Festival of Creative Operations 2025

First Sessions Announced

We are busy developing an exciting agenda for the Festival of Creative Operations 2025 so keep your eyes peeled for details. Register for the event to be the first to hear about new sessions and speakers! 

In the meantime, check out the first few sessions confirmed:

Creative Velocity: How Skyscanner Harnesses People, Process & Tech to Scale Creative Excellence
 

In a world where creativity drives competitive edge, how do you deliver world-class creative at pace without compromising on quality - or breaking the bank? 

Join Skyscanner’s Brand Studio leads as they reveal how they’ve put creativity at the core of everything they do. 

Learn how they’ve redefined collaboration, embraced innovation, and optimised processes to create work that measurably moves the brand and business forward. 

Whether you’re seeking inspiration or practical tips, this session will give you a blueprint to empower creativity and efficiency across your organisation.

Andrew Le Masurier, Global Head of Brand & Creative, Skyscanner
Carla Sandhu, Director, Global Head of Design Operations, Skyscanner

From Production House to Agile Powerhouse Transforming Your In-House Creative Agency
 

How to transform your in-house creative agency from a traditional production house into an agile powerhouse.

Tested strategies for:

• Leveraging AI and automation to free your creatives from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on high-value ideation
• Building a flex-resource model that scales efficiently while maintaining creative excellence
• Developing cross-training programs that empower your team to thrive with emerging technologies

Practical frameworks for:

• Evaluating and implementing the right tech stack
• Creating hybrid creative training programs that blend traditional skills with AI capabilities
• Structuring flexible workflows that adapt to changing demands 

The goal:

Future-proof your internal agency while maximizing creative potential.

Brianne Gallagher, Head of Creative Operations, Wayfair

Creative Matters, Bold Futures
 

A closing conversation to connect the dots, spotlight the brilliance, and distil the insights gathered from across London, New York, LA and Sydney. Four cities, countless ideas, brought together by the very people who led the charge.

Our global chairs will surface the standout moments of 2025, the ideas that proved Creative Matters isn’t just a theme but a rallying cry for smarter, braver, more strategic operations. Expect sharp reflections, fresh provocations and the occasional spark of healthy disagreement.

They’ll share:

• What truly shifted the needle for Creative Operations this year
• The unexpected ideas that caught fire and why they mattered
• The trends and transformations already shaping 2026

All in pursuit of a clearer view of where Creative Operations goes next, and how we can all Dare to be Different.

Bring your questions, your challenges, your alternative takes. This is no polite recap; it’s a fast, thoughtful, and open exchange designed to sharpen perspectives and ignite ideas.

Because when Creative Matters meets Daring to be Different, the future gets a whole lot more interesting.

Moderator: Nicky Russell

Panel: Dan Montalbano, Mark Stocker, Thomas Stilling, Perrie Schad, Andrea Ruskin, Abby Blackmore

“I Don’t Like it!” - Subjectivity vs. Creative Operations

Does your business or brand need to scale ever-increasing amounts of content to engage its consumers?

Does it struggle to find the balance between quality, cost and time as it produces creative work?

If the answer to either or both of these questions is “Yes” then, at some stage, the business will likely run into the age-old problem: Subjectivity!

Nick Goodchild, currently Vice President of Global Transformation for Tommy Hilfiger, unpacks some of his career experiences where ‘Subjectivity’ has raised its haughty head and forced even the most robust of content production and creative operation processes onto their knees.

 Covering:

• What ‘Subjectivity’ is, with examples of how it can impact your ‘Always-On’ content
• 3 x specific approaches to help mitigate the impact of ‘Subjectivity’
• How AI can help baseline creative opinion and contain the debate

Nick Goodchild, VP of Global Transformation, Tommy Hilfiger