AI can create content. It can analyze markets. It can generate ideas, optimize campaigns, personalize experiences, and increasingly act on behalf of customers.
But it cannot decide what a brand should stand for.
It cannot determine which opportunities are worth pursuing, which promises should remain non-negotiable, what customers should feel, or how a company can create meaning and value in a world where more and more work looks automated.
That is the leadership challenge now.
The brands that win in the AI era will have more than technology. They will be the brands with greater judgment, greater imagination, and a clearer understanding of the people they serve.
For 50 marketers who recognize the significance of this moment, The Blake Project, Bayhaus Creative, and Branding Strategy Insider are bringing back The Un-Conference for its seventh event.
This year’s theme: The Human Advantage In An AI World.
Taking place September 9–11, 2026, on the waterfront in San Francisco, The Un-Conference is marketing’s only problem-solving event: a small, gamified brand-leadership experience for marketers deciding how to preserve and expand the human advantage as AI transforms creativity, customer relationships and commerce.
The challenges you’ll tackle here are based on and influenced by the actual issues that you and other participants are facing.
This is not another event about AI tools, productivity hacks, or presentations about the future.
It is a hands-on learning experience for leaders who need to make better decisions now.
The Un-Conference brings together senior marketers, brand leaders, innovators, agency professionals, product leaders, customer experience leaders, and entrepreneurs to work through the strategic questions that AI has posed to every organization.
At The Un-Conference, participants experience Brandingo: The Brand Management Safari—a gamified, team-based format that turns learning into action. Teams compete, debate, test assumptions and work through real brand challenges alongside experienced peers from different industries, disciplines and perspectives.
The challenges you’ll tackle are based on and influenced by the actual issues that you and other participants are facing.
That is what makes The Un-Conference different.
It is unlike any other branding or marketing conference:
- Everyone in the room is an expert and gains from the sum of the expertise in the room.
- Our competitive learning format is fun, energized, and impactful.
- The walls are down, there are no podiums or stages, there is no hierarchy – your uniform is jeans.
- The focus is on learning outcomes, not ticket sales.
- Small is powerful, with only 50 marketers participating in hands-on learning.
- This is marketing’s ONLY issues-based, problem-solving event.
- As in your marketplace, some will win, some will lose, all will learn.
No Attendees. Only Participants.
The best pathway for learning is participation, not observation. It is in small groups, where ideas are tested, assumptions are challenged, and people learn by doing.
AI is changing how brands are created, experienced, recommended, and bought. But technology alone will not create competitive advantage.
Advantage will come from the human decisions behind the technology: what a brand protects, what it makes easier, what it refuses to automate, how it earns trust and how it remains relevant when customers increasingly encounter brands through AI-enabled systems.
The Un-Conference is designed to help 50 leaders make those decisions.
Four Challenges For Brand Leaders
Speakers and featured participants will be announced soon. The program is organized around four essential challenges for leaders building brands in an AI world.
1. Building Brand Advantage In The Agentic Marketplace
As AI agents increasingly search, compare, recommend, and buy on behalf of customers, what will make a brand visible, preferred, and worth choosing?
2. Protecting Human Relevance As Customer Relationships Become Automated
How can brands use AI to make customer experiences more useful and personal without losing trust, empathy, distinctiveness, and emotional connection?
3. Expanding Creativity Without Creating Sameness
How can organizations use AI to accelerate insight, ideation, and execution while protecting originality, taste, cultural relevance, and the creative choices that make brands memorable?
4. Leading The Brand Organization Through AI Change
What new capabilities, operating models, and leadership disciplines will marketers need to ensure that AI strengthens brand value, commercial performance, and the people responsible for both?
These questions matter across brand management, marketing, innovation, product, customer experience, growth, communications, agency leadership, and the C-suite.
The Un-Conference will challenge assumptions, surface opposing views, and provide participants with a practical way to think through the decisions that shape their organization’s competitive future.
San Francisco. September 9–11, 2026.
This year, The Un-Conference will take place at CENTRL Office’s North Waterfront location at 50 Francisco in San Francisco.
Our schedule will include:
Wednesday, September 9
Kickoff mixer /Meet your teammates
Thursday, September 10
Competitive team challenges, featured conversations, facilitated learning, and an evening team experience
Friday, September 11
Final challenges, presentations, conclusions, and next-step commitments
Who Should Participate?
We have reserved these two days (and a kickoff mixer on the evening of the 9th) for 50 senior B2C and B2B marketers who see professional growth as a mandate for success and who seek a learning experience superior to last century’s format of marketing conferences
- CMOs, vice presidents, directors, and brand leaders
- Marketing, innovation, and customer-experience professionals
- Product, growth, and commercial leaders
- Brand managers, product managers, and strategists
- Agency leaders, planners, creatives, and account professionals
- Consultants, researchers, and entrepreneurs
- Leaders responsible for growth, culture, customer relationships, and competitive advantage
- Marketers who prefer hands-on learning over passive observation
- Professionals who believe the old conference format is no longer enough
For seven events, The Un-Conference has brought together a wide range of marketing oriented leaders and professionals from around the world representing startups, emerging, regional, national and global brands. Past participants include AAA, Air France/KLM, Bayer, Bloomberg, Humana, Land O’ Lakes, Liberty Mutual, Pilot/Flying J, RJ Reynolds, TD Ameritrade, GlaxoSmithKlein, Wounded Warrior Project, Ogilvy, Kawasaki, GE and many more.
AI is changing the way brands are built. Join us in San Francisco to explore how human judgment, creativity, and connection can become stronger competitive advantages in an AI world.
The Un-Conference: The Human Advantage In An AI World
September 9–11, 2026
San Francisco, California
The Un-Conference is brought to you by The Blake Project, a brand consultancy focused on business performance; Branding Strategy Insider, a global resource helping brands become more competitive and valuable; and Bayhaus Creative, helping AI companies tell human stories through original video and brand content.
To learn more or inquire about participation, contact us.
Registration details coming soon.
