Strategic Circles
Heads of Brand Circle.
For leaders stewarding brand equity, positioning, and long-term brand architecture across different categories and market contexts. Where brand strategy meets commercial pressure.
Brand leadership sits at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and commercial accountability. The challenge isn't just building a brand — it's protecting long-term equity while delivering short-term results in organisations that increasingly prioritise the measurable over the meaningful.
The brand leader's isolation
You're surrounded by people who want to optimise, measure, and performance-market their way to growth. Your job is to hold the line on what makes the brand worth choosing in the first place. That tension is universal across industries — and remarkably few forums exist where brand leaders can discuss it honestly with peers who understand both sides.
What gets discussed
How to defend brand investment when CFOs want measurable ROI on everything. Brand architecture decisions in multi-brand portfolios. The real impact of purpose-driven positioning — when it works and when it's performative. Managing brand consistency across markets and channels when local teams want autonomy. Building a brand team that combines strategic thinking with creative excellence.
The cross-industry advantage
Brand challenges in technology look different from those in consumer goods — but the underlying strategic patterns are remarkably similar. A Head of Brand at a SaaS company and one at a heritage FMCG brand can exchange perspectives that neither would access within their own industry.
How the Circle is curated
Every participant holds genuine brand leadership responsibility — strategic, not just executional. The mix spans industries deliberately: brand challenges in luxury, technology, consumer goods, and services each bring different lessons to the same fundamental questions.
This Circle is for leaders who:
- —Hold Director+ Brand, Brand Strategy, or Brand Marketing roles
- —Are responsible for brand equity, positioning, and architecture
- —Navigate the tension between brand investment and commercial pressure
- —Want functional peer exchange across industries
- —Value strategic brand thinking over tactical marketing discussion
Founding Exchange — Shape the Format, Set the Price
2026 gatherings are hosted on a founder basis. Boris covers accommodation. Participants contribute €700 per person — all meals, activities, and local logistics across the full weekend.
€700
per person · all-inclusive
From 2027: €2,000–2,500
Your host
Every gathering is built personally by Boris.
"I built two companies, scaled across borders, then spent years inside EMEA headquarters advising the people who run them. That's why I can build this room: I've sat on both sides of the table."
Boris builds every gathering personally, not through an algorithm, not through a team. He reviews every application, builds the room as a whole, and is present for all four days.
Boris built two companies from scratch, scaling to 35 FTE across four offices before pivoting to enterprise advisory. Through his SO DIGITAL and Otto Ziegler Consulting practice, he worked with Directors, VPs, and SVPs at EMEA headquarters: Nike across 14 markets, Uber across 46, WarnerBrosDiscovery / HBO Max across 17, Amazon Ring across 10, and global HQs like TomTom, Victorinox, and Jacobs Douwe Egberts, spanning brand, marketing, creative, e-commerce, supply chain, operations, and procurement. Parallel to this he attended dozens of cross-industry conferences both across Europe, but also across the globe from Hong Kong to Las Vegas. He saw the downsides of mass gatherings for genuine professional connection. It's this combination, founder experience and cross-industry HQ exposure, that shapes how he builds every gathering: he knows which problems are universal, which people can help solve them, and how to build a room where that exchange actually happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
Register Your Interest
Our events are invite-only. Share your details and interests, and we'll reach out when we're curating a gathering that's right for you.
Know someone who belongs here?
If a name came to mind, that instinct is usually right.
The best gatherings come together through people who know each other — not through applications. Forward this page to them, or write to Boris with a brief introduction.