Learn from Leaders Who Build Brands That Matter
From globally recognised creative pioneers to purpose-driven strategists and emerging market innovators, Brand Magic 2026 brings together voices shaping the future of brand leadership across continents.
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Khaya Dlanga is an award-winning marketing executive and bestselling author. Formerly Chief Marketing Officer at Rain, South Africa’s data-only mobile network, he previously held senior leadership roles at Coca-Cola South Africa, where he spearheaded the iconic Share a Coke campaign, an idea that went on to travel to over 90 markets worldwide.
His work has earned international recognition, including two Cannes Gold Lions, multiple Silver and Bronze Lions, a Gold Clio, a Gold One Show, and numerous other industry accolades. He is also a multiple Coca-Cola Global Marketing Excellence Award recipient.
Beyond marketing, Khaya is the author of five bestselling books. One of his titles was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Alan Paton Award and, upon publication, famously became South Africa’s most stolen book. In 2025, he took the stage at the annual global TED conference.
In an era where machines can write copy, generate images, and optimise campaigns in seconds, what is left for humans to do?
While the mediums we use to communicate continue to evolve, the power of story remains our most potent tool for driving purpose beyond profit. Stories are what make us believe in the impossible — turning brands into movements and customers into communities.
In this talk, Khaya draws on his experience building globally recognised brand campaigns and authoring five bestselling books to argue that purpose-driven brands now face a defining choice: chase the algorithm or tell stories that people genuinely feel. In an era where access to AI tools is universal, competitive advantage will not come from technology alone. It will come from brands brave enough to stay human, and to build belonging through culture, empathy, and meaningful connection.
Louise Hvenegaard Petersen is Strategic Creative Director and Founder of N96, a Copenhagen based creative consumer brand studio working at the intersection of strategy, branding, and identity. With over nine years of international experience, Louise has led brand transformation projects for both iconic corporations and ambitious challenger brands across Europe.
Before founding N96, she spent more than five years at global brand consultancy Pearlfisher and later served as Packaging Design Lead at Bold Scandinavia / NoA. Her work spans FMCG, retail, and lifestyle brands, and has been recognised with Creative Circle Awards, DBA Design Effectiveness Awards, Pentawards, and Dieline Awards.
Louise serves as a Jury Member at Creative Circle and Advisory Board Member at Skolen for Visuel Kommunikation. She believes that purposeful brands are built through strategic clarity, cultural intelligence, and bold creative decisions that translate values into tangible business impact.
In today’s marketplace, purpose is no longer a positioning statement — it is a strategic responsibility. Yet many brands struggle not only to operationalise their values, but to express them in ways people can clearly understand and meaningfully engage with.
Purpose becomes powerful when it moves beyond intention and begins to shape both the internal structure of a brand and the external experience of it. It must influence decisions, design systems, brand architecture, product choices, and communication — creating coherence between what a brand believes and how it behaves.
This session explores how brands can move from performative purpose to purposeful practice, translating belief into clear, compelling brand action. Through a strategic design lens, Louise demonstrates how purpose can drive differentiation, build trust, and sustain long-term relevance — ensuring that impact and profitability strengthen one another rather than compete.
Mohammad Akrum Hossain is Chief Creative Officer at POP5 and one of Bangladesh’s most internationally recognised creative leaders. With over 250 local and global awards to his name — including honours from Cannes Lions, Spikes Asia, Effie Awards, ADFEST, MAD STARS, and PHNX — his work has consistently placed Bangladesh on the global creative map.
Among his most celebrated campaigns are AgroBanking, Child Marriage Prevention Loan, The Unwritten Story, Tally Loan Druti, Plastic Exchange Store, and the recent Plot Farming, which earned Bangladesh its first Grand Prix at MAD STARS.
Akrum made history as the first Bangladeshi creative to serve as a speaker, jury member, and judge at Cannes Lions, and to lead a coaching session at LIA. He has also served on juries across major global platforms including ADFEST, MAD STARS, Creative Circle, PHNX, Effie Awards, and Ciclope.
Over nearly two decades, Akrum has worked with leading local and international brands including Telenor, Banglalink, Reckitt, GSK, and United Commercial Bank. Through his leadership, Bangladeshi creativity has earned unprecedented international recognition — demonstrating how powerful ideas can emerge from emerging markets and resonate globally.
This session explores how purpose-driven creativity can emerge and succeed within the structural realities of emerging markets, using Bangladesh as a living case study. Through a curated selection of globally recognised work, the audience is invited into the stories behind ideas that began in underrepresented contexts and travelled far beyond them.
Rather than focusing on scale or resources, the session reveals how deeply local challenges were reframed into meaningful, resonant solutions by embracing limitations instead of resisting them. Along the way, it reflects on how CSR can evolve from charity to problem-solving, and how creativity can become a driver of business growth even in environments where awards and experimentation are often viewed with scepticism.
By grounding global recognition in cultural truth and conviction, the session offers an honest and human perspective on how emerging markets can build powerful, purpose-driven brands without compromising local reality.
Paul Dunn is a four-time TEDx speaker, Senior Fellow at one of the world’s leading think tanks, and recipient of a Lifetime Service Award to the Accounting Profession in the UK.
He was one of the first ten employees at Hewlett-Packard in Australia before founding one of Australia’s earliest computer companies. He later established The Results Corporation, where he helped develop and grow over 23,000 small and medium-sized enterprises.
Paul has been featured in Forbes alongside Sir Richard Branson in a global piece on business disruptors and is recognised as a Social Innovation Fellow in Singapore — an honour shared with film actor and philanthropist Jet Li and former Walmart Chairman Rob Walton.
A conservative estimate suggests more than 236,000 businesses have engaged with Paul’s programmes worldwide. His bestselling books, including The Firm of the Future and Times UP! (co-authored with Ron Baker), are widely regarded as reference works for professional service firms globally.
Today, Paul continues to build on that legacy as co-founder of B1G1: Business for Good, a global movement enabling businesses to connect in meaningful ways and collectively create over 392 million giving impacts around the world.
It is becoming increasingly clear: what used to work no longer does.
We are living in a time of extraordinary potential and exponential growth — with change moving at unprecedented speed. And yet, for many founders and leaders, something feels missing. Beneath the momentum and metrics, a deeper question emerges: Is this all there is?
Paul challenges the idea that growth comes from standing out louder. Instead, he argues that enduring success comes from standing for something — and that the real shift today is not from being purpose-driven, but from becoming impact-driven.
In this fast-paced and thought-provoking session, Paul introduces the powerful ‘Game A / Game B’ paradigm and explores how the “Power of Small” can transform into the “Power of All.” The result is a compelling reframe of how businesses grow — not through noise, but through meaningful impact that engages teams, customers, and communities alike.
Most brand purpose statements sound the same and rarely translate into action or business impact. This session explores why purpose fails inside organisations and how to make it work in the real world to drive meaningful business growth. From product design to experience to culture, the session will look at how purpose becomes something customers and employees actually feel and act on.
Sylvester Chauke is one of Africa’s most dynamic creative entrepreneurs and strategic marketing leaders. A University of Johannesburg alumnus turned Professor of Practice in Strategic Communication, he combines academic insight with real-world brand leadership at the highest level.
As Founder and Chief Architect of DNA Brand Architects, a multi-award-winning consultancy known for its bold, culture-shifting work, Sylvester has become synonymous with fearless brand thinking and creative disruption across the continent.
Before founding DNA, he held senior roles at Nando’s South Africa and MTV Networks Africa, where he led groundbreaking campaigns that helped shape a new era of African storytelling. His unconventional approach and unapologetic energy earned him the CNBC All Africa Young Business Leader of the Year award, cementing his place among Africa’s most influential voices in brand innovation.
A TED speaker and author of Stand Against Bland, Sylvester is a global advocate for youth empowerment and purpose-led leadership. He serves on several influential boards, including the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Advisory Council, the University of Johannesburg Advisory Council, and the South African State Theatre.
As Professor of Practice, he continues to empower the next generation of brand architects — urging them to lead with purpose, embrace authenticity, and make creativity a force for good.
In a world marked by geopolitical tensions and rapid transformation, the foundations of business and society are shifting at unprecedented speed. Sylvester Chauke explores a defining question of our time: what does it truly mean to build brands that matter now — and endure next? Drawing on more than two decades of advising leading African and global brands, and his work as a brand architect and Professor of Practice, Sylvester challenges conventional assumptions about growth, relevance, and influence. This keynote examines the intersection of leadership, creativity, and ethics in a rapidly evolving landscape. It argues that brands must move beyond being commercial entities to become credible cultural participants — where trust, value, and responsibility are inseparable. Grounded in real-world insight and forward-looking perspective, this session invites leaders to rethink branding as a force for progress, integrity, and long-term impact.