MAD STARS 2026 Reveals Its Speaker Lineup — Busan, August 26–28

MAD STARS 2026, the Busan International Marketing & Advertising Festival, runs August 26–28 in Busan. Now in its 19th year, the festival's industry conference will feature roughly 40 sessions.

Two Keynotes, Two Different Questions

Both keynotes come from this year's MAD STARS International Honorary Award recipients.

• Raja Rajamannar (Mastercard) — "Quantum Marketing." Drawing on 12 years leading marketing at Mastercard, he addresses how technology, data, and cultural shifts are redefining what marketing is.
• Tara McKenty (Chief Creative Officer, AKQA) — "Creative Intelligence," focused on what creative organizations should preserve and what they should change in an AI-shaped environment.

The pairing is deliberate. One session addresses the structure and definition of marketing; the other addresses creative judgment. Those are the two open questions the industry is holding simultaneously.

Jury President Panel and Core Themes

A jury president discussion brings together leaders from Google, TikTok, and Mastercard — a direct read on how award judging criteria are shifting.

Conference themes include:

• AI ethics
• Trust in generative content — as production gets cheaper, what makes anything credible
• Fandom-based brand strategy
• Urban wellness

The Thread Connecting Them

Individually the topics look scattered; together they circle one question: when the cost of producing content collapses, what remains as differentiation? AI ethics and generative content trust answer it on the production side; fandom strategy answers it on the relationship side. As tools level out, point of view and relationships are what stay scarce.

What Practitioners Should Target

• The jury president panel may be more useful than the winners' reel. Shifts in judging criteria show up in next year's creative briefs.
• The fandom strategy session maps directly onto brands deciding whether a community is an ad channel or a relationship asset.
• Forty sessions across three days demands triage. Arrive with two or three unresolved organizational questions already written down.

For a case study in shifting creative direction, see Rhone's CMO Shifts From Performance to Brand.