The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX

Today we’re going to talk about agility in how we relate to ourselves. While we’ve all grown up with unique backgrounds, habits, and things we were taught as the true measures of success, as we go through life we can often find that those things, even if well-intentioned, are either incorrect, or don’t apply to us as they might have been intended.. The challenge, then, is to find a way to continually improve ourselves in order to be better. I talk a lot about agile processes and how companies can use them to improve everything from customer and employee experience to branding and marketing, but today we’re going to talk about applying transformation to one’s self. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Laura DiBenedetto, Best Selling Author and CEO of Vision Advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn about the blueprint for an experience-led organization by combining customer and employee experience Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While government is often described as anything but agile, there are plenty of people working with agile methodology, as well as a more scalable and iterative mindset in all sectors, both private and public. In fact, government agencies are increasingly turning to agile methods for all kinds of solutions, from software development and more. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Dave Witkin, Principal at Packaged Agile. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about how to adapt your events to be more virtual in a marketing environment that is in continual fluctuation. With the massive changes that COVID-19 has brought to the world of corporate and association events, many companies have scrambled to adapt to make them virtual, with mixed results. Some organizations, however, have found a way to innovate and create great experiences despite the limitations. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Mark Michelson, CEO of CX Talks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about agility in how you deliver customer experiences. While customer experience always requires a sharp focus on listening and adapting to customer needs, most companies have had to make much larger changes recently due to COVID-19 and the different rules of operation. To talk about this in more depth, I thought we’d explore an industry that often thrives on interactions in physical spaces: museums. We’re going to explore how a museum was able to adapt its methods of delivering experience in a way that not only served the temporary needs due to COVID restrictions, but also set the organization up for future success in an increasingly online world. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Craig Langlois, Chief Experience Officer, Berkshire Museum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about how agility can help an organization maintain good employee and customer experience, despite tumultuous times. We are also going to talk about how the role of great employee experience is to make sure that employees are enabled to find balance between their work and personal lives, and that, when done well, one benefits from the other. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Nancy Greatrix, Director of Human Resources and Becky Lechner, Employment Brand Manager, from Room and Board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about startups, and the importance of ensuring your teams are able to maintain agility throughout your development and growth. This means knowing how to configure your teams with both internal and external resources, and even when to build things internally versus externally. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Dan Moore, CEO and Co-Founder, Vaporware. Dan co-founded Vaporware to help entrepreneurs take their software ideas to market. Over the past 6 years, he has helped Vaporware deliver thousands of iterations across dozens of apps in 4 main industries (Healthcare, HR, Real Estate, and IT) - ranging from the first MVP versions to modern iterations on mature solutions. With a strong belief that anyone can become the next big software as a service company, he leads Vaporware in helping business founders pivot their business through process automation, technical modernization, and software innovation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about agility in teams, and how productivity, psychological safety, and an agile approach work together for the benefit of organizations and those who work within them. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Duena Blomstrom, an accomplished author and Co-Founder and CEO of People Not Tech. PeopleNotTech offers a revolutionary machine learning-powered software solution in the form of a work tool that checks and improves Psychological Safety in teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about keeping your company agile and the value of learning, iterating, and optimizing your business. Too many times companies spend vast amounts of time and effort creating something that is either not exactly what the market wants, or is not a feasible product or service for the company to offer as it grows over the long term. Instead, an agile approach of creating and learning while being continually open to change and improvement can yield the best results. Today we’re going to hear from someone who did just that and has built a highly competitive product while inventing new solutions to challenges along the way. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome David Wachs, CEO of Handwrytten, a handwriting service for brands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the freelance economy and why it’s important that freelancers, contractors and the self-employed protect themselves and their future with insurance, retirement, and other methods of planning ahead. Many freelancers are passionate about what they do and become independents so they can focus more of their time on what they love doing. They often find, however, that they need to learn about a wide variety of things such as accounting to send clients invoices, project management, and many other skills. This is in addition to ensuring that they are planning for their futures and the well-being of their families. Insurance, retirement, and other methods of planning are often taken for granted by full-time employees, but freelancers have to source and purchase this on their own. This can be prohibitive from both a time and cost perspective. To help me discuss this topic, and offer some potential solutions, I’d like to welcome Steve Blair, who is part of the team at CareerGig, where he is VP of Benefits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the freelance economy and why it’s important that companies use verification and assessments to reduce risk and hire the best possible candidates. One of the great things about the Web is that it is an often open place where people can participate from different locations and backgrounds. While in many cases this works well, companies can often have a hard time differentiating between freelancers and contractors who claim to have certain credentials and skills. How do you verify and certify that the person you are hiring is an expert at what they do before it’s too late? To help me discuss this topic, and offer some potential solutions, I’d like to welcome Kelly Painter, who is part of the team at CareerGig, where she is VP of Sales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the importance of customer and patient experience, and how training can play a big part in teaching empathy and understanding to improve it. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Jennifer Thompson, President of Insight Marketing.

Part 3 of 3: In times of disruption, organizations are forced to pivot in unexpected ways. While you can plan for potential events, it isn’t until a change occurs that the organization is tested. At the root of an organization’s response plan is data. When organizations understand how to leverage and optimize their business data solutions, data becomes a competitive advantage. Change is constant. How organizations adapt to change is the variable. In this 3-part series of The Agile World, TEKsystems Data Analytics and Insights leaders discuss data’s evolution from a supporting asset, to a mission-critical component to success and the catalyst for change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 2 of 3: In times of disruption, organizations are forced to pivot in unexpected ways. While you can plan for potential events, it isn’t until a change occurs that the organization is tested. At the root of an organization’s response plan is data. When organizations understand how to leverage and optimize their business data solutions, data becomes a competitive advantage. Change is constant. How organizations adapt to change is the variable. In this 3-part series of The Agile World, TEKsystems Data Analytics and Insights leaders discuss data’s evolution from a supporting asset, to a mission-critical component to success and the catalyst for change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 1 of 3: In times of disruption, organizations are forced to pivot in unexpected ways. While you can plan for potential events, it isn’t until a change occurs that the organization is tested. At the root of an organization’s response plan is data. When organizations understand how to leverage and optimize their business data solutions, data becomes a competitive advantage. Change is constant. How organizations adapt to change is the variable. In this 3-part series of The Agile World, TEKsystems Data Analytics and Insights leaders discuss data’s evolution from a supporting asset, to a mission-critical component to success and the catalyst for change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A discussion about next best action and its role in enhancing the customer experience with Jean Belanger, Founder and CEO of Cerebri AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about how to focus on customer experience and what that means within an organization. While it’s often said that everyone in a company has a role in customer experience, my guest today would say that, while true, if you don’t have people whose role it is to focus on CX specifically, your organization can’t truly be successful at it. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Augie Ray, VP of Customer Experience, Gartner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the importance of customer experience in a membership organization. Also, since our guest is from the American Marketing Association, we’re going to talk a little bit about the relationship between marketing and customer experience. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Jennifer Severns, Chief Experience Officer at American Marketing Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about company culture and how to maintain and develop great employee experience in a fast-growth, global organization. We’re also going to talk about how to develop and train the best and most effective types of leaders for your organization. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Joy Sybesma, Chief People Officer at Dataiku. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about how enterprises who remain agile can achieve great success in building great experiences for their customers. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Aileen Cahil, an author, speaker and customer experience expert who has worked with several Fortune 100 companies and gotten great Customer Experience, Digital Transformation, and Marketing results through a data-driven, customer-centric and agile approach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the value of a holistic digital experience. Too often organizations spend time optimizing a few channels to make sure that they are performing well, but they fail to look at the bigger picture. Customer experience is a key differentiator in today’s competitive marketplace, and organizations that embrace digital experience as more than the sum of its parts will get ahead and stay ahead. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Eric Stahl, SVP of Digital Experience at Salesforce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the importance of being intentional with your brand’s experience, and why great company culture and customer experience are critical to success. Great customer experience is created from motivated, engaged employees who feel both valued and valuable to an organization. While that sounds straightforward, it is often easier said than done. Even for Fortune 500 brands, the transformation required to become an experience-led organization requires people, processes, and technology to all be in alignment to the benefit of both customers and employees. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Antonia Hock, Global Head of The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, a thought leader in customer and talent experience, and who was recently named to Luxury Daily’s Top 25 Women to Watch in Luxury. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the importance of the employee experience and how organizations of all kinds can remain competitive in the current job market, while paying attention at all the key stages in the employee journey. To help me discuss this topic, I welcome Felipe Cofiño, VP Human Resources and Organizational Development, Signal Financial Federal Credit Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about Diversity, Inclusion, and the Employee Experience. Employee experience has an increased focus at leading companies around the world. This enhanced experience has many aspects, including people, processes, and technology. Today we’re going to discuss how technology is a key component in employee experience, as well as the role that diversity and inclusion plays in EX. To help me discuss this important topic, I’m joined by Robert Ruelas, VP End User Computing, Americas, VMware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to talk about the importance of values and culture in the employee experience. As companies continue to compete for both talent and customers, experience becomes a differentiating point. Brands that don’t put their employees first will not be as competitive in a marketplace driven by experience. I'm joined by Dr. David Rodriguez, Global Chief HR Officer, Marriott International to the show to discuss this important topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A discussion about customer journey orchestration and its power in creating great customer experiences with special guest Tim Claytor, SVP Partnerships at Kitewheel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am joined by Charlie Oliver, Founder & CEO of Tech 2025. Technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, automation and many others promise better data, better access, and better ways of reaching customers. But what about the customers’ perspective? How will these technologies help customers solve their challenges more easily and offer a better customer experience with products and services they regularly interact with? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A discussion about organizational culture and employee experience with special guest Traci Schweikert, VP Human Resources of POLITICO. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I talk a bit about my new book, The Agile Consumer, which discusses the continually evolving brand-consumer relationship. As consumers have more choice, options, and agency to make purchasing decisions, their power increases in the dynamic. This also means that brands need to find new ways to reach and provide meaningful solutions to their challenges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I feel it’s important to address one other key aspect of brands that is part of the “new normal.” It’s not enough to simply make a great product, or offer an amazing service. It’s also not enough to simply engage with our audiences on a regular basis. There needs to be something more, and truly successful brands have tapped into this. Just as an agile brand must establish a bi-directional relationship with individual consumers to be successful, there must also be a symbiotic relationship with the world at large. This can play out in ways that impact society, the environment, or other areas that have a large cultural impact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the third of four episodes related to brands and storytelling. The best way to make your brand’s story memorable is to relate it to your audience. What is challenging in this is that, in a continually changing world, any of the following may be true: ● Your audience’s tastes change over time. ● You are appealing to multiple audiences, often with different values. ● Your company is going through transformation whether through acquisitions or changes in the market. ● Your products or services are evolving over time. With all of the changes, different focus areas, and competing or conflicting tastes, you have your work cut out for you. Fortunately, by focusing on the essence of what makes your brand unique you can cut through the clutter and find a way to relate to your audiences. You may be able to filter your brand’s values through a slightly different lens for each audience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second of four episodes related to brands and storytelling. It’s time to stop thinking in the broadcast mode of marketing. Simply saying something isn’t enough. Claiming to be the best, the fastest, or the friendliest means nothing without proof, and the proof isn’t just statistics, but meaningful interactions that build relationships. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the first of four episodes related to brands and storytelling. Think about the last time a friend or colleague told you about a brand or product they like. Chances are, one of the things that stood out was something they learned while reading about the product, reading its history, or maybe even using the product. People like to share something new or unexpected about brands they love with their friends, family and colleagues. Giving them something they can use to teach others motivates them to embrace and remember the information. In the act of teaching someone else, they also build greater affinity for your brand or product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 5 of how to create an agile brand. To create a holistic customer experience, it’s important to use those channels as a means of two-way communication, rather than to deliver one-way messaging directed at consumers. Instead, engage in a dialogue with your customers, and even if you’re not actively communicating with them, listen to what they have to say. As I’ve often told potential and current clients who were reluctant to fully engage or participate in social media, people are talking about you whether you are present on the platform or not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 4 of how to create an agile brand. We need to stop thinking only in terms of the individual channels we reach customers through. Instead, we have to think of our customers in terms of their overall experience with our brand. As noted, customers are becoming more and more “device agnostic” and you could even say they are “channel agnostic” as well. Whether they choose to visit a store, or shop on their phone, text, tweet or even make a good old-fashioned phone call depends on many external factors brands can’t anticipate. To combat this, we must make our communications, marketing, commerce and customer service agile and channel-agnostic as well. This is what creates a great customer experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 3 of how to create an agile brand. It’s also not enough to just be adaptive. Without culture and processes for easy collaboration both internally and with external partners, being truly agile will not be possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every day, threat actors are working to penetrate your organization’s perimeter and access unauthorized, sensitive and confidential information. No organization is immune. Early detection is critical. Identity is at the core of security. Organizations that can seamlessly manage and maintain user access to business information and data will not only decrease the likelihood of a breach—and the financial, reputation and brand equity threats that accompany compromised data—but they will also eliminate service disruption, establishing a competitive advantage over their less-protected peers. In this episode of The Agile World, brought to you by TEKsystems, we discuss the critical importance of an identity access management (IAM) program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 2 of how to create an agile brand. When thinking about evolution versus revolution, you need to know when to take which approach for your own brand. You may need to take each of these tacks at different times. Generally speaking, you don’t want to continually take a revolutionary approach because you run the risk of alienating loyal customers. They may follow you through one reinvention, but too drastic change too often may not inspire the loyalty which is also critical to a successful brand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part 1 of how to create an agile brand. While it seems that it’s only in the age of technology that everyone complains about being too busy and things moving too quickly, this isn’t the case. As early as 500 BC, Heraclitus said: “the only thing that is constant is change.” You need to find ways to take advantage of change and use it for your advantage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just as past generations had their own unique relationship to brands, this dynamic will continue to evolve over time. Let’s take a look at a few aspects of branding as they relate to the generations which will shape our economy and society over the decades to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I go through the principles of an agile brand: • Our highest priority is to add value to people’s lives through meaningful interactions and tangible benefits that brands offer to customers. • We believe brands play an important role in society, and when they are managed properly, they can add value to people’s lives. • We believe change can be a force for good and branding and marketing need to change to best serve their customers and society. • We believe the future is bright and technology can be a force for good in the right hands and with the right motives. • We believe that to make a great brand is to tie a core set of values to the products and services delivered. • We also believe the world is in continual motion, and the ideas and thinking we currently share are subject to continual evolution as the practice of branding evolves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Netflix is a great example of a brand that has continued to disrupt, innovate and remain agile over time. From its beginnings up against the behemoth Blockbuster, to its current disruption of traditional television and home entertainment, I trace its roots and how it has stayed agile after all these years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices