Ana Andjelic

One of Forbes' Most Influential CMOs & Author of The Business of Aspiration

Ana Andjelic

One of Forbes' Most Influential CMOs & Author of The Business of Aspiration

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Biography

Ana Andjelic is a brand executive, author of The Business of Aspiration, and among Forbes' The World's Most Influential CMOs. She specializes in brand-driven modern businesses. Ana earned her doctorate in Sociology and worked at the world's top brands and advertising agencies. She runs a weekly newsletter, The Sociology of Business, and is a widely read columnist, speaker and advisor.

In the course of her career, Ana Andjelic modernized, innovated, and breathed new life into legacy brands. She amplifies brands creative and strategic capabilities, resources, and processes as a basis of their successful global positioning, brand and business strategy, creative output, and execution and growth modeling.

Most recently, Ana worked as the Chief Brand Officer at Banana Republic, where she led the widely-lauded brand turnaround. Prior to Banana Republic, Ana held positions as the Chief Marketing Officer at Mansur Gavriel, interim CMO at David Yurman, and the Chief Brand Officer at Rebecca Minkoff, where she launched the Female Founder Collective.

Earlier in her career, Ana introduced the luxury practice in the global Havas network, and held senior positions at Spring Studios and Droga5. She worked with brands such as LVMH, Sergio Rossi, Belvedere, Moet Hennesy, Sotheby’s, PUMA, H&M, Topshop and Topman, PUMA, Canali and MCM, among others.

In 2020, Ana was selected by Forbes as one of The World’s Most Influential CMOs, and in 2018, she was listed among Forbes’ top 50 CMOs who serve as models of a new, emerging and disruptive chief marketer. She was also named as one of the Luxury Women to Watch by Luxury Daily and was listed among the top 10 digital strategists globally by The Guardian.

Ana often serves on the juries for creative awards in the advertising and luxury industries. She has given talks globally and contributed to publications including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, The Guardian, Advertising Age, Adweek, Form Design Magazine, Frame Magazine, Luxury Daily, Lean Luxe, Glossy, and Campaign. She a frequent expert resource for Business of Fashion, Financial Times, British Vogue, FT’s “How to Spend It,” and Vogue Business, and is an expert source for trend forecasting companies like The Future Laboratory, Red Scout, and WSGN.

Ana is advisor to The Dematerialised, the experiential marketplace for Fashion NFTs. She holds Ph.D. in Sociology and M.A. in Media Studies.

Speaker Videos

Surviving the Attack of the Algorithm | FashionTech Berlin

How to Make Content Stand Out in the Streaming Age | Cannes Lions

Truth Be Told | Digitas Newfront 2019

Mastered Promo

Why Store of the Future Doesn’t Want To Sell You Anything

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Speech Topics

Brands & Crypto: Opportunities Beyond Avatars

Brands are experimenting with NFTs, video games skins, and digital collectibles at an accelerated rate. But they are just scratching the surface of the new crypto economy where consumers are investors and users are members. Beyond digital avatars and marketing gimmicks, there is an entire decentralized market and culture to be unlocked and developed. This presentation shares five scenarios for brands to succeed in the crypto world.

Metaverse & the Future of Storytelling

As consumers and brands are building their presence in the virtual worlds, there are new opportunities to tell stories. Each metaverse is its own little world, with its own currency, community, culture and fairytales. This presentation explores the potential of brand storytelling in metaverse, as well as how tokens, blockchain and NFTs evolve to become key narrative anchors, and what is next for metaverses once they become interoperable.

The Future of Creator Economy

NFTs opened up a world of creativity that removed all the intermediaries, like dealers, auction houses, and brands. Creators own their creativity, they invest in the creativity of others, and can pool resources together. Secondary marketplaces only boost a creator’s standing as their works become collectibles that can be bought, traded, bartered, and resold. This presentation explores auctions, trading, fractional ownership and community investments as the new economic formats that emerged in the crypto world, but are spreading into the way we run our business.

The Evolution of Ownership Economy

New ownership economy, powered by cryptocurrency, creates new business models. Most notably, they emphasize community and decentralized, collaborative and demand-driven investments. Fractionalized ownership and community-based economy turns consumers into brand and business investors. Tokens and NFTs simultaneously create economic, social and cultural value, creating a new class of owners and a new social class of investors and collectors. This presentation covers the building blocks of the nascent ownership economy and offers strategies for brands to successfully participate in it.

Outsider Innovation

Those excluded from the game usually understand better what the game's about than the insiders. They are proving that stuff that happens outside the established industry structures is the stuff that matters: value innovation, new narratives, new presentation formats, and new business models. They don’t play by the rules of the game they’re disrupting. This talk explores disruptors and the new value curve they are creating.

Testimonials

“I have had the pleasure to be working with Ana through collaboration around a transparency Hack that was arranged by H&M GROUP in LA. Ana brought very interesting new insight around the topic of transparency with focus on consumers. She is very engaging, knowledgeable and inspirational in her speaks. She is very professional in her approach and she has ability to charm the audience with her wits and charms. I highly recommend her as a public speaker.”

- Sustainability Strategist at H&M Group Business Development and Innovation

“I am hosting conferences for more than 10 years and rarely bring speakers twice on stage at the same conference. Ana is one of these rare exceptions. She can speak about almost everything in the area of fashion, retail and digitalisation. Her speeches are fun and always filled with best cases, which makes it easy to listen and to get inspired. Having worked for well known global brands and her sociology background provides the in-depth credibility of how to innovate in times of digitalisation. Our audience and media always loved her speeches, which is most important.”

- Chief Business Development Officer at FASHIONTECH Berlin, Premium Exhibitions Gmbh

“Ana provides a refreshingly unique, smart and compelling perspective on modern day brand transformation - bridging a discourse across cultural, digital, business and media strategies.”

- Managing Director, Innovation and Strategy at Accenture Interactive

“The world needs more people like Ana. Strong minded, empathetic, vigorous thinkers. Comfortable with ambiguity, happy to study data, but more likely to find enlightenment by joining up the dots in the real word. Both a thinker and doer, strategist and creative, big picture and detail, Ana is a tremendous progressive force in a wide variety of projects and roles.”

- Head of Futures and Insight at Publicis Groupe and author of Digital Darwinism