CEO of World Federation of Advertisers (Belgium)
Hall AAA | Thursday | 2:40 PM
As the CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), Stephan Loerke stands at the centre of the only global network built for senior marketers that gathers more than 150 of the world’s biggest brands with budgets that we can’t even dream of, over 60 national advertiser associations across five continents and a serious concentration of creation, influence and responsibility. Talk about impressive.
Loerke’s perspective is different because WFA sits on the pulse of the issues that dictate muchabout the future of advertising. This is a place where global advertisers work together, develop and defend standards around transformation, trust, brand safety, privacy, platforms, AI and more. It’s also where some of the most sensitive topics get addressed, including one that has recently stirred the industry: new global agency selection guidelines.
As advertisers push for more transparency, fairness and sustainability in agency relationships, the question is no longer if change is coming — but what it actually looks like from the client side.
That’s exactly why this session matters. Loerke brings a rare perspective: not from an agency, not from a platform, but from the very top of global advertisers. The people who ultimately define expectations, budgets and standards.
Expect insights you don’t usually hear on stage — the kind that shape how the industry will operate in the coming years. What do the world’s biggest advertisers really want? What are they changing right now? How will the budgets shift? How will they pitch an agency? And what should everyone be paying attention to before it’s too late?
Stephan Loerke: Inside the Minds of Global Advertisers
You can tell a lot about the state of our industry by looking at how brands choose agencies. The criteria might sound rational, the decks look super polished, the intentions are usually good, yet the process still manages to expose all sorts of anxieties around trust, control, money, speed and who is actually meant to lead.
To open the festival, the CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers Stephan Loerke joins us for a fireside chat about where the communications industry is heading through the eyes of the world’s biggest marketers. We’ll get into the new WFA’s and VoxComm’s Agency Selection Guiding Principles, what advertisers now expect from agency partners, which tensions are shaping brand decisions behind closed doors and why partnership quality is becoming a serious business issue again. This is also a rare chance to get a cleaner read on the fears, pressures and ambitions currently driving global advertiser thinking. Which is usually far more interesting than whatever they say in polished case studies.
