Marcus Collins, PhD

Leading Through the Power of Culture

Scholars often refer to leadership as the ability to influence without authority. The most powerful way to do that very thing at scale is through culture—the system of beliefs, norms and symbols that demarcate who we are and what is expected of people like us. Whether you are in a company, an organization or community, culture governs everything. Dr. Marcus Collins helps leaders understand the power of culture in influencing and changing human behavior and to develop it as a leadership tool. Audiences learn how to shape a more innovative, productive, inclusive and empathetic culture in their workplace or organization. Most importantly, they’ll learn how to harness the sway of culture to get people to move and take action.

Building A Stronger Culture

No matter what your company or organization aspires to be—more innovative, more inclusive, more creative, more customer-centric, more productive, etc.—your success is 100% dependent on the culture that you create within the culture at large. Afterall, culture is the operating system of humankind. When you understand and operationalize it, it can become your organization’s superpower. In this game-changing talk, Dr. Marcus Collins walks audiences through the fundamentals of culture and how it affects who we are and who we want to be, giving audiences the tools to view any business challenge or opportunity through the powerful lens of culture. He also brings the audience together with group exercises that challenge their thinking, spark new ideas and inspire action.

Putting the Humanity Back into Customer Centricity

In today’s competitive business landscape, it’s more important than ever to put the customer at the center of all business decisions. While this truth might be widely held, our ability to build organizations that are readily capable of implementing a customer centric approach is not as accessible as we might desire. This talk uncovers a perspective for customer centricity and provides actionable strategies for adopting this approach within your organization.

Key takeaways:

• Understand the benefits of a customer-centric approach, including increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, and how it can drive business growth and success
• Discover strategies for creating a customer-centric culture within your organization and building a customer-centric team
• Learn how to apply these strategies to your organization right away

For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want To Be

Culture is a word we often use but seldom fully understand. So, why does that matter? Because there’s no force more influential on human behavior than culture. What we wear, what we watch, who we marry, how we vote, what we support, and just about every aspect of daily living is informed by—and in many ways governed by—our cultural subscription. Therefore, if we can fully understand what culture is and the underlying physics of how it works, then we can leverage its sway to get people to take action. Of course, this is powerful for marketers, politicians, leaders, managers, and anyone with a vested interest in getting people to move. In this talk, Marcus pulls from both theory and practice—using learnings from his work spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé to working with Fortune 500 companies like Apple, McDonald’s, and Google—to break down the ways in which culture influences behavior and unpacks how to leverage its power to get people to move.

Other Speech Topics Include:

A WHOLE NEW WORLD: CALIBRATING A PERSPECTIVE ON SEGMENTATION AND DATA
Today’s connected-world provides marketers unprecedented access to consumer data. We can track what people like, where they go, what they share, what they buy, and so on. The reams of passive information that people shed on a daily basis allow for more targeted messaging and measurement. However, while this intelligence has made marketers more confident, it has not made them more accurate in their efforts. This deficiency is not due to a lack of available data, rather, it is born from a lack of truly understanding people. Marketers have mistaken consumer information for consumer intimacy and, therefore, have not been able to fully leverage the power of data analytics. In this session, we will uncover a new and more accurate approach to segmentation so that we might improve our marketing accuracy, extract the potential of big data, and ultimately get closer to predictive modeling.

YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN? A CULTURAL LOOK AT CONSUMER MEANING-MAKING AND BRAND CONSECRATION
We live in a culturally constructed world where the branded products we consume and display are used to signal our constructed identity based upon the meaning we infuse in them. Understanding this meaning requires radical empathy and the ability to decipher the hidden cultural codes. This session will provide a perspective on how to navigate the cultural world and leverage the data that is made available through today’s evolving media landscape to encode and decode meaning through marketing.

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF THE NETWORK
It’s been said that “good marketers see consumers as complete human beings with all the dimensions real people have.” Demographics fail to accurately describe “real people.” Of course, that’s why marketers focus on psychographics because they paint a more vivid picture of who people are. However, the truth is, psychographics and personas only get us so far. In this session, we will uncover a new and more accurate approach to segmentation so that we might improve our marketing accuracy and ultimately get closer to predictive modeling.

CREATING CULTURAL CONTAGION
In today’s hyper-connected world, the allure of “going viral” continues to seduce marketers and idea-generators into investing significant time and resources toward the creation of content – videos, memes, tweets, posts, etc. – that spreads. There is seemingly no shortage of brands, business owners, or storytellers who covet the opportunity to have their ideas trend on Twitter, rake up 1 million+ views on Youtube, or garner thousands of Facebook “likes.” Metrics of social-chatter are then used as a proxy for success with the inclination that virality leads to reach and reach implies potential action. Though there are benefits to “going viral,” one must wonder if virality is truly what we’re after or if perhaps there is something far greater worth pursuing. This session reframes the benefits of “going viral” and provides an alternative aim. It explores the impact of culture on consumer behavior and offers an actionable framework that enables marketers to create ideas/messages/ products/content that not only spread but also take hold in culture.

LEARNING FROM HIP HOP
Hip hop is a large, well-defined, valuable, and growing culture of consumption with a set of beliefs, norms, artifacts, and language which govern the behaviors of this tribal collective and the social structure thereof. The construction of these governing cultural characteristics are highly visible and accessible by social media and other marketing channels of communication. What makes this potential even more staggering is the contagious which takes place among this culture of consumption not rarely but routinely, as seen in the adoption of Beat By Dre headphones, Adidas’ Yeezy sneakers, and the Fortnite video game. In fact, the hip hop culture of consumption has become a multi-billion dollar industry and has influenced consumption activities across such areas as music, automotive, fashion, sport, marketing, and tech. There is much to be learned from this consumption culture and how brands tap into this powerful buying population. In particular, what are the processes by which norms are negotiated and constructed when social contagion of branded products happens among members of the hip hop culture of consumption? How does the exchange and propagation of content between members of the hip hop culture of consumption translate into cultural characteristics within the collective? This session aims to not only address these issues but provide insight as to how brands can use this knowledge to inform product innovations, marketing activities, and business decision-making.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORKSHOP
Social media technologies are continuously transforming the ways consumers interact with each other and firms. These changes constitute a fundamental shift in the marketplace — consumers have greater opportunities to voice their opinions and connect with other consumers as well as an increased influence over marketers and brands. As a result, the conventional approaches to marketing communications have become more and more challenged. This puts an added emphasis on leveraging social media to engage consumers and propagate ideas, messages, products, and behaviors. This workshop takes an in-depth look at the relationship between media and human behavior, and examines how organizations can capitalize on social media to support their marketing efforts. Participants will learn the secrets to unlock the potential of today’s tools to create comprehensive social media strategies and share-worthy ideas.

BRANDING & BRAND STRATEGY WORKSHOP
Today’s brands have transcended beyond mere marks of ownership, which aid commercial exchange, to become full-fledged cultural producers. This transcendence was no act of serendipity or result of happenstance. Rather, marketers have committed themselves to building strong brands that have relevance and global reach. Understanding the strategic decisions that go into building such brands will arm future marketers with the skills they need to develop, manage, and grow these brands themselves. This workshop, therefore, is designed to explore the building-blocks of branding and how contemporary marketers communicate brand ideas through effective advertising campaigns and powerful creative ideas.

DIGITAL MARKETING WORKSHOP
“Digital” has become one of the most important issues in business today—requiring new skills and capabilities from the entire workforce to compete in the market. The word “digital,” however, has come to represent a type of technology, a mindset, a skillset, and a whole host of factors that make up contemporary business. With no shortage of jargon, abstractions, and buzzwords associated with “digital,” practitioners have struggled to find clarity in the space and fully leverage the potential power of “digital” for their business. This class takes an in-depth look at “digital” to provide an approach which empowers marketers with a perspective to navigate the ambiguity of “digital” with concreteness and actionable skills. Participants will learn how to apply strategic thinking to the creation of “digital” marketing activities that not only change industries but also consumer expectations.