Little Grey Cells Club

Name: Marketing Alchemy
Start: 2026-06-03T18:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-06-03T21:30:00+01:00
Location: The Blue Room, Quo Vadis Restaurant

Dinner

Marketing Alchemy

Where Is The Human x AI Sweet Spot?
With Joe Goldberg (Santander),
Olivia Butter (Klarna) and
Tom Roach (Jellyfish)

June 3 @ 6:00 pm - 9:30 pm

The Blue Room, Quo Vadis Restaurant, 26-29 Dean Street, London, W1D 3LL

When is it ‘too much’ AI? And when is it not enough?

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24 marketing minds pool their experience, challenges and advice on implementing the latest tech.

Marketing Alchemy

Where Is The Human x AI Sweet Spot?
With Joe Goldberg (Santander),
Olivia Butter (Klarna) and
Tom Roach (Jellyfish)

The debate about AI and marketing has generated way more noise than effective solutions, especially as many of the loudest voices have never had to run a marketing function within a big business. On Wednesday 3 June, Little Grey Cells Club brings 24 senior marketers together for an evening engineered to promote frank discussion on all matters brand marketing and AI.

The question at the heart of the evening is where the human x AI sweet spot actually lies. How do we combine our unique human capabilities with what AI can genuinely do, in ways that make both better? Where should we draw the line? How do we run hard at the future without abandoning what we know works and losing the ‘human touch’?

Our exceptional guest speakers will frame the conversation. Joe Goldberg, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications Strategy at Santander, brings the industry expertise and perspective of a brand marketer navigating these questions inside one of the UK’s largest financial institutions, where the stakes of getting the balance wrong are very real. Olivia Butter, Head of U.S. Brand and Marketing Strategy at Klarna, brings the perspective of someone operating inside one of the most AI-ambitious marketing organisations in the world. Tom Roach, VP of Brand Strategy at Jellyfish and one of the most respected voices on marketing effectiveness in the UK, brings two decades of experience at AMV BBDO, BBH and adam&eveDDB alongside cutting-edge thinking on the application of AI for brands.

The setting is the Blue Room, Quo Vadis’s private dining room on Dean Street in Soho, with three courses by Jeremy Lee, one of the most celebrated chefs in London. As with all our dinners, there will be no selling and no deck presentations: just the frank exchange that only happens when the guests are experienced marketers, open to sharing and learning from each other.

With our spirit of openness, shared learning and support, and our sales-free environment, this exclusive dinner for senior-level brand-side marketers is capped at 24 seats. You will leave informed, inspired and with valuable new industry connections.

Location

The Blue Room, Quo Vadis Restaurant, 26-29 Dean Street, London, W1D 3LL

6:00 pm

Guest arrival + Drinks reception

HH:MM am/pm

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6:35 pm

First course served

7:00 am

Guest Speaker: Tom Roach (VP Brand Strategy, Jellyfish)

7:05 am

Main course served

7:40 pm

Guest Speaker: Joe Goldberg (Head of Brand Marketing and Communications)

7:45 pm

Dessert served

8:10 pm

Guest Speaker: Olivia Butter (Head of Global Brand Direction and Strategy)

8:15 am

Time for networking

9:30 pm

Event concludes

Guest Speakers

Joe Goldberg

Head of Brand, Marketing and Communications Strategy

Santander

Joe Goldberg’s career began not in marketing but in politics. Years as a student activist and speechwriter for a Labour minister gave him an unusually clear-eyed understanding of persuasion: that people move on belief, not evidence. It’s a conviction that has travelled with him ever since, through Mars, a long run in brand consultancy, and into Santander, where he has led brand strategy since 2017.

Now Head of Brand Marketing and Communications at one of Britain’s three largest retail banks, Goldberg oversees everything from customer strategy to tone of voice. He is one of the more intellectually restless brand leaders in financial services, and one of the more sceptical when it comes to AI’s role in driving consumer choice. He is unconvinced that people will surrender considered decisions to a bot, and equally convinced that the brands with genuine emotional weight will be the ones that survive the shift.

That tension sits at the heart of his thinking. Data has a place, but only if you know what you’re trying to find. Algorithms will surface what people already say about you. And if you haven’t built something worth believing in, no amount of technology will save you. For a dinner exploring the sweet spot between human judgement and machine capability, Goldberg is exactly the kind of voice the room needs.

Olivia Butter is Head of U.S. Brand and Marketing Strategy at Klarna, one of the most AI-forward marketing organisations on the planet. She has spent the past five years helping to define the brand’s voice in its most important market, overseeing integrated campaigns, brand strategy, and Klarna’s approach to marketing innovation as the company has embedded AI across its entire creative and content operation.

Before Klarna, Olivia honed her strategic instincts at Chobani, rising to Senior Manager of Marketing Strategy, and earlier in her career worked agency-side at Grey and BBDO. That blend of FMCG rigour, agency craft, and tech-scale ambition gives her a relatively rare vantage point: she understands both the discipline that brand-building demands and the pace at which AI is now reshaping how that work gets done.

Klarna has become something of a reference point in the industry’s AI debate, having publicly committed to using generative tools across campaign production while cutting marketing spend and scaling output simultaneously. Olivia is placed at the centre of the AI x Marketing debate.

Olivia Butter

Head of Global Brand Strategy and Direction

Klarna

Tom Roach

VP Brand Strategy

Jellyfish

Tom is a brand strategist and marketing effectiveness expert whose thought leadership and columns in Marketing Week are required reading in the marketing world.

After two decades in some of the world’s foremost creative agencies, including AMV BBDO, BBH, Leo Burnett, and adam&eveDDB, Tom joined Jellyfish in 2021. As VP of Brand Strategy here, he brings progressive thinking to client strategies for some of the world’s leading brands including Google, Uber and Unilever.

He’s the winner of multiple IPA and Cannes Lions Effectiveness Awards including for McDonald’s, Barclays and John Lewis. He is the originator of cutting edge marketing thinking on a diverse range of topics including the application of GenAI for brands.

He is in demand as a speaker at major industry events, including SXSW, Cannes and Google Think, and is a regular awards judge including being Chair of Judges at the APG Creative Strategy Awards.

"Refreshing, thought-provoking and inspiring"

"Great to meet so many impressive marketers from such a range of companies and have such stimulating conversations - there's nothing else like it"

"Fantastic event, great networking, the panel discussion and the table topics were spot on"

Our Partner

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Seniority Screening

Little Grey Cells is a ‘brain trust’. We are unashamedly elite (in the sense of ‘invite only’, for the most senior marketers in the UK) – but not elitist (in the sense of not stuffy, snobby or formal). Our attendees are exclusively of the same level of decision-making marketing responsibility as our advisory board. As a result we screen all registrations to ensure that marketers who attend our events meet this criteria. Thanks for your understanding.

Little Grey Cells Club

Little Grey Cells Club

Marketing Alchemy

When is it ‘too much’ AI? And when is it not enough?

Happening In

Marketing Alchemy