A True Breakfast of Champions: The Tech Alliance AGM keynote inspires change, risk, experience and growth
London’s knowledge-based business community gathered this morning for an engaging event with Jim Carroll, renowned author, and international futurist, trends and innovation expert. Jim’s presentation, "Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Aligning Yourself for Growth Through Innovation", highlighted the drawbacks and obstacles created from the more cynical ‘but that’s not how we do it’ type of mindset. He challenged the audience to embrace change, and relentlessly focus our businesses towards future growth. Today’s economic struggles are irrelevant when innovation and experiential capital become the key motivators.
Carroll’s presentation, while touching on several key areas of Southwestern Ontario’s tech sector and related industries, also underscored several observations and interpretations relevant to today’s marketing, communications and brand experts.
While some have argued that the brand is dead or that investing in over-branding strategies is a waste - considering the immediacy and rampant availability of stakeholder feedback, branding is actually imperative to future success. If your brand message cannot be controlled, the naysayers argue, throw it out. However, in a time when competing for brainspace is increasingly difficult (can you remember one of the 100’s of brand messages you encountered on your way to work this morning?), brand relevance is exactly what every organization needs to ensure engagement, loyalty, influence and status. Carroll’s point, “your brand is what they say it is” defines exactly why brand matters in today’s environment.
As the economy moves from catastrophe to convalescence there are several realities Carroll highlighted that will impact branding, public relations, corporate communications, and marketing. How communities form, how individuals interact, and how organizations relate to both, will be altered immeasurably in the not so distant future by:
- Pervasive connectivity
- Intelligent infrastructure
- Segmented media
- Location intelligence
- Status information
Consider the possibilities, opportunities and options when you combine any two from the list above with stakeholder information. Customers, donors, shareholders, patients, guests, and employees - all available, trackable, reachable, findable for two-way communications from specific locations, through targeted and preferred channels without restriction. Solid brand strategy and investment builds the foundation for experimenting, experiencing and learning how new media works for your organization. It allows us to embrace the reality of branding – that “it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room” (Jeff Bezoz, founder, Amazon.com) – and relinquish the fantasy of controlling the message.
So, let’s not throw away branding because we can’t keep it on a short leash. Let your brand roam, listen to the feedback, be flexible, be responsive, and stay relevant.