Following an exciting Wednesday that culminated in some interesting partnership chats at Spotify HQ, I whizzed off the train from Paddington to Cookham, home of the CIM and my beloved marketing academy scholars a night before the content kicks off, rather than do what I did last time; wake up at 6am and still manage to get there late. Classic.
It was great to see my #BFFs from the course #TeamAngus – we’ve formed a sickening clique that’s fairly unforgiving despite how divisive it is… and following dinner and a couple of drinks, headed off to bed, and somehow it was already midnight. FML.
Waking up hungover wasn’t part of the plan but dragging myself into the content for the day there was little excuse not to wake up immediately as our first speaker; Scott “The Boom” Morrison, kicked off the day with a highly energetic and passionate story of his journey within brands, most successfully when he delivered an alternative brand story leveraging data for Diesel during the economic crisis.
His energy and passion for bringing what he describes as ‘The BOOM” movement which is; “To inspire incredible future end states so that people are free to go boom!” is all about human beings exhibiting “The visceral hungry and curious animal inside”.
He encouraged our cohort to “Thrive on chaos”, “Practice extreme empowerment”, and always ask the “heresy questions”.
A heresy question is one that is glaringly obvious as the clear problem facing your company either now or in the future that no one wants to discuss – AKA Blockbuster and Netflix, or for us – “What would happen if all retailers said they didn’t want to sell through Grabble?” It’s worth coming up with Plan B’s from these questions and it was great to hear his stories about how empowering it can be to get your team to think about them.
Naturally, like all good motivational movement speakers, he reminded us of the infamous Simon Sinek “start with why” question, that questions a brand’s existence, and ended it by getting us to reveal a series of deep questions about our organisations that help us become better leaders by confronting change in a positive manner.
All in all, a legend. More on the next speakers and their lessons soon.
You can tweet him @scotttheboom and I recommend you do, cos he is one bad ass mofo.
