architects for our company, driving revenue and data scientists at the same time. Nobody can be all those people in one.”
She continued, “The future is a curious customer-obsessed leader. You need to have a passion for the craft of marketing as well. You need to have a curiosity to reinvent yourself, company and team.”
Persson also credited the integration of data as the key element behind Snowflake’s success with securing partnerships with other technology and consulting firms.
“That’s how the integration of the ecosystem is, and we play quite a big role in that,” she said. “But for customers, it needs to be easy for them to understand how different technologies fit together.”
As the role of CMOs continues to change, Persson emphasized that curiosity and remaining a student of the business are the most valuable skills that future business leaders will need.
Keynote Conversation With Project Runway
Twenty-one years after its start on television, “Project Runway” has returned to streaming for a new generation of designers to discover their creative voices. Since its inception in 2004, the series has evolved and changed–just like the industry it honors.
“In the very beginning, we wanted to make sure a lot of these discussions have been talking about authentic voices in the world that you want to brand to,” said Michael Rucker, executive producer of “Project Runway” in a keynote conversation with Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. “I think we really wanted to make sure that the show spoke to designers and the design processes. We wanted to make sure that we were talking about fashion to another generation who actually do consume fashion not only on TV, [but] they’re consuming it on their phones day to day.”
After winning Season 4 at 21 years old, designer Christian Siriano spoke about the importance of reviving “Project Runway” and why he decided to return as a mentor. “It’s really important that the mentor on ‘Project Runway’ actually works in fashion,” said Siriano. “I thought that that was very important for this younger generation, which is why I said yes. I think it’s really interesting to have a young designer like myself mentor other young designers because I’m really in [the fashion industry]. It helps the designers a lot.”
With various challenges, the competition opens the doorway for emerging designers to collaborate with brand such as Macy’s, Banana Republic, and Eli Lilly. “The show has evolved, and so has the brand integrations on the series,” said Rucker. “In the very beginning, when we were doing [integrations], there wasn’t an audience. We didn’t know what the audience was and we didn’t know if brands were going to see this as an actual show.
“A lot of the things that we really showed is that you can bring in a brand voice and find a creative outlet into creating a challenge around it, but the sweet spot is if we can find it where it feels authentic to the brand [and] also authentic to the fashion world.”