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#BizTrends2018: A trends story from a magician's granddaughter
I am the granddaughter of a magician. A real, actual International Brotherhood of Magicians magician, who made milk disappear from newspaper cones, made my gran and aunts vanish from locked boxes, disappeared and reappeared doves and found coins in my ears.
Heidi Brauer, chief marketing officer, Hollard Insurance.
It will come as less of a surprise then, when I admit that I have a magic wand in my office. Over time I have come to see that trend analysis can be about self-fulfilling prophecy, and so I hope that if I see a glimmer of something and I use my wand, I can magic it into being a real ‘thang’.
As a brand grower, here are some of the trends I wish to use my wand to realise:
- We will learn to trust a process. It’s so much more enabling to go into a meeting or a workshop and trust that the agenda or subject will lead you to where you need to go. We will set a process - stepping stones for our thinking journey and landing points to make sure we stay on purpose – and then think together.
- We won’t be married to outcomes. I have learned that truly liberated thinking and the best ideas come when you trust the process and you don’t go in wed to your point of view. The great ideas are usually never mine and that’s completely fine – I’ve learned to love the journey without needing to control it.
- We will stay on purpose. Children often cry that another child did something to them ‘on purpose’. As brand leaders, we will be more ‘on purpose’. In the best way, not a way that’s stuck to a point of view. In a world of increasing sameness and decreasing budgets, we will be more consistent, persistent, insistent and relentless with our purpose and brand’s messaging.
- We will be brilliant in elevators. Being on purpose is the gift that enables us to say more with fewer words. Communication that is consistent, persistent insistent and relentless will help us sell an idea more succinctly and compellingly than we can ever imagine.
- We will listen to hear. We will pay exquisite attention to one another. And we’ll do this whilst not being married to an outcome. And whilst staying on purpose.
- We will make everyone and every thought equal. When we all know the process, when we are all on purpose, when nobody is wed to an idea, when there is equality of thinking, then real creativity can happen.
- We will use simple language. We will replace jargon and suitcase words. This will be our greatest tool in making everyone and everything ok.
And we will be magicians. The most gifted magicians conceptualise on a grand scale, imagine every detail, plan the execution and then deliver with grace and flair.
