Learning about courage - Braver Conference 2018

Yesterday Teads had the pleasure to sponsor The Marketing Society annual conference. The theme was ‘Braver’ (building on last year’s ‘Brave’ conference), and they certainly delivered against the brief.

The amazing activist Caroline Casey opened the day challenging us all to join the Inclusion Revolution. Amongst many great insights, she focused on the importance of showing 'this is the real me' and being brave every day ('say the things that are real'). For her, bravery is asking for help, following your star and remembering that every day you get a second chance. If you didn’t get a chance to see her at the conference, I would strongly recommend you watch her TED Talk...it’s great.

Thomas Barta reminded us that the path to bravery is not in your job description and that you have the power to be brave at every level.  He also and provided a great tool for you and your organisation to measure how brave you are currently, check it out at whatsyourbrave.org.

Cecilia Weckstrom explained how they had demonstrated true bravery at Lego when facing difficult business challenges and that the solutions were rooted in a clear understanding of the purpose of the organisation. Her advice for brands wanting to be meaningful is to 'find your why?'

This was followed by a brilliant session from detective superintendent in the Met Police, Tor Garnett, on what things stop people being brave. The three main things were ‘Hierarchy, Blame and Control' and she outlined what the Met Police are doing to change this. With people like Tor running our police force, I feel in very safe hands!

Sophi Tranchell explained the brave career change she had made from successful film producer to running Divine Chocolate, a small business where the owners are the cocoa farmers themselves. Because, as she told us, 'there is more to life than just making money'.

Eric E Murangwa shared his amazing experience of how football saved his life and how sport can teach you to be human. He told us ‘to inspire bravery in others, you first need to be brave yourself! Which was followed by an excellent explanation by Martin Glenn about how the FA challenged conventional wisdom to get the British public and media to reconnect with the England team.

After lunch the bravery continued with chief executive of The Marketing Society, Gemma Greaves, leading a conversation on Human Leadership between three of marketing’s most senior leaders; Syl Saller, Michelle McEttrick and Pete Markey, where they shared very personal experiences unpicking the myths about bravery, discussing what bravery means for them.

Steve Langan from Hiscox USA did a great session on finding the courage to do the right thing, no matter how hard, and the importance of millions of small moments of courage that build up the personal 'courage muscle’. This was followed by a very personal bravery session from Jaz Ampaw-Farr (Resilience Ninja) about how being brave requires authenticity, which in turn requires true vulnerability 

And finally, Marcus John Henry Brown shared a very surreal session on bravery in a future world.

So as you can see a really action packed day. When we started, the objective set by The Marketing Society was that when we left, we would be at least 2% braver than when we arrived that morning. This was certainly the case for me.

Written by Marc Zander, Global Vice-President Client Partnerships Teads