Bland is expensive.
In a market where every category is crowded, every message aspires to be louder, and every product promises the similar things, “good” has become invisible. Distinctiveness is no longer a brand flourish. It’s commercial survival.
On Thursday 30 April 2026, Little Grey Cells Club brings together 100 senior-level marketers for a morning designed to tackle one of the hardest questions in modern marketing: how do you build a brand that people can actually pick out, remember, and choose?
Ban The Bland: How Distinctiveness Decides Commercial Fate runs from 08:30–11:30 in Central London. Expect sharp thinking, real-world lessons, and the kind of frank conversation you only get when the room is closed, the incentives are clean, and the audience is made up of peers.
Our guest curator is Kirsten Stagg, Marketing Director at Škoda UK and one of Creative Salon’s Top 50 Creative Marketers in the UK, has spent the last few years using humour, cultural honesty and genuine creative conviction to cut through a category that rarely does any of the above. From ‘Familying’ where Škoda spoke directly to real SUV drivers to the Crufts partnership, which lifted brand consideration from 49% to 77% among stand visitors by doing something simple but super-effective: finding an audience that already loved Škoda cars and letting them bring their dogs.
Kirsten will be joined by panellists Pippa Prain (ASDA), Richard Sherwell (J.P. Morgan Asset Management), Anoushka Grover (Purplebricks), Richard De Villa (Club Med) and Hannah Bourne (Penguin Random House) bringing very different perspectives on what it takes to stand apart when your category is shaped by trust, complexity, and constant scrutiny.
The morning blends fireside conversation with roundtables, giving you space to test ideas, share challenges, and workshop live problems with people who’ve been there. No performances. No posturing. Just candid, lived experience and practical troubleshooting.
As always, this is Little Grey Cells Club: a sales-free environment, built for honest exchange. We elevate marketing through collective insight, and this session is built for marketers who want to leave with business clarity and not clichés.
