Buzzwords, Bots & a Bloody Good Keynote. Big Summit lowdown lets go!

AI, Attribution and enough acronyms to sink a ship, I’m digesting away after the Big Summit 2025 event.

If you know me, you know I love a good industry event, but only when they’re actually good. And Big Summit 2025? It was sharp, polished, and full of the kind of conversations that leave you buzzing.

From the panels to the facilitation, it had the right people in the right places, including an absolute standout keynote that deserves its own shoutout (more on that below 👇). Here’s my personal highlight reel, hopefully snackable enough to chomp through my discoveries, especially for those who couldn’t make it.

“Change or Die” keynote: No Filler, Just Fire. | Andy Lark, Liven

Honestly? One of the most engaging keynotes I’ve seen in a long time. My takeaway? AI isn’t the cherry on top, it’s the whole cake. Get ahead of it, and get onboard… because the game is changing at the fastest pace we have seen technology adoption.

His core message was clear: if you’re not designing your business with an AI-first mindset, you’re already falling behind. We’re not talking plug-and-play tools, we’re talking cultural change, new ways of thinking, and building teams that don’t fear the future.

Revenue & ROAS Talk!

The most powerful metric? Revenue uplift. If your sales are growing, it’s working. Full stop.

Zoe Devine from Laser Clinics really hit this home for me, especially as I continue immersing myself in the world of retail media.

She wasn’t speaking directly about retail media, but her message landed loud and clear in my world.

When the conversation turns to measurement, tracking, and reporting (and the metrics start piling up), her reminder was simple and powerful.

Sam Shennan from Incubeta added another powerful lens.

The savvier players are ditching traditional ROAS and leaning into Mixed Marketing Models (MMM) for a more accurate view of performance.

And they’re thinking top-down: “I’ve got X budget, what’s the smartest way to deploy it?”

Not just defaulting to familiar, bottom-funnel habits.

Personalisation: B2B Deserves a Love Language Too!

I had an epiphany! We throw the word personalisation around in B2C like it’s gospel, and it kinda is.

But the real whitespace? The B2B partner experience. Retail media can be structured and streamlined, yes, the submission forms, rate cards, and media kits matter, but the human element? That’s what turns the dial. Face-to-face consulting and collaboration still guide, co-create, and customise. Because real partnerships aren’t built from PDF libraries of endless levers alone.

(Ahhh… finally, something AI truly can’t replace.)

AI: It’s a Mindset Shift, Not Just a Tool

No one’s a true expert yet, but the brands doing it best are embracing change & experimentation, not perfection. AI was broken down into three buckets, and Kate Conroy from Google absolutely nailed the articulation delivery. Her examples and clarity made it click in my mind… (so maybe there is an expert among us after all) Naturally, off I go, deep-diving down the rabbit holes into the three below;

1. Predictive (forecasting & trend insights)

2. Generative (content creation & ideation)

3. Agentic (automating end-to-end tasks & workflows)

Which buckets are you leveraging within your business?

Now its not an industry event if you don't run into someone you've been meaning to have a catch up with. I ran into Roger Dunn, the retail media oracle himself, and had a yarn about what’s new in the space.

Plenty of ripe thoughts now swirling in my brain as we march forward with retail media in business… might be deserving of discussion on another blog soon. If you’re curious about this space, he’s a good one to follow.

Bonus Touch: Grace Choi’s Live Art

Loved this! Throughout the event, artist Grace Choi was sketching guests in her signature style. She’d snap your photo, then chip away throughout the day to gift you a playful, personalised portrait to take home.

A gentle reminder that even in an AI-saturated world, human creativity still hits different.

WRAP IT UP KAT!

Ok, so I’m a sucker for a good quote, and Andy’s presso reminded me of a goodie (because what’s a keynote without a killer quote slide to hit a home run.)

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

And what I love, is that I walked away from a tech talk eComm event, where it was all about AI, attribution, automation, MMM’s, dashboards, data, and yet what stuck with me was personalisation and human interaction trumps all.

It reminded me how much I still love that I’ve spent the bigger part of my career in Sales, face-to-face, building relationships, reading the room, feeling the rhythm of real conversations. Whether that’s been in salons, in retail, in B&M’s or now in eComm land.

Tech evolves. AI scales. Attribution shifts.

But connection still converts… and humans still move the needle.