Strategy Friend | Author of “Strategy Is Your Words” | CEO and Host of Sweatheads (New York, USA)
One of the leading marketing strategy mentors worldwide known as Mark Pollard is coming to DK. You can pick up your jaw from the floor, we’ll wait.
Depending on who you are, words like framework, tools or strategy light you up or put you to sleep. But as anyone who’s experienced Pollard knows — the delivery makes all the difference. I don’t like doing traditional keynotes, he says, I like building material around the audience.
After years of calling out lazy thinking, fake depth and strategy theatre, he preaches this to over 1.3 million listeners of his widely popular strategy podcast Sweathead, where you can hear his sexy Australian-meets-New-Yorker accent talking all things strategy. If you were living under a rock and don’t know what kind of legendary strategist is coming to DK, start there. (We bet you didn’t think you’d walk away from this text with a podcast recommendation.)
But did you know that this same guy — almost became a lawyer? Then he did the most reasonable thing imaginable: he dropped out because making websites about hip hop was way more interesting. This somehow took him into advertising — where he went on to do strategy work that left our imaginations stretched and our brains forever poked. And you already know we like the sound of that.
You know this by now: Mark Pollard doesn’t do “strategy vibes”. He does thinking that ruins bad work forever. That’s why the world’s most influential brands, including Facebook, Twitter, The Economist, Mozilla and many more you usually admire from a distance keep calling. Why Sweathead became a global training ground for strategists who actually want to be good. Why he’s written books that politely remind you there are no shortcuts. Ever. And why he’s spoken on the biggest stages and led strategy at some of the biggest agencies. So yeah, he’s definitely someone, excuse the language, who knows his sh*t.
Mark Pollard: Strategy On You
Oh, you thought this was going to be a typical strategy session? Cute. But no. Mark Pollard doesn’t do polite keynotes or neatly packaged frameworks. He builds sessions around people in real time and uses strategy the way it was always meant to be used: as a thinking tool, not a performance. At DK2026, the voice behind the Sweatheads podcast with over 1.3 million listens brings an interactive, high-energy session that turns strategy back on you. Not on brands. Not on case studies. On how you think, define problems and turn messy ideas into something that actually connects.