About James
James Hurman is a New Zealand-based entrepreneur, investor and advertising effectiveness expert
He’s the founder and chair of Previously Unavailable, a creative company that partners with, creates and invests into high-growth startup companies.
James is a co-founder of several high-profile New Zealand startups including Tracksuit (brand health tracking SAAS), AF Drinks (non-alcoholic RTD cocktails) and New+Improved Ventures, a venture studio specialising in AI and SAAS marketing technology companies.
In partnership with New Zealand’s premier venture capital firm Icehouse Ventures, James and his partners created Brand Fund 1, a VC fund that invests in and advises brand-led start-up companies.
James is one of the world’s better-known experts on marketing and advertising effectiveness. He grew up in the advertising industry as a strategic planner and during his career won over 50 advertising effectiveness awards and was named the world’s number one strategic planning director.
He’s the author of several major data-driven marketing effectiveness studies including The Effectiveness Code (2020) with Cannes Lions and WARC, and The B2B Effectiveness Code (2021) with the LinkedIn B2B Institute and WARC. He’s the author of two books on the subject – The Case for Creativity (2015) and Future Demand (coming June 2026) – which bring together evidence-based research to help organisations better plan brand, marketing and advertising strategy.
He consults in this capacity to large organisations across the world, and is a senior advisor at LIONS Advisory - the consulting offering of Cannes Lions - through which he leads creative transformation programmes for major global brands.
James is the programme director of the Master of Advertising Effectiveness, a global online professional development programme for marketing and advertising people whose alumni includes executives from Google, Amazon, Airbnb, Disney, McDonalds, New York Times, Salesforce and all of the major advertising agency networks.
James' Session
Future Demand – how marketing to tomorrow’s customers will break your brand out of the performance trap.
James will reveal why so many brands have optimized themselves onto a growth plateau, and share the evidence-based way out. Drawing on decades of global research, he’ll show what brands can do to create profitable growth that scales.
Based on his new book Future Demand, this session proposes a new mental model for marketing, built on how markets really work, how humans really make decisions, and how advertising really creates sales.