Last night, I attended my first event as the new Marketing Officer at HyperWeb.
The 2019 Brand Summit was my first steppingstone to enhance my current career development and learning. It was a highly valuable event, leaving me extremely excited to begin my career in the marketing industry.
This evening was devoted to brand importance and providing what I would consider crucial ideas to understanding marketing and its continuous development. Lead by successful industry leaders who shared their insights on creativity, design and the power of emotion in the constantly evolving business environment.
Here are some of the key ideas I personally took from the event:
Leader in Sports Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer of the FFA, Luke Bould, commenced with the idea of brand importance and understanding the overall positioning of your businesses brand.
Luke stressed the importance of connection in a crowded marketplace to ensure you are able to become a market leader. This involves understanding your consumer’s main needs, desires and opinions. I saw how the FFA went through a process of, establishing a strong connection and conversion in order to achieve repositioning and reinvigoration.
He touched on the significance of tone of voice and how this is KEY to a brand’s implementation. I believe this is particularly relevant to any business as they should have an understanding of their one of voice, and the words that reflect their values as it translates to their marketing content (web + social). True tone helps to maintain consistency across all aspects of the business.
An interesting point made by Luke about the idea of brand development and the strategy taken when repositioning FFA’s brand. The success of this was due to the overall brand consistency, resulting in a near 100% buy in from football clubs and associations on both a local and national level.
Public Speaker and Adventurer, Justin Jones, followed and provided a raw insight on a number of key ideas; direction, planning/strategy and the power of emotions. This was an extremely captivating perspective from an individual who had undertaken ravenous expeditions, learning his own capabilities and how this is relevant to overcoming misfortune.
The key is to understand that whilst important to have a plan and a set direction, redirection of your original strategy may be required at times. Why is this important? We as human’s often become complacent and develop a perspective that can be best described as looking down a tunnel, especially in business and marketing. I believe it is critical to avoid complacency as it can often halter our true potential and the ability to be creative. Something I will take on board when delivering my future ideas and perspective.
Jonesy called on the power of emotions and how it is important to understand that anything is possible when you connect with these emotions and ensure you demonstrate a high level of perseverance. This is something I have found particularly relevant to achieving my goals in both my personal and career development. It has enabled me to feel more connected to my work and express my viewpoints when necessary. This can be applied to companies when encourage individuals to feel more connected to ensure they are able to express their idea’s freely and in an authentic manner when marketing the overall product/idea. Being authentic is key to personal and business success.
Creativity and Design was a topic presented by Adjunct Professor, Senior Advisor and Chairman, Andrew “Billy” Baxter. Billy’s points reinforced the power of creativity and design in creating the most effective campaigns. How do we develop this creativity?
Many individuals have shown to not express their creativity in their industry. I found this particularly relevant when considering my own personal creativity and Andrew’s insight put things into perspective.
Whilst it’s so easy to present figures to a board and allow technology to give us these, such as a bounce rate or a goal conversion rate provided by Google Analytics. Andrew stressed the importance of staying true to the original fundamentals of marketing. This involves understanding your brands purpose, the needs of your target market, values and defining qualities. It is also creating a brand personality that is a true reflection of your current market and representative of inclusiveness.
The key message from Andrew was to reward yourself when you feel creative and to allow yourself to explore the idea. You’ll never know what you can do until you take the leap and voice your opinion. Taking this approach is more likely to present a successful outcome.
I am currently in my final year of my degree at the University of Newcastle and believe that relevant industry experience, networking and exposure to different perspectives is vitally important. This ensures I can put my best foot forward and develop my learning to apply at HyperWeb and offer our clients and partners a fresh perspective that is creative and valuable.
