Mediocrity: the silent killer.
Survival in the Age of AI and Disruption. Anthony Reeves has globally led at Amazon, Airbnb, WPP, and LVMH. Through his new book, Eat the Donkey, he helps Businesses and Brands Survive through immense change. And fix what AI can’t fix: weak foundations, risk avoidance, and cultures addicted to comfort.
“Anthony outshone the other speakers, including Gwyneth (Paltrow), in both personality and charm.”
Michael: Deloitte Digital
“95 % of purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious. The moment you stop selling products and start wrestling with the uncomfortable questions about relevance, value, and meaning, you find clarity .”
Brand and Business Survival in the Age of AI: lessons from the outback and the worlds most hostile boardrooms.
The Australian Outback and High Country laid the foundation for who Anthony is. These are places where survival isn’t theoretical, and comfort isn’t an option. From an early age, he learned what matters, what doesn’t, and how to recover when things go wrong. In these climates, failure wasn’t a choice.
That survival mindset followed him into business, where he held global leadership roles at Amazon, WPP, Airbnb, and LVMH. He learned that organizations fail the same way people do: by avoiding the discomfort required to transform while staying true to their Foundations. In other words, being average is not good enough for a company.
He is a brand and business innovator, consultant, and speaker. He doesn’t do incremental. He doesn’t do “that’s how it’s always been done.”
“Anthony is a rarity. He is THE BRIDGE. He bridges decades of leadership experience with state-of-the-art digital expertise. He bridges brand experience and leadership, with technology and data-driven craft. He helps teams and businesses grow. You will love hearing him speak and it will change your organization.”
Martin Albrecht | President | CROSSMEDIA
Ease is a greater threat to growth than discomfort.
AI is driving brands toward the mediocre middle.
When everyone has access to the same data, tools, and optimization logic, companies begin to look, sound, and behave the same — offering the same products, experiences, and trade-offs in the name of efficiency. In the years ahead, this race to sameness will frustrate customers, disengage employees, and stall growth.
Drawing on a career inside the world’s largest agencies, leading brand work at Amazon, and advising iconic companies like LVMH, AirBnb and Kohler, Anthony Reeves argues that the only way out is to stop worshiping the data and start doing the uncomfortable work it can’t do: 1) ruthlessly prioritizing the customer and 2) ruthlessly prioritizing the company's Foundational System.
He calls this eating the donkey: making the hard, often counterintuitive decisions that reduce real customer frustration rather than optimizing toward averages.
In this leadership book, Reeves shows how enduring brands escape static mode, return to explorer mode, and continue to evolve while holding fast to the foundations that make them beloved by customers, trusted by employees, and resilient over time.
Most businesses are unwilling
to make hard decisions.
“The hard decision to eat donkey as a child was about survival, not comfort, not shame, not anything else. Companies avoid making a hard decision now, for prosperity later.”
In business, Anthony has witnessed hard decisions being avoided. And a series of small, short-term rationalized choices adding up. These choice quietly erode standards, clarity, and conviction. By the time leaders realize what’s been lost, the decision they’re facing is no longer about growth and future success; it’s about survival.
Anthony works with companies, organizations, leadership, brands and students during moments change and pressure. His work helps people strengthen their Foundations so that growth reinforces who they are.
With decades of experience inside some of the most high-stress companies, Anthony has become a recognized leader in business, marketing, and brand. With global roles across LVMH and Airbnb, and my long Amazon experience (Amazon shares leaped from $325 to $ 2,150 during that period), he speaks passionately about Foundations, Leadership for Growth, and Customer Experience.
