A skincare brand’s mock funeral, a talking house and some spectacularly bad cricket commentary. Brand Summit 2026, run by the Marketing Association, had plenty to say about how brands earn a place in people’s lives.
I wasn’t expecting to get teary at a marketing conference.
Barely into Brand Summit 2026, and my eyes were welling up. Not quite how I’d imagined the morning going.
The culprit was former Dove executive Firdaous El Honsali, livestreaming from London with a look back at 20 years of the brand’s Campaign for Real Beauty.
Dove’s Real Beauty platform began in 2004, after research found just 2% of women considered themselves beautiful. Rather than simply selling soap, the brand challenged the beauty standards perpetuated by its own industry.
The business results weren’t bad either. Dove’s turnover tripled between 2004 and 2024.
There were the faces of frontline healthcare workers, marked by hours wearing protective masks during Covid, in Dove’s Courage Is Beautiful campaign. Then came the disturbing examples of AI beauty filters turning women and girls into impossibly perfect versions of themselves. Dove fought back with #TurnYourBack, enlisting influencers to literally turn their backs on the camera. Within 72 hours, the brand had turned a social media craze into a campaign against unrealistic beauty standards.
El Honsali admitted she still gets emotional revisiting the campaigns. Apparently, so do I.
More than a pretty picture
Now chief marketing and growth officer at beauty-tech startup Noli, El Honsali had some less sentimental observations for the marketers gathered at the Grand Millennium hotel in Tāmaki Makaurau.
AI is making content cheaper and easier to produce, but it’s also making brands look and sound increasingly alike. Meanwhile, consumers are growing more suspicious of what they’re seeing.
Her argument was that trust, consistency and a clear sense of purpose matter more than ever.
Up next, Ikea head of marketing ANZ Erin Falconer explored how a global brand can become part of local life, while Quantum Jump CEO Ben Goodale shared findings from the 2026 Loyalty State of the Nation research.
Finding your people
Two Dudes founder Tomas Tappin had a slightly different approach to winning hearts.
Six years ago, he and his co-founder started selling men’s skincare products from a Mount Eden garage. Today, Two Dudes is stocked in stores across New Zealand and Australia.
With little advertising budget, the pair concentrated on building a community, starting with the idea of finding 1,000 true fans.
Humour and the occasional ridiculous stunt did much of the heavy lifting.
When Two Dudes announced its own death ahead of a packaging refresh, loyal customers took time off work to attend a mock funeral in Cornwall Park.
Not many moisturisers get that sort of send-off.
There was also a 30km camel ride to deliver an order to an Australian supermarket and a skydiving stunt to celebrate a Chemist Warehouse milestone.
But behind the silliness is a serious ambition to improve men’s physical and mental health. Last year, the brand rallied its followers to raise almost $150,000 for Movember.
Tappin’s point was that people weren’t simply buying skincare. They wanted to be part of something.
Still behaving like schoolboys
The Alternative Commentary Collective has made a business out of taking the mickey out of sports commentary. What began as cricket banter broadcast from a caravan has grown into a thriving sports entertainment brand.
Jeremy Wells and Mike Lane brought some of that irreverence to Brand Summit in their fireside chat with NZ Herald journalist Shayne Currie. Wells recalled how, after being expelled from his previous school, he ended up on a cricket team with Lane. Judging by their performance on stage, neither has matured significantly since.
There was also the story of hiring a helicopter for a 30-second flight into a Wellington cricket ground, largely to wind up veteran commentator Bryan Waddle. As you do.
Wells explained how he adjusts his internal censor between Seven Sharp, Radio Hauraki and the considerably less restrained ACC. His new hairstyle, meanwhile, has apparently attracted around 200 complimentary emails.
Beneath the laughs was a point about knowing your audience. The ACC isn’t about to clean up its act to please advertisers.
As Lane puts it: “If you’re not talking their language, who are you talking to?”
Twister, anyone?
There was plenty happening away from the stage, too.
Out in the lobby, our StopPress/NZ Marketing magazine team were handing out magazines and recording a vox pop. Next door, delegates were contorting themselves in their socks over a game of Twister at creative agency Boxer’s stand. All Eyes by Pead provided the coffee as well as a game of darts.
Lunch brought a range of goodies, including some excellent lamb koftas and Reuben sandwiches.
The afternoon included an international keynote with Lessi Richio exploring how Lululemon and the Australian Open turned sporting moments into movements.
TRA’s Laura Mulcahy and Rebecca Yildiz also examined the rise of solo living, challenging some familiar assumptions about what belonging looks like.
Love at first sight
Anew founder and CEO Jayden Klinac and Kelvin Soh, founder and creative director of DayMonthYear, offered another take on what makes people connect with a brand.
Klinac’s frustration with single-use plastic bottles eventually led to Anew, a distinctive blue, reusable, plant-based water bottle.
Soh has helped Klinac build the brand around the idea that sustainability doesn’t need to involve guilt, sacrifice or depressing statistics.
Reflecting on 25 years in the industry, Soh says one of his biggest lessons was the importance of belonging.
“I’ve been talking about belonging for a long time and this is the first time I have been to a conference where it is said so many times.”.
For Soh, it’s about getting the brand’s DNA and building blocks right, giving people the opportunity to “fall in love with the brand”.
He recalled a security guard stopping someone carrying an Anew bottle to ask if he could photograph it. He hadn’t heard of the brand, he just wanted one.
“The marketing starts before the marketing starts,” Soh says.
A useful thought for anyone spending a fortune trying to make their products stand out.
Home truths
The final keynote came from Australian insurer Suncorp and creative agency Leo, sharing the story behind their Cannes Lions Titanium Grand Prix-winning project, Haven.
With climate change threatening to make 10% of Australian homes uninsurable by 2035, Suncorp decided to rethink what an insurance company should actually do.
Rather than simply helping people recover from disasters, why not help them prepare?
Haven is a free digital platform that draws on 12 datasets to assess the risks facing individual homes. Enter your address and your house comes to life, warning you about potential floods, bushfires and storms and suggesting practical ways to protect it.
The idea was that people might ignore advice from insurers, but perhaps they’d listen to their own homes.
Suncorp also did something unusual. It opened up proprietary risk data and made Haven available to all Australian homeowners, including customers of competing insurers.
Within three months, 330,000 people had visited the platform, with 79% saying they intended to make their homes more resilient.
But as Leo’s Andy Fergusson and Suncorp’s Mim Haysom explained, the bigger ambition was about protecting more than property. It was about helping people stay in the homes and communities they love.
The word belonging certainly got a workout at Brand Summit 2026.
But the best examples showed that it’s not enough to tell people they belong. You have to give them a reason to feel it.
Then TVNZ opened the free bar for cocktails. That probably helped too.
The post Belonging is a funny business: Brand Summit 2026 wrap appeared first on stoppress.co.nz.
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