Vishen Lakhiani
Founder & CEO of Mindvalley | 3x Bestselling Author | Creator of The 6 Phase Meditation | Watkins Top 100 Most Spiritually Influential
Futurist & Innovation Expert | Former CCO at BBDO & ECD at Ogilvy | Founder, BRAINKICKS GmbH | Change & Digital Transformation
Dietmar Dahmen is one of the world's most electrifying keynote speakers on innovation, disruption, and the future of business. Former CCO at BBDO and ECD at Ogilvy, he became Chief Innovation Officer at ecx.io (IBM) before founding BRAINKICKS GmbH. His theatrical keynotes, complete with chainsaws, sharks, and walls broken live on stage, don't just inform senior audiences; they make the urgency of transformation impossible to ignore.
Want to book Dietmar Dahmen as a speaker for your event? Please provide the info below and we’ll get in touch within 24h:
Futurist speaker Dietmar Dahmen is one of the most electrifying voices on the global keynote circuit, known for turning complex ideas about innovation, disruption, and the future of business into unforgettable experiences. With more than two decades of senior leadership across the world’s most prestigious advertising agencies, Dahmen brings rare on-stage intensity and real-world credibility to every engagement. His career carried him through New York, Los Angeles, Munich, Hamburg, and Vienna, the creative capitals where he shaped strategy and craft at the highest levels of the industry.
Dahmen began as a strategic planner before rising to become Creative Director at DDB, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy, and Chief Creative Officer and Managing Director at BBDO. These were working roles, not ceremonial titles: he led large cross-functional teams, oversaw major international brand campaigns, and built deep expertise in consumer psychology, trend forecasting, and market disruption. During his time teaching at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, his students won the prestigious Young Directors Award 16 times, a record that speaks to his eye for talent.
Dahmen’s trajectory then turned decisively toward technology. He became Chief Innovation Officer at ecx.io, an IBM company, where he helped connect creative marketing with enterprise digital transformation. Sitting at the intersection of creative strategy and emerging technology gave him a holistic view of how organizations must evolve in an AI-driven, hyper-connected economy. Today he is founder and managing director of BRAINKICKS GmbH, a venture built on one idea: strategic intelligence fused with creative spark. He also advises the European Association of Communication Agencies on future marketing and disruptive technology and serves on advisory boards in Zurich and New York.
As a speaker, Dietmar Dahmen is in a category of his own. Where most presenters lean on slides, he builds theatrical experiences, breaking walls, riding sharks, and wielding chainsaws on stage to make the urgency of change viscerally real for audiences that range from the C-suite to frontline teams. His talks cover AI and the future of marketing, digital transformation, the power of cooperation, and how to dismantle the internal “pillows of comfort” that keep organizations from evolving. Senior audiences routinely call his presentations the most inspiring they have ever seen, not because he simplifies the message, but because he makes acting on it feel both necessary and possible. To book Dietmar Dahmen for your next event, contact Aurum Speakers Bureau today.
Change does not wait, and the organizations that thrive are those that learn to ride disruption rather than flee from it. In this high-energy keynote, Dahmen reframes the fear of transformation as a competitive advantage, equipping leaders and teams with the mental models and practical tools to move faster, adapt smarter, and turn instability into momentum. Using vivid storytelling, real business cases, and his signature theatrical delivery, he ensures every attendee leaves not just informed, but genuinely energized to act.
Every organization has them: the internal narratives, habits, and structural comforts that feel reasonable but quietly prevent growth. Dahmen exposes the psychology behind organizational inertia and shows how the most dangerous obstacles to transformation are the ones that feel safe. This keynote combines behavioral science with creative strategy to help leadership teams identify their own pillows of comfort, dismantle them decisively, and build a culture where urgency and innovation become the default rather than the exception.
The competitive advantage of the future is not technology, it is cooperation. In this provocative and scientifically grounded keynote, Dahmen argues that the same instinct for collaboration that made Homo sapiens the dominant species is the critical ingredient missing from most modern organizations. Drawing on anthropology, business strategy, and real-world case studies, he makes a compelling case for why breaking down silos, embracing diverse expertise, and designing for collective intelligence is the most powerful transformation any company can undertake.
Artificial intelligence is not coming for your marketing budget. It is already reshaping every touchpoint of how customers discover, evaluate, and engage with brands. Dahmen brings his rare combination of advertising mastery and technology expertise to one of the most pressing strategic questions organizations face: how to stay relevant, emotionally resonant, and commercially effective in a world of AI-generated content, hyper-personalized experiences, and rapidly shifting consumer behavior. Audiences leave with a clear framework for future-proofing their brand strategy and customer engagement.
| Basic Data Protection Information | |
|---|---|
| Data controller | AURUM SPEAKERS BUREAU S.L. |
| Address | Parc Audiovisual de Catalunya 1, Oficina S11, 08225 Terrassa, Spain |
| Purposes | We will use your data to respond to your requests and deliver our services to you. |
| Marketing | We will only send you marketing correspondence if you have given your prior consent, which you can do by ticking the box for that purpose. |
| Lawful basis | We will only process your data if you have given your prior consent, which you can do by ticking the box for that purpose. |
| Recipients | Generally, only our members of staff who have been duly authorised may access the data that you have provided. |
| Your Rights | You have the right to know what information we hold about you, to rectify it and to erase it, as explained in the additional information available on our website. |
| Additional Information | For more information, please see “PRIVACY POLICY” on our website. |