“The first step for a brand change leader is to free up resources that are committed to maintaining things that no longer contribute to brand performance and no longer produce results. Maintaining yesterday is always difficult, extremely time-consuming and risky.
“I never worry about action, but only inaction.” ~ Winston Churchill There’s a simple, human reason why behaviors happen time and time again. We are creatures of habit and familiarity. It is much more comforting to keep hammering away at what we know than it is to stop, reappraise the problem and completely redesign the playbook.
Transformation isn’t about plotting a meeting point for your brand with the predicted future. It’s not about getting to where the puck will be, to paraphrase Wayne Gretzky. Because depending on the arrival of the next big thing or that breaking wave, that hot new trend, the long-awaited demographic or anything else for that matter is conjecture.
Top tier marketers today have made one career-changing decision that has extended the reach of their success. They’ve elected to lead rather than manage. Those seven words represent the new requirement for high performance in an age where the customer drives the conversation about brands and where the proactive thrive.
As the role of marketers continues to expand, so do the pressures. Some marketers will rise to the challenge while others will slip behind. Why will they slip? Because change is hard. That’s why the future can look so much like the past. And why brands and the marketers who manage them often lose their edge. For those marketers who see comfort zones as a dangerous place, we have designed a very unique experience around...
