Keynote speaker
As a writer and consultant at The Audacity Group, I deal with brands and the critical issues around branding strategies that people are challenged by every day in competitive and shifting markets – not just in New Zealand where I live, but across the world. As a keynote speaker on branding, great cultures and big ideas, I invite marketers, senior decision makers and conference delegates in New Zealand and elsewhere to thoughtbreak their brands – in other words to step back, take stock and approach their branding strategies and their marketing strategy in different ways.
Specifically, I challenge how brands perceive problems and the ways that branding issues sometimes get framed. I look at why markets shift their expectations of brands and how those changes can impact your marketing strategy. I ask you to rethink the real problems your brands face and how you can develop branding strategies to address them. Most of all, I talk about branding strategies that will help you gain the greatest leverage and margin from your brands.
The keynotes on brands, branding strategies, great cultures and big ideas highlighted here are starting points. An address can be as general or as personalised as you wish. You can ask me to talk about whole-of-sector issues or problems that are specific to your organisation. I can talk for 40 minutes as a keynote speaker or expand a subject line out to a workshop format and discuss branding strategies with your people over an afternoon session or even a whole day. I talk to people in New Zealand and beyond.
Keynote presentations:
“I forgot you … and I can’t remember why ”
Winning the fight to be remembered .
Got customers? Want to keep them? Of course you do. When people feel they know a brand, and they are loyal to that brand, that brand enjoys higher levels of trust and reputation, is invited to participate in more opportunities, is more likely to retain business and operates with greater levels of confidence and decisiveness.
Getting there though requires moving away from a tried and true but utterly forgettable customer service model. In fact, it means shifting your marketing strategy from one based on an “us and them” relationship to one built around what amounts to a “commercial community”. I’ll show your how small changes can make big and profitable impressions by delivering your customers experiences that are memorable, distinctive, personalised and yet consistent.
Watching the whale fly
How to get take-up on amazing ideas .
Powerful business and branding strategies are fed by great ideas. This keynote came directly out of the lessons I learnt trying to get New Zealand organisations to accept branding strategies that incorporated far-reaching changes. The irony of risk is that the more disinclined you are to accept it, the more prone you are to its effects. Here’s just one reason why: according to The 2005 Customer Loyalty Index, consumer expectations are growing at up to 25% faster than organisations’ ability to keep up. So if you are not proactively driving change through your organisation and into the marketplace, market dynamics will mean you are continually on the receiving end of customer disappointment. And disappointed customers are much more inclined to leave you, negotiate down your price, tender projects and generally behave in ways that compromise your profitability.
One of the key problems for organisations is that many great ideas that drive distinctive strategy are left high and dry – stranded, by corporate conservatism and people’s innate concerns about whether the business case for proactive change is strong enough. If your breakthrough marketing strategy is to succeed, it must be packaged and delivered in ways that encourage other people to shoulder the opportunity and make it fly. In this keynote, I show you how to successfully socialise bold, competitive ideas.
Calling your crusade
A deep sense of purpose is one of the most powerful and focusing emotions that humans can share .
Purpose is powerful. By focusing on an idea that is bigger than any one individual and only truly achievable collectively, people can take ownership of a concept that excites them, and share with others that sense of excitement and the agreement it generates.
This presentation examines what I believe are the fundamental tenets of successfully projecting the organisation into the future – an inspiring idea, permission to chase that idea through a disciplined and focused strategy, frequent celebration of achievements, and unremitting honesty about the progress being made. For a wider leadership group, this is an opportunity to reflect on the collective challenges of aiming hundreds of people in the same direction to pursue a goal they cannot touch and that some of them may never be there to see.
Taking the cannibals out for lunch
How to fight the price wa r
“Is that your best price?” … Businesses today are constantly under pressure to reduce what they charge. But price reduction is not the magical potion that makes businesses more competitive. In fact, in many ways, it creates more problems than it answers because it turns consumers into bargain hunters with an insatiable appetite for eating your profits. The challenge for so many companies is that even when markets decline, they still have figures to reach. They still have to be chosen. And all the while, those around them seem to be shifting their price points and ramping up their incentive programmes to rake in the punters.
If your branding strategies are right, no-one should ever lose a sale only on price. If price is that big an issue, then your marketing strategy is wrong: customers are unclear about the value being offered or sales are being targetting at the wrong audience or the company has not made the changes necessary to stand out from competitors. If you’ve ever felt that what you do or offer is worth more than what people seem prepared to pay, let me take you on a journey through market dynamics, German military strategy, and the habits of a particularly nasty fish to find ways forward.
Find out more
To find out more about any of my keynote presentations, please contact me directly or call your favourite New Zealand speaking bureau.
If you’d like me to talk about other significant contemporary issues affecting companies, their brands, their strategy or their competitiveness, in New Zealand or beyond – something you may have read on my Upheavals blog, for example – please just let me know.
