Marketing Vanguard Stage
Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Leave the Playbook, Take the Cannoli

Category disruption, AI transformation, talent retention, tariffs, instability: Whatever your "agita du jour," we can all agree that everything is shifting all at once, and the old playbooks aren't working the way they used to. Drawing on the widely adopted methods from Applied Empathy and his forthcoming Constellation Thinking, author and advisor (and former agency founder and marketer) Michael Ventura leads a hands-on session that gives senior leaders a way to hold competing pressures as a system to manage rather than a single priority to chase, and the empathic discipline to make hard calls under scrutiny without sacrificing trust or speed. Bring your juiciest problems and an open mind.