An exploration of the modern consumer, their values, expectations, and what brands need to do to win their race for relevance.

Like that pulsing blue dot on your Google Maps app, today everything revolves around the customer. They are at the centre, the frame of reference built around them. Everything is shown from their perspective. Their expectation is for instant, personal, and contextual. They only want to interact with brands that are authentic, that deliver on experiential, and with whom they can collaborate as opposed to just ‘buy from’. We need to seek emotive engagement and push beyond the functional and transactional. The values of the modern consumer continue to shift and this keynote explores what other brands and industries are doing to deliver on these values. As AI, Robotics, Metaverse and a maturing Gen Z & Gen Alpha consumer group emerge, the customer connection is set to fundamentally change.

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How emotive customer connections, continuous investment in customer and employee experience, and inviting customer collaboration builds brand tribal following. If Taylor Swift can do it, so can you.

How has Taylor Swift, a 34-year-old entertainer and entrepreneur risen to such superstardom, building one of the world’s most impressive tribal brand followings of our time? Her global Eras Tour has broken all records, a brand recouping the 15-year investment made in emotive customer connection. Looking at the core values of modern customer and employee connection, this keynote explores the nature of brand relationship, emotive customer connections, customer excite & delight strategies, customer empowerment and tribal belonging, collaboration, brand authenticity, personalisation, and customer intimacy. Using Taylor as our jump-off point, we explore what brands and businesses are doing all over the world in the CX & EX space.

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A cultural evaluation of the effect AI will have on the consumer decision making process and the world of marketing, branding and customer connection will change.

Technology has always enabled the advancement of commerce. From product and channel development to consumer expectations, technology has both catalysed and enabled change. In recent decades, the internet, broadband, WiFi, 4G, and the Smartphone have all step-jumped and catalysed consumer connections.

As AI, Metaverse, Robotics and the coming of age of Gen Z and Gen Alpha regarding consumer expectations converge, we are set for significant change. The AI conversation needs to be less about algorithms, deep fakes, data, and natural language models, and more about how brands need to prepare for a new way of doing business.

While AI will bring countless new touchpoints, it is about leveraging the new technologies to build more efficient, exciting, and engaging customer connections. Exploring the sociological, behavioural, and cultural history and impact of technology and AI, this keynote demonstrates that it’s not just the rules that are about to change, it’s the entire game.

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An understanding of how agility, risk, play, and creativity catalyse innovation at the personal, professional and organisation level.

Every organisation recognises that creativity and innovation are the fuel that will drive their engine to success. The problem is that most organisations fail in catalysing this creativity, and so the innovation wheel stops turning. If we are to push established boundaries, challenge norms and solve problems in new ways then we must change our approach.

Habit and routine are the enemy of growth, personally and professionally. Rigid bureaucratic structures are part of our problem. Templates, organizational structures, corporate procedures. In our new disruptive economies, agility is key and so we need to rewire our approach to change.

Understanding play, mischief, fear, and risk in relation to creativity, alongside exploring vulnerability and courage in our everyday are all strong leadership qualities. This is a highly motivating speech that challenges the individual and delivers an inspirational personal development message alongside the professional.

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