Mira De Maeyer - President UBA
Bart De Pauw - Moderator UBA Media Date

Deborah Gurofsky’s keynote, “Hooked, Then Ghosted: The Era of the One-Night-Stand Brand”, will highlight the importance of building brands through advertising that is embedded in meaningful storytelling: content that resonates deeply, rather than fleeting messages that disappear with a single scroll. She argues that effective brand-building is not about short-term impact, but about cultivating long-term relationships with audiences.

During her presentation, Deborah will explain how audiences are seeking genuine connection, and why the most memorable brands are those that consistently appear within the stories people genuinely care about. She will show how television and connected TV provide a unique environment for fostering these lasting relationships and delivering sustained brand impact.

With a visually rich and high-energy approach, Deborah will not only share insights but also encourage reflection and spark meaningful conversations among attendees, reinforcing the enduring power of TV as a cornerstone of effective brand-building.

Les Binet’s keynote, “Go Big or Go Home: How small thinking is making marketing less effective”, will challenge some of the most common assumptions in modern marketing. Drawing on new research from the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising, he argues that many companies are undermining their own success by focusing on the wrong priorities.

During his presentation, Les will highlight how marketers often overlook the single most important decision affecting effectiveness, while over-relying on the wrong metrics that ultimately erode shareholder value. At the same time, businesses are losing money by ignoring their most valuable customers, missing large-scale media opportunities, and investing in inefficient creative work that fails to deliver a return.

Les will unpack what has gone wrong in today’s marketing practices and, more importantly, how to fix it. His core message is clear: growth requires bold thinking. By embracing scale, smarter measurement, and more effective creativity, brands can unlock disproportionate impact and drive significant profitability.