Why is employee advocacy so often mistaken for a content strategy? Rida Oyebade, Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, explains why handing employees “ready-made content” isn’t enough — advocacy only works when it still sounds like the person sharing it, not the brand behind them.

In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, host Joel Harrison talks to Rida Oyebade about employee advocacy — the discipline of turning colleagues into credible, willing voices for the brand. Rida traces her own path into advocacy, breaks down the different tiers of an advocacy programme, and is candid about what she’s learned building one from scratch at Workday: why participation has to stay genuinely optional, why no programme survives without real buy-in from leadership, and why the whole discipline is really about borrowed trust rather than borrowed content.

In this episode

• Why brand-originated content is losing ground to individual voices in B2B
• Why handing employees ready-made content isn’t the same as earning their voice
• The three tiers of employee advocacy, and why each needs different handling
• Why employee advocacy means borrowing someone’s “personal real estate” — and why participation has to stay optional
• What actually makes advocacy programmes work, and why persuasion alone isn’t enough
• Whether employee advocacy is a specialism worth building a career around

Guest

Rida Oyebade is Senior Social Media Manager at Workday, where she leads employee advocacy — working with colleagues, or “influencers” as she prefers to call them, to carry the brand into places a corporate account can’t reach.

In this special edition of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Fiona McKenzie of Marketbridge to make sense of Cannes Lions 2026. Fresh from five days of multi-stream content, installations and fringe events, they let the dust settle and distil what actually matters for B2B marketers – viewed through a growth lens, not creativity for its own sake.

They unpack why B2B is visibly on the rise at Cannes, the tension between creativity and commercial measurement, and the CFO buy-in conversation (brand as future cashflow). They dig into three important releases from the week: the FT's work on trust (including the finding that 82% trust a source more when it challenges than when it agrees), Bloomberg on reputation pulling weight across the full funnel, and Bain & Co.'s new model positioned as a rival to NPS, scoring a buyer's likelihood to choose you before any deal is on the table.

The conversation moves through the B2B Lions winner – an obscure Swedish ball-bearing company using tidal energy in the Faroe Islands, and why a big idea told as a wider go-to-market story is a step in the right direction – the rise of creators and influence in B2B, Joel's framework of five "trust champions," and a notably optimistic read on AI: a technology that surfaces existing misalignment and removes grunt work rather than replacing human judgment. They close on what Cannes could do better for the B2B community.

In this episode:

What Cannes actually is, and why it's so hard to navigate. B2B moving up the agenda. The growth-versus-creativity lens. CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow. Why CMOs are exhausted by the measurement debate. Three key releases: FT on trust, Bloomberg on reputation, Bain's NPS rival. The B2B Lions winner and what it signals. Creators, influence and Joel's five trust champions. A grounded, optimistic take on AI. What's missing, and what would take Cannes to the next level in 2027.

Reports and resources mentioned (links below):

• FT – research on trust in B2B https://dimensionsofinfluence.ft.com/
• Bloomberg – reputation across the funnel, B2B Summit presentation https://www.bloombergmedia.com/blog/corporate-rep-study-2025/
• Bain & Co. – new buyer-choice model positioned against NPS https://www.bain.com/insights/raising-the-odds-on-a-deal-how-likelihood-to-buy-rewires-b2b-growth/

Chapters:

• (00:00) Welcome and why we waited for the dust to settle
• (01:13) What Cannes actually is, and how to navigate it
• (03:04) B2B on the rise at the festival
• (04:28) The growth lens: creativity anchored in commercial value
• (05:21) CFO buy-in and brand as future cashflow
• (07:54) Why CMOs are exhausted by measurement
• (10:23) Is B2B creativity judged by the wrong (B2C) playbook?
• (11:26) Three key releases: FT, Bloomberg and Bain
• (16:45) Talking the language of the boardroom
• (19:36) The B2B Lions winner: a Swedish ball-bearing story
• (24:29) Creators, influence and the five trust champions
• (30:11) AI: surfacing misalignment, not taking our jobs
• (35:17) What Cannes could do better
• (37:46) Wrap-up and how to share your own take

Following your [Hook] | [Elaboration], with [Guest] format:

1. Cannes decoded | Cutting through the noise to find the B2B signal, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
2. Creativity anchored in growth | What Cannes Lions 2026 really told B2B marketers, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
3. Trust is the scarce resource | Reading the room after Cannes 2026, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
4. A ball-bearing company won | Why the B2B Lions winner is a step in the right direction, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
5. Brand as future cashflow | The CFO conversation B2B marketers need to have, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
6. It's not boring, it's mismeasured | Rethinking B2B creativity after Cannes, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
7. Five days, one signal | Making sense of Cannes Lions 2026 for B2B, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge
8. The five trust champions | Creators, influence and where B2B is heading, with Fiona McKenzie from Marketbridge

Most of the conversations that decide a B2B deal happen in a room you'll never be in. Buyers swap recommendations, compare notes and build their shortlists in spaces marketers can neither see nor measure – and by the time you're in contention, the decision is often half made.

In this episode of Trust & Influence in B2B, Joel Harrison is joined by Lottie O'Donoghue, strategy director at Velo, a specialist B2B agency built on recommendation. Lottie has led marketing client-side in scale-up SaaS and run ABM at Accenture, and now shapes recommendation strategies for Velo's clients across technology, industrial and professional services.

Together they unpack why becoming the recommended choice has shifted from a nice-to-have to a commercial imperative, the real difference between being known and being recommended, and the trust signals that quietly compound into advocacy.

In this episode:

• Why the recommended choice now matters more than the visible one
• The trust signals that accumulate into recommendation, and the ones marketers most underestimate
• How to make the case for investing in influence that conventional attribution can't capture
• Where to start if you suspect you're not being talked about in the right rooms
• Velo's six Rs of Recommendation Marketing framework

Download Velo's report here: https://www.velo-b2b.com/ebooks/?utm_source=Joel+Harrison&utm_campaign=Recommendation+Marketing

This is a sponsored episode, produced in partnership with Velo.