Joshua Paul Nafman is Vice President of Data at Diageo, where he brings an unconventional but highly complementary blend of creative, marketing, and data leadership experience. His career began in the creative agency world, where he spent a decade working across creative, media, and production for global brands including Apple and Pepsi. During this time, he helped produce high-profile campaigns such as Apple’s iconic “Mac versus PC” ads and major brand rebrands, developing a deep appreciation for storytelling, craft, and audience engagement.
A pivotal moment came early in the digital era, when Joshua worked on one of the first synchronized rich-media advertising executions on nytimes.com. Seeing millions of users actively engage with a technically and visually sophisticated digital experience sparked his long-term fascination with the intersection of creativity, technology, and scale.
He then moved brand-side, spending the next decade at Pepsi, KIND, and Hello Products. There, his focus shifted from traditional TV advertising to digital, social, content, and performance media. He led data-informed marketing programs that produced viral campaigns such as Pepsi Max’s Jeff Gordon Test Drive and Uncle Drew, supported real-time Super Bowl marketing “war rooms,” and managed multimillion-dollar influencer and digital media investments grounded in audience insight and performance analytics.
Over the past eight years at Diageo, Joshua has taken this fusion of creativity and data further, focusing on automating and scaling consumer activation. His work centers on using data to power more relevant, timely, and effective consumer engagement, embedding analytics into how brands are built and activated in a modern, digital-first world.
As a data and AI leader, which traits and skills do you think matter most, and which of those have been most influential for you in your current position?
“The most effective data and AI leadership skill is systems thinking, not just technically but organizationally. I believe a marketer with context into the other parts of the business at their fingertips is not only a better marketer but a builder of cross-organizational intelligence. This way of thinking has been influential within Diageo by driving us to focus on cross-functional rather than siloed infrastructure and benefits.
“For instance, the most valuable data a marketer can have is commercial, a data point commonly owned by commercial teams. By showing value of data from other parts of the organization to marketing, and vice versa, it makes it easier to identify mutually beneficial investments, allowing Diageo to operate for the whole of Diageo rather than a single department.”
Reflecting on your career, what is one non-traditional piece of advice (outside of technical skills) you would give to an aspiring data or AI leader aiming for the C-suite?
“Distribution beats capability. If you build it, they will not come. If you buy it, they will not use it. You need to either thoroughly, painstakingly, manually understand how outcomes are actually delivered, or hand the outcome delivery over to an AI or automation to find its own way otherwise what you build will drive no change, adoption, or tangible value.”