Anna Cairns and Kerry Collinge are the co-founders of Illuminari, the marketing collective they launched in 2026 alongside Rory Sutherland, Les Binet, Karen Nelson-Field, Orlando Wood, Richard Shotton, Margaret Heffernan, Tom Goodwin and Adam Morgan.
Anna spent 22 years agency-side. She ran Nudgestock, the behavioural science festival, for a decade, and spent eight years building Rory Sutherland's fame and stage presence around the world. Kerry spent 25 years in marketing at Carlsberg, AB InBev and Mondelez, then ran marketing at System1 and took Uncensored CMO to Marketing Week's B2B Brand of the Year as its Managing Director.
Between them they have sat in most of the rooms where marketing decides what it thinks. Their view is that the industry has hidden behind measurement. Everyone uses the same dashboards and the same frameworks, so everyone gets the same answers, and nobody is accountable for whether any of it worked.
Along the way: why Anna's daughter believes Elvis is still alive, the Joe Rogan cat litter story and who gets paid when misinformation spreads, why you can line up ten beers blind and nobody can tell the difference, why a CEO will believe a stranger with a slide deck over the team he already employs, and why marketing still gets treated as the colouring in department.
Chapters
00:00:00 Welcome to the Show: Meet Kerry and Anna, The Founders of Illuminari
00:01:41 The Data and Fear Problem: Why Marketing Lost Its Humanity
00:09:21 The Cannes Dinner Party: How Illuminari Was Born
00:14:52 The TikTok Generation: Misinformation and the Need for Real Conversations
00:23:50 The Three Martini Lunch: Bringing Back Joy and Connection
00:39:11 The Organ Transplant: Moving from B2C to B2B Marketing
00:55:08 The Rory Effect: Why Simplification Beats Complication
00:56:50 The Wall of Shame: Why Great Work Comes from Shaking the Tree
00:59:07 The Avengers of Marketing: How to Work with Illuminari
00:59:53 The Closing Question: Are You Bringing Your Whole Self to Work?
#RorySutherland #Illuminari #UncensoredCMO #Nudgestock #System1 #Marketing #BrandBuilding #MarketingStrategy #CMO #B2BMarketing #MarketingEffectiveness #BehaviouralScience #Advertising #WeHaveAMeeting
Connect with Anna and Kerry:
Illuminari: https://www.theilluminari.com
Anna Cairns: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-cairns-70284220
Kerry Collinge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-collinge
Uncensored CMO: https://system1group.com/uncensored-cmo
Hear more from the hosts:
Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b
Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b
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