Announcing Our First 2026 BRXND NYC Speakers
Leaders in AI from Amazon, Microsoft, Rocket Money, Bark and more are coming to the Times Center on November 5.
We’re announcing the first tranche of speakers for our NYC event at The Times Center on November 5, 2026.
We’re also extending the early-bird waitlist through July 31 and opening ~20 more slots so will be offering a bunch of tickets off waitlist today.
If you’d like a ticket at the discounted early bird rate before the $999+ GA, join the waitlist here (they will be first-come, first-served).
When I originally announced BRXND in 2022, it was because I felt there was a better, more important conversation to be had in marketing about AI. At that time, it felt like all anyone wanted to discuss in the industry was the possibility of AI-generated television ads, and that felt (and still feels) like such a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle.
Fast forward to 2026, and I feel a bit of deja vu. While the industry has thankfully come to understand that the opportunity is bigger than just AI commercials, there’s another massive underestimation happening, but this time it’s around consumer adoption and what it means for brands. While most of the industry seems obsessed with getting on Reddit, my feeling is that this is the biggest shift in the way consumers consider, research, and buy products since the birth of ecommerce thirty years ago.
To that end, this year’s conference will build on our past focus of helping to highlight how the world’s best marketers are integrating AI into their organizations and work while also spending more time looking outward to consider what the future of brand building looks like in a world where preference is heavily mediated by large language models. To get things started, I’m incredibly excited to announce the initial set of speakers and sponsors. We’ll have more coming out over the coming weeks and months, but a huge thank you to those who are helping to bring this year’s event to life.
Initial speakers:
Jo Shoesmith, Chief Creative Officer, Amazon
Mark D’Arcy, Corporate VP and Global Creative Director, Microsoft AI
Mikkel Holm, Chief AI and Innovation Officer, Bark
Aaron Dignan, VP of Agentic Products, Rocket Money
Mike Houston, Head of Creative AI, Amazon
Tom Critchlow, Forward Deployed Engineer, Alephic & Founder, AI Search Leaders
Justin Inman, Founder & CEO, Emberos
While the narrative has evolved as LLMs increasingly mediate consumer preferences, the core tenets of BRXND are the same as when I put on the first show in 2022.
Doers > Speculators: We want BRXND to be about doing and learning, not talking and speculating. We are too early in this journey, and the technology is too different from what we’ve seen before to get stuck speculating about its future impact.
Curiosity > Overconfidence: We embrace the unintuitive nature of AI and its future implications. We are all learners in this new era of technology.
Conversations > Panels: Whenever possible, it’s better to have just two people on stage talking to one another rather than a whole set of speakers competing for time and attention. Go deeper with fewer people so that the audience can learn from their thinking and experience more than just their opinions.
Show > Tell: It’s always better to show people something than to tell them about it. While other conferences try to urge people away from showing specific products, we think it’s most useful for people to see what’s real and possible.
Process > Perfection: Take your audience on a journey, even if it’s something that didn’t work out. This is an audience of doers and experimenters, and understanding the journey is often more important than just seeing the outcome.
This is just the beginning. We’ll be announcing additional speakers in the coming editions of the BRXND Dispatch as we build towards an incredible day on November 5 at the Times Center
Final reminder: early-bird ticket pricing is available through the end of the week. To add your name to the waitlist, please visit our website. Thanks for all of the support, and I look forward to seeing you in November.