Keynotespreker
About the speaker
Věra is the Global Creative Thought Leadership Director at Kantar, blending her background in art and psychology to help brands unlock the power of creative effectiveness.
A recognised industry voice, she speaks regularly at leading events including the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, ESOMAR Global Congress and the Effie Europe Conference.
She has authored three reports on how creativity drives brand growth and is an experienced Effie judge across multiple markets.
About the session
Connected Creativity - How to build brands in the creator era
Discover how brands can create “stories that stick” in an era defined by fragmented media and creator driven culture. Drawing on Kantar’s effectiveness database, Vera shows how multi channel synergy now drives nearly half of campaign impact.
With examples from Cadbury and Desperados, the session reveals how creator content, when strategically integrated with branded channels, unlocks greater relevance, credibility, and long term brand growth.
4 questions for Věra
What do you see as the most defining challenge for marketers in 2026?
The biggest challenge for marketers in 2026 will be learning how to influence not just people, but the AI tools and agents they use. AI search and agents are shaping how we discover and even buy brands, and this means marketers need to learn how to address two audiences at once – agents and end consumers. Brands have always needed to predispose more people, but now they must also predispose the algorithms making decisions on their behalf. That means making product information, experiences and content widely findable and agent friendly. And while agents handle that, marketers will still need to win humans over with creativity, empathy and emotion.
What role does AI really play in branded content today?
Gen AI is enabling brands to create more content, faster than ever before. The tech is getting better all the time: you only have to look at examples such as Coca-Cola’s Christmas ads or Svedka’s Super Bowl ad to see what can be achieved. There is a watch out for marketers though. When we looked at all of the Gen AI ads in our ad-testing database, we found there’s no huge correlation between effectiveness and AI use. But effectiveness drops if the AI use is more obvious. This is because an AI tool doesn’t know your brand, and won’t put it at the heart of the creative, unless you tell it to. So, off the rack tools that aren’t trained on your distinctive brand assets aren’t going to cut it. Brands that train up bespoke tools, and keep human creativity in the loop, will be best set for success.
Where do you see the real innovation in branded content today?
We are undoubtedly entering a new era of creator marketing. What creators bring to the table today goes beyond their follower count. It’s their ability to build trusted, meaningful connections with audiences. For marketers, the real skill will be keeping the brand at the front and centre. Even though net 61% of marketers plan to spend more on influencer content this year, only 27% of paid creator content clearly links to a brand. The campaigns that get it right treat creators as genuine creative partners while keeping the brand firmly at the centre of the idea, not as an afterthought. One example I loved from this year’s Effies Europe Awards is by Old Spice Romania which tapped into the gaming community, partnering with well-known gamers who named their players after Old Spice scent names. This turned turning brand assets into active characters within the gaming ecosystem.
Why is the Branded Content Event 2026 relevant, and what will visitors learn in your session?
With so much changing across the industry, this is a great moment to pause, take stock, and learn from others about how they’re handling it. I’ll be talking about how brands can create “stories that stick” in a media landscape that’s more fragmented than ever. Coherent, cross‑channel ideas are now 2.5x more important to success than a decade ago, yet only a quarter of creator content strongly links back to the brand. In my session, I’ll show how brands can move beyond treating creator work in a silo and ensure it connects seamlessly with how they show up elsewhere. We’ll also dig into how to co‑create with creators, giving them the freedom that fuels their creativity while still delivering on the brand’s goals.