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Highlights from the conversation When you're on the client side there are so many priorities to handle other than brand building It's about encouraging a culture of not just being on repetition, but a culture that is about making things better and making things happen The important thing is to know that a lot of people on the client side aren't brand builders You just hope that senior leadership h...

Highlights from the conversation The most successful relationships we have are the ones where the internal team have done the work to prime the key decision makers with what to expect That's where balance is really crucial – we can support them and give them all the ammo needed. But at the end of the day [we need] their expertise for those crucial conversations As there's more access to design, [m...

Highlights from the conversation: We all have the same time in the day, but some people get exponential results You can go on a completely different path and you can define what 'winning' is We believe if we stop being self-critical, we're just gonna become a sloth...which is a complete lie Great communities are not actually focused on communities, they're focused on a mission A lot of people get...

Highlights from the conversation They're not gonna care, and they shouldn't, because they don't need more things If you play it safe and you go the easy route it falls on deaf ears It's about the people that do it. We want to be in the right relationships with the right people. The product and all that other stuff are important, but great people build great brands and great companies, and I think...

Highlights from the conversation: We have to give a shit. And our employees have to give a shit about the things we give a shit about Any great brand is a convergence of both functional and emotional components When everybody's going heavily into their data, it leaves space for a really good story You’re not for all. Generalisation isn't doing anybody any favours Be super specific about what's imp...

Highlights from the conversation: Just like brands and companies, people need to have the right mindset about what could be rather than a preservation mindset or a victim mindset To think less about resources and more about being resourceful is the kind of change we need to make in our heads. What does the world need right now? it needs more fresh, entrepreneurial thinkers who are willing to turn...

Highlights from the conversation: A rebrand doesn't have to be extreme. It could be the right decision to just modernise or refresh We want to give up and coming businesses a fighting chance No one cared about them. They were visual spam all over the city, no one engaged with them. The whole point of them was to inform the public, but no one cared Brand identity really can just attract people in t...

Highlights from the conversation: I like the idea that a couple moves from me help fuck with the people who had 100 moves to make Man, I'm just going to have fun with this. I'm not going to worry about what is and isn't the right thing to you know, to get me into the cool room. I'm just gonna do it If you're just starting out, it's about knowing how to play the deck of cards, when to play them, ho...

Highlights from the conversation: You're lucky if you find a name or concept that upsets a certain number of people We did a lot of work to ensure that our customers thought that we hung the moon. And the advantage of that [was] our fans sold for twice what anybody else's did We talked to every single customer that we had — 10s of thousands of people over a period of years — to see how we could ma...

Highlights from the conversation: "Design is not what we make. Design is what we make possible for others." "Craft is just consideration of every detail. And scale is often about finding efficiencies. And those two notions are kind of at odds with each other." "Craft at scale is the same as craft anywhere else. It's just trying to bring intentionality and consideration to every decision." "We feel...

Highlights from the conversation: Most of my clients didn't embrace collaboration in a deep way, there was shallow collaboration. But that wasn't really about genuine collaboration. Working with your competitors is going to get you there faster, Brand owners have misunderstood the degree to which people care or don't care about them That ambition is too important for me to suppress. I need to step...

Highlights from the conversation: David Ogilvy had lamented that if advertising agencies were a dairy farm, you had more milkers than you had cows. We were removed from the people who were most invested in the brands that we served I was shocked at how great the product was and equally sad about how poorly it was being presented So even they themselves didn't come in to make shit up . They just de...

Highlights from the conversation: I think that everything is a remix of something else. So we love to see when other agencies are similar to us because it only means that there are more people believing.  So they come to us with a brief — we always rewrite it. Most of the time, we make them realise that what you think you need is not what you need, or maybe that comes in stage three. Companies lov...

Highlights from the episode: Their Head of Brand position didn't exist. And in fact, there was no brand team, Yoco, in the startup phase that they were at, and in many respects, we're still at, the mentality is usually growth hacking, it's performance marketing The core job of a brand team is to build a really strong competitive moat around yourself . So that if competitors do come in with a reall...

Highlights from the conversation: My concern is not the big brands, it's the numbered companies. It's the invisible number of companies that are dumping chemicals into our water because we've never heard of them, we can't control them What you say is inconsequential. The real story you're telling your people and the world is your action. But today, everything is transparent. We've gone from an opa...

Highlights from the conversation: Purpose defines what you do when nobody's looking . Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of posturing and gesturing What I've seen in the last three years is an obsession with the startup culture . On the other end of the pendulum, you've got an obsession with people who can now globalise and take their brands beyond national boundaries, but there's this missing midd...

More about Tom  An evangelist for conscious business, Tom Fels is the Founder and CEO of Animarem, an advisory focused on transforming business as a force for good, and the regional representative of the global B Corp movement in Southern Africa. Tom’s journey to purpose saw him guiding the world's top brands to growth as communication group Publicis Machine‘s Group Managing Director, supporting d...

Highlights from the conversation: I realised that if you want to touch people, just tell them a story and they will never forget you It's easy for me to be in a business where I sell jeans and it's all about money-making. But when you have a big idea, a bigger purpose that's what keeps us going, that's what builds companies that's what builds big brands We had to upskill them. So we collaborated w...

Highlights from the conversation: The foundation itself is a product of this process. This started a long time ago, and now we took the shape of an institution to really push this forward and really think about creativity as a tool to build our collective future It's important to create initiatives that are able to establish a basic level of knowledge that young people can have access to in order...

Highlights from the conversation: Sometimes, I think people forget that what happens to us in the workplace really has far-reaching consequences I don't believe in safe spaces. I believe in brave spaces where people can be brave and say what it is that they've been through. [On the Constitutional Court] I worked in an environment where there was a concerted effort to live up to South Africa's high...

Highlights from the conversation: It's these little rituals in organisations that can often create a culture, and culture can often drive the behaviour and the success or failure of an organisation. The more shared meaning you build an organisation, the stronger your culture is. One of the most important things you can do is become part of somebody else's story. That's one of my big pet peeves wit...

Highlights from the conversation: We've got such an unbelievable opportunity to define workplace 2.0. Our ways of working were an evolution from when we were factory workers. We are naturally diabolical at our communication. Despite our best intentions, it's one of the muscles of culture that every single organisation needs to focus on building. If you needed everybody in the same room at the same...

Highlights from this episode If I had sat down when I was 22 and actually retraced the steps of my life up until that point, there were clues along the way. I was Debating Captain at school, Alice in Wonderland in the school play, I used to read at church when I was little. So I was always in plays and drama, and I was talking a lot. I think that you are put on this earth to fulfil your purpose. A...

More about Erik International Speaker | Specialist Team Coach | Author Erik has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physiotherapy from the University of the Witwatersrand as well as a Postgraduate Diploma in Management and a Master’s Degree in Business and Executive Coaching, both from Wits Business School. Keynote Speaker  Erik shares insights, stories, and research with audiences across the world on...

As an entrepreneur, Conor has founded 5 companies and built the third largest fleet of private jets in Spain. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing — in 2009, Conor stared some of his biggest fears in the face — not having money to pay bills and going through a divorce, among others. Through his experience and lecturing and speaking on leadership, Conor brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to...