Join 100+ insight professionals for the only UK conference dedicated to helping you put customers at the heart of business decisions. Register today.
Ready to turbocharge your insight team and take the lead in building a customer-centric culture? This exclusive, annual conference explores the ways client-side research teams can utilise marketing fundamentals to deliver long-term value, create a culture of customer-centric decision making and solve some of the most pressing challenges in modern business.
Join FlexMR, a roster of experts in marketing and culture building, plus experienced clientside presenters to learn the secrets of Customer Salience and how it represents a new frontier of strategic relevance.
Here's what delegates had to say about the 2024 Customer Salience Summit, which was rated an average 9.7 out of 10 by attendees:
"The day was really inspiring. I've come away with lots of new ideas" - Rose Hadden, Head of Customer & Market Insight at City & Guilds
"A fantastically organised event with great speakers and content offering food for thought plus many actionable tips" - Anna Apostolopoulos, Global Director of Insights at Pearson
"Really relevant, engaging and honest speakers. Plus the summit was great for networking too" - Andy Smith, Customer Insight Manager at NFU Mutual
Stay tuned as we continue to update the agenda with an exciting lineup of expert speakers and panellists.
Two Ways to Join
To get the full Customer Salience experience, join us on October 7th 2025 at RSA House in central London. For £150 +VAT, you'll receive in-person access to the full event programme, a catered lunch and networking drinks. Register to join the full, in-person experience here.
Online tickets provide access to a livestream of the Summit on October 7th, including all presentations, keynotes and panels. In addition, you'll be able to re-watch all sessions on-demand from a week after the event. Register for the online event here.
The Summit Agenda
From 9am to 4pm, we'll be hosting an exciting and diverse range of sessions - including keynotes, client-side panels and interactive workshops. We'll dissect the challenges facing the market research and insight industry today, the intersection of data, customer experience and driving marketing success - plus much more. Here's a taster of what to expect:
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Presentation - The Business Case for Salience: Why Insight Isn't Enough
Discover how to supercharge research and insight by creating a culture of customer centricity that informs decisions and closes delivery gaps. -
Presentation - Going Against the Grain: What Brands Get Wrong About Customers
Dive into the academic foundations that marketing is based on, and join Dr Alan Gilchrist from Lancaster University Management School in challenging common misconceptions about customers along the way.
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Workshop - Fuelling Customer-Centric Thinking with the Innovation Trifecta
Explore what drives customer-centric innovation and the programmes that have driven continued success at Nestlé with The Innovation Kitchen in this online exclusive session.
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Panel - Mistakes that Mattered: Customer Insight Lessons Learnt the Hard Way
We learn from failure, but rarely talk about it. This grounbreaking and thought provoking panel aims to change that with brave clientside panellists sharing the mistakes and challenges that helped them find future success.
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Workshop - From Boardroom to Living Room: Connecting Stakeholders & Customers
Fan favourite Charlotte Vicary returns to the Customer Salience Summit to host an interactive workshop on empathetically connecting stakeholders to customers. -
Panel - Argumental: A Recipe for Insight-Driven Collaborations
Things are going to get heated as two teams of clientside practictioners go head-to-head in this fierce debate about the factors that lead to successful, customer-centric collaborations.
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Presentation - Tuning In: The BBC Blueprint for Audience Insight
How does a national media brand with a mandate to represent and appeal to all stay true to its mission? Discover the secrets to mass marketing brand success with BBC Director of Brand, Jane Callingham.
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Plenary - Activating Customer Salience: What Will You Do Next?
In this closing plenary, we'll reflect on learnings from a packed agenda and you the all important question - what will you do now?
If you'd like to know more about Customer Salience before joining the Summit, check out the complete guide and toolkit - available here. Inside, you'll find tools for assessing your organisation's current capacities, an introduction to the 4C Framework and practical templates to kickstart your journey. You can also watch the full, on-demand recording from the 2024 Customer Salience Summit here.
Introducing Our Speakers
Georgina White - Chief Customer Officer at Holland & Barrett
White's focus as CCO is empowering teams to create brilliant outcomes for customers that drive commercial results. She is an experienced customer leader, having established teams and improving business performance for brands such as BT/EE, British Gas, Hive, Capital One & Merrill Lynch. She has held roles In the UK and globally covering Insight, Data and Commercial within both B2C and B2B environments, plus sits on the Board of the Market Research Society
Jane Callingham - Director, Brand at BBC
Callingham is responsible for developing and implementing the BBC portfolio brand strategy, shaping the organisation's annual marketing plan, plus all pan-BBC marketing activity. Prior to joining the BBC, Callingham spent 10 years in advertising agencies and as a brand consultant planning campaigns for brands including the Evening Standard, TfL and Waitrose. Her career highlights include helping to secure the future of the BBC Royal Charter, and getting in the lift with Louis Theroux.
James Sallows - Global Marketing Effectiveness Director at The LEGO Group
With over 20 years of experience in media and market research, Sallows has a track record of growing and transforming teams by innovating with data, technology and talent development. His career has spanned senior positions at Kantar, Ipsos, Schlesinger Group, IPG Mediabrands and leading consumer health company Haleon.
Dr Alan Gilchrist - Associate Professor at Lancaster University Management School
Using ethnographic approaches, Dr Gilchrist helps both research and practitioner communities alike comprehend and understand complex organisational strategising. His research on leadership, managerial sense-making and researcher motivation has been published in leading journals such as the British Journal of Management, Industrial Marketing Management and European Journal of Management.
Charlotte Vicary - Founding Director at The Customer Closeness Company
Vicary is a co-founder of The Customer Closeness Company, AURA’s double-winning Best Small Agency of the Year. Her professional mission is to help businesses grow by improving customer lives. Closing the gap between people in business and their customers is central to this, and she works with clients like BT, Twinings and NatWest to do just that. In 2022, her collaboration with BT Insight won AURA’s coveted Insight Impact award.
Gerardo Mazzeo - CEO of The Innovation Kitchen
With over 30 years of marketing experience, Mazzeo has worked extensively with Kraft and in senior leadership positions in Nestle. As a core member of the Global Marketing Team, and in the role of Global Innovation Director, he supported capability building ia “Brand Building the Nestle Way” (BBNW). Mazzeo's consultancy, The Innovation Kitchen, is a trusted partner of PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Weetabix and a variety of food tech startups.
Danny Russell - Non-Executive Advisor at FlexMR
An insight industry veteran, Russell is the former Marketing Strategy Director at Sky, who has held senior positions at Boots, Kraft Foods, British Airways, PaddyPower and O2 Telefonica. Since founding a consultancy in 2015, he has worked with a range of consumer businesses, including 21st Century Fox, The Economist, Ladbrokes, Metro Bank, Vodafone and Zwift.
Paul Hudson - Founder & CEO at FlexMR
Hudson is an experienced insight leader, working at the intersection of technology and service to drive customer insight into every decision. He has worked with global brands to build effective and impactful research programs that take advantage of cutting edge technology and the latest in strategic thinking.
About FlexMR
FlexMR is the Insights Empowerment Company. As markets grow and consumers evolve, brands must fight to stay at the forefront of industry. To succeed in this competitive landscape, research teams need an insights partner they can rely on. A partner dedicated to their success. That’s what we do. We thrive on making insight more relevant, more accessible and more impactful - whilst overcoming the challenges that modern research, product and marketing teams face.
