This episode of Marketing Vanguard comes straight from Cannes Lions 2026 as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Nathan Rosenberg, chief marketing and brand experiences officer at Virgin Voyages.
They discuss why the best and most real marketing happens when a customer is telling their friends the story of what they experienced, how Virgin Voyages turns crew culture into customer loyalty, and why repeat rate should sit much closer to the center of marketing strategy.
What you’ll learn:
- Why marketing is irrelevant if the experience does not hold up
- How repeat customers can lower acquisition costs and change the growth equation
- Why crew experience directly shapes customer experience and brand memory
- How Virgin Voyages turned an adults-only cruise model into its clearest differentiator
- Why marketers need to stop drowning in reports they will never act on
- How AI can amplify creative teams instead of replacing them
- Why soft skills like empathy, vulnerability and listening are now the hardest leadership skills
This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.
About our guest:
Nathan Rosenberg has spent 14 years at Virgin Voyages, building one of the most distinctive experience-led brands in travel. With 26 years across the Virgin organization, Nathan brings a deeply human-centered approach to marketing, culture, and brand strategy.
At Virgin Voyages, his work spans far beyond campaigns. He champions the full experience of the brand, from how guests feel when they step onto a ship to how crew members are supported to deliver memorable service.
His philosophy is simple but demanding: if you take care of your people, they take care of your customers, and customers take care of the outcomes.
Episode Highlights:
[01:22] Real Marketing Happens When Customers Tell the Story — Nathan challenges the idea that the ad is the brand. In his opinion, the real marketing moment happens later, when a customer is sitting at dinner with friends and telling them what happened on board. That story, the memory, the specific detail they cannot stop repeating, is what moves people from awareness to action. It is a sharper way to think about brand building: not what you say in the market, but what people repeat when you are not in the room.
