2023 Expert Outlook on Communications
REPORT
7 Dec 2022
2023 Expert Outlook on Communications

What will be the impact of lateral communication? Is influencer culture dead as we know it? What does brand empathy mean to people? In this part of the 2023 Expert Outlook, we speak to three experts about how the search for control and connection is shaping the Communications sector.

Francesca Sobande

Dr. Francesca Sobande is the author of The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain, Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19, and Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture. She is a senior lecturer in digital media studies, and her areas of expertise include popular and meme culture, Black media and visual culture, feminism and consumer culture, and brand responses to injustices and crises. Dr. Sobande’s research has been published in international journals, including Cultural Studies, Marketing Theory, Journal of Consumer Research, and European Journal of Marketing.

Matt Klein

Matt Klein is a cultural theorist, cyberpsychologist, and marketing strategist, analysing social shifts and the psychosocial implications of our technology. Working alongside brands, TV producers, non-profits, and government agencies, Klein is a trusted source in identifying cultural change and developing future-proofed business strategies. As an award-winning writer and frequent commenter, his observations have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Forbes, WARC, The Verge, CNBC, and Adweek.

Grace Wells

With 52 million likes and 2.4 million followers on TikTok, Grace Wells posts commercial-style videos of random objects. She has gone on to have her own Amazon page selling film equipment, a one-to-one course on product videoing, and a successful YouTube channel.

Makua Adimora

Makua Adimora is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. After completing a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, she shifted her focus to culture journalism. With a keen interest in music and culture, she has written for the likes of Vogue, Dazed, The Washington Post, and Al Jazeera, among others. In her spare time, she can be found overspending at Superdrug or writing about the new-school hip hop scene in Nigeria.