Sir John Hegarty will deliver the opening keynote at Festival of Marketing 2026 on 14 October at The Brewery in London, under the theme Raise the Bar.
Sir John Hegarty will open Festival of Marketing 2026 with the event’s headline keynote, Marketing Week confirmed on 3 September. The festival runs for one day on 14 October at The Brewery in London, its twelfth outing, under the theme “Raise the Bar”.
His session is pitched squarely at growth in a difficult market: reframing a category, stretching a brand, and finding new ground through product and service rather than through spend. Hegarty founded BBH London in 1982, was knighted for services to advertising in 2007, and now co-runs The Business of Creativity, part school and part strategic consultancy, aimed at business leaders rather than creative departments.
There aren’t many in marketing who you can credibly describe as a legend but Sir John Hegarty is one of them.
Russell Parsons, editor in chief of Marketing Week and Festival of Marketing
The bill around him is broad. Entrepreneur Spencer Matthews and Professor Damian Hughes of the High Performance podcast close the day, and named speakers include Charlotte Langley of Bloom & Wild, Suresh Balaji of Lloyds Banking Group and Mark Given of Sainsbury’s, across seven stages and more than 50 sessions. Canva and Santander are also on the programme, with more brands to be announced.
Hegarty’s case for creativity is not abstract, and Ad Ranking has reviewed the evidence. BBH’s 1985 Levi’s “Launderette”, which he art-directed, remains the tidiest available demonstration that a famous idea is a commercial instrument rather than a decoration, with the sales record and the IPA paperwork to prove it.
Why it matters to a marketer: keynote bookings are a reliable read on the industry’s mood. In a year when every line of budget is being asked to show its working, a festival that opens with the man who built BBH on the argument that fame is efficiency, rather than with a platform or a measurement vendor, is making a fairly pointed statement about which way the argument is currently going. Marketing Week has the announcement.
He plans, buys and reviews advertising for a living, and helps score campaigns on the site against the same five Crown Score criteria alongside other authors and contributors.
Opening the Festival of Marketing, Hegarty set out a simple triangle for judging creative work, blamed KPIs for a sea of sameness, and admitted he once had no idea if a famous Audi ad would work.
The IPA Bellwether Report finds a net 14.3 per cent of marketers raised budgets in Q3 2026, with main media at a nine-year high, though the 2027 adspend forecast was cut.
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