2026 AGENDA

To be announced soon!

Stop defending your budget and start proving your power by using data-driven frameworks to show how brand reputation protects stock price and drives sales. Master the modern tools needed to tie brand positioning directly to the bottom line, ensuring you get the budget and respect your strategy deserves.

• Tie Positioning to Profit: Use modern frameworks to connect brand impact directly to the bottom line

• Protect Financial Value: Prove how your brand’s reputation secures the stock price and fuels sales

• Secure Executive Respect: Use data-driven evidence to shift Comms from a cost center to a value driver

Boring is the fastest way to become invisible, especially when engaging Millennial and Gen Z audiences who crave warmth and candor over corporate perfection. 

Nicholas Carter, Director of Corporate Communications for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, shares the honest truth about their pivot toward a more transparent, human approach. We’ll get into how to persuade a cautious C-Suite to be brave, without alienating the older, established customers who’ve been with you for years. Stop playing it by the book and take the "unfiltered" risks needed to actually connect with audiences in 2026!

Moderator: InComms editor

Stop fighting yesterday’s battles and learn how to identify the emerging crises forming in the blind spots of traditional risk management. This session provides the tools to pivot from reactive responses to proactive strategies, keeping your C-suite ahead of the unknown.

• Spot Hidden Threats: Identify the early signs of disaster and emerging risks before they explode.

• Master Proactive Management: Shift from reactive firefighting to plotting scenarios for the unexpected.

• Lead the C-Suite: Gain the insights needed to keep leadership one step ahead of potential crises.

In this candid case study, we pull back the curtain on a high-stakes crisis that could have wiped millions off the company’s valuation, but never made the headlines. Walk through the specific mechanics of how they killed the story and, more importantly, how they translated that "non-event" into a report for the Board.

Conducted under Chatham House Rules to ensure a truly candid environment, this session shares the framework used to quantify averted reputation damage and turn invisible wins into a measurable business case for the C-suite.

Forget passive listening- these are hands-on working groups. At every table, you'll tackle real PR challenges, from measurement to project briefs, guided by an expert moderator. Come ready to collaborate, test new ideas, and build practical solutions. You'll leave with fresh, actionable tactics to implement with your team immediately.

1. Substack? Reddit? The Next Platform Strategy

Stop pitching the news and start producing it by scaling an owned media ecosystem across high-production social channels. Command a loyal audience without relying on the shrinking press release. From the Guardian’s move into niche SubStack verticals to the untapped proactive potential of Reddit, we’ll map the next frontier of platform strategy to ensure your brand narrative remains undisputed and unmediated.

2. Stop the Burnout in an Always-On PR Workforce

As the PR industry shifts toward "doing more with less," systemic burnout has become a critical risk to talent retention and company stability. Move beyond surface-level wellness to explore how leading teams are redesigning the workday, ensuring your people stay high-performing and sustainable amidst an "always-on" news cycle. Learn how to protect your own by reclaiming the balance between high-impact results and long-term professional health.

Moderator: Harriet Otoo, Senior Director, Communications, Paramount

3. Employees as Influencers?

As the line between professional expertise and personal presence blurs, your employees have become your most powerful, yet unpredictable, brand ambassadors. Explore how to empower internal advocacy while navigating the complexities of ‘compensation’ models. We’ll tackle the critical friction points: how to select your advocates, and how to protect your brand when a high-profile employee influencer walks out the door.

Moderator: Maria Shum, Head of Corporate Communications, Brown Shipley

4. Mapping the New Agency Landscape

As corporate spending becomes more targeted, the industry is shifting away from broad, one-size-fits-all contracts. This session explores how in-house teams are assembling agile, multi-partner rosters to drive enterprise value without the constraints of traditional retainer models. We will examine the evolving "ideal setup" for internal teams and discuss how agencies can adapt their service models to remain indispensable, long-term strategic partners.

Moderator: Ian Mackie, Director, Corporate Communications - APJ, EMEA & LATAM, Cohesity

5. Balance Authenticity in a New Era of Sustainability Disclosure

Sustainability has shifted from a marketing "nice-to-have" to a legal mandate, leaving comms teams trapped between greenwashing litigation and the paralysis of greenhushing. As some organisations scale back their ESG commitments, the question of internal ownership has never been more contentious. This session goes "under the hood" with leaders navigating CSRD and ISSB frameworks to determine where ESG truly sits within the corporate hierarchy.

While global giants often default to silence, agile players are capturing the spotlight by daring to take a stand. We’re moving beyond theory to help you navigate global tensions and master the high-stakes balance between strategic neutrality and authentic advocacy.

• Protect your brand reputation by identifying exactly when silence is a shield and when it becomes a liability.

• Maintain creative momentum with practical frameworks that keep your campaigns moving, even amidst geopolitical friction.

• Know when your brand has legitimacy to speak by identifying the specific criteria that turn social commentary into a powerful, respected asset.

While comms teams turn to "social-first" strategies, research reveals that AI models maintain a massive bias toward "legacy" authority, with up to 80% of citations originating from high-trust sources like the Financial Times. This session explores how to balance premium earned media with technical web optimisations to ensure your verified brand dominates AI search results.

• Future-proof your visibility by mastering the shift from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

• Reclaim your brand narrative by leveraging high-authority media to anchor how AI models perceive and summarise your reputation.

• Optimise your digital footprint with specific website adjustments that ensure AI engines prioritise your official content.

Establishing Credibility and Trust in an AI‑Saturated Environment

In a world where high‑quality content can be generated in seconds, “more” is no longer a viable strategy for corporate communications. As AI accelerates volume and blurs authorship, audiences are becoming more discerning – and more sceptical.

This session explores how organisations move beyond output to establish credibility through narrative discipline, governance and transparency – including the growing role of video and authentic executive voices in bringing strategy to life. We’ll examine how showing real people, real judgment and real accountability helps close the say‑do gap, differentiates an organisation’s voice, and turns authenticity into a durable competitive advantage.