TED Residents Susan Bird, Torin Perez and Che Grayson from our first cohort of TED Residents. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED

On September 12, TED welcomed its latest class of the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. Residents spend four months in the TED office with fellow brilliant minds who are creatively taking on projects that are making significant changes in their communities, across many different fields  

The new Residents include:

• A fashion designer who is calling out pollution in the garment industry
• A pair of musicians who are building an online resource to match artists with grants
• An entrepreneur who is using geolocation and mobile technology to tackle the massive global litter problem
• A teacher who is turning the children of an entire school district into citizen scientists providing research data on the Bronx River
• A financial tech veteran who is interested in making our smartphone the focus of conservation!

At the end of their session, Residents have the opportunity to give a TED Talk about their ideas in the theater of TED HQ.  Read more about each Resident below:

Kevin F. Adler is the founder of Miracle Messages, a social venture that uses short videos, social media, and a global network of volunteers to reunite homeless people with their long-lost loved ones. His goal is to serve 1% of the world’s homeless population by 2021.

Zubaida Bai cofounded AYZH (pronounced “eyes”) seven years ago to bring simplicity and dignity to women’s healthcare worldwide. Innovations such as her Clean Birth Kit in a Purse are saving and changing the lives of the world’s most vulnerable women and children.

Formerly a career diplomat, Miriam Bekkouche‘s current work combines the latest in neuroscience and behavioral psychology with ancient traditional wisdom. She is the founder of Brain Spa, a coaching and consulting company that explores what mindfulness practice can bring to global problems.

Jordan Brown is a digital health professional who is developing a platform to promote the use of virtual reality and immersive video games in healthcare. In 2014, he founded MedPilot, which tackles the challenges of rising consumer medical costs.

Angel Chang is a womenswear designer working with traditional hand-woven textiles of ethnic minority tribes in rural China. She is taking what she’s learned about indigenous crafts and applying that knowledge to make the fashion industry more sustainable.

TED Residents Jeff Kirschner and Kunal Sood at TED HQ, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED

In his doctoral studies at Cornell University, Abram Coetsee studies the intersection of museums, new media and graffiti. Currently, he is curating a 3D digital reconstruction of 5Pointz, a New York City landmark until it was destroyed by real estate developers in 2014.

Sharon De La Cruz is CEO and Creative Coder of the Digital Citizens Lab, a design collective with a focus on civic technology. Using play as a fundamental tool, Sharon and her team create resources for educators that can meet the needs of historically underserved children of color. Their primary product, “El Cuco,” is an interactive digital comic built to teach children code logic.

As a oud player, Hadi Eldebek has toured with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. As a cultural entrepreneur based in New York City, he is collaborating with his brother, Mohamad Eldebek, on two projects: GrantPA, a platform that helps artists find and apply for grants, and Circle World Arts, a global network of workshops that connects artists, audiences, and institutions across continents, languages, and traditions. Mohamad plays percussion and has a master’s degree in neuroscience.

Trained as a visual artist, Danielle Gustafson launched the New York Stock Exchange’s first website in 1996. For the next decade, while serving as a digital-strategy executive in financial services, she also (literally) moonlighted as cofounder of the NYC Bat Group. She now advocates for broader awareness and study of bats, and believes that the smartphone may be the most important conservation tool of the 21st century.

Shani Jamila is an artist and a managing director of the Urban Justice Center. She creates pieces and curates public programs that use the arts to explore justice, identity and global engagement.

Brooklyn-based filmmaker, eco-activist, and futurist Shalini Kantayya uses her work as a tool to inspire audiences to action. The mission of her production company, 7th Empire Media, is to create a sustainable planet and a culture of human rights through imaginative media.

Francesca Kennedy founded Ix Style after seeing Lake Atitlan, in which she was baptized, contaminated and overrun with algae (“Ix” is the Mayan word for water). The company sells huarache sandals and fashion accessories made by Mayan artisans in Guatemala, and then donates a portion of every sale to providing clean drinking water for local children.

TED Resident Second from the right is Francesca Kennedy working with her collaborators from Ix-Style ar TED HQ, September 2016, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED

A backpacker-turned-bartender, Jeff Kirschner is a serial entrepreneur with a love for storytelling. His latest venture is Litterati, a growing global community that’s crowdsource-cleaning the planet, one piece at a time.

Lia Oganesyan believes in the power of virtual reality to foster community. Previously, she co-published DARPA-funded research that assessed how soldiers with PTSD responded to virtual human therapists. She is now building VeeR Hub, an online marketplace for virtual reality content creation.

Marlon Peterson is president of The Precedential Group, a social justice consultancy. He is a gun violence prevention strategist, writer, and now media maker.

While maintaining her fulfilling career as a healthcare and life-sciences executive, Susan C. Robinson is exploring how the natural expertise and unique skill sets of people with “disabilities” may be reframed–and how businesses can thrive while pioneering new standards for diversity and inclusion.

Kunal Sood is the founder and CXO of X Fellows and cofounder of NOVUS, which recently hosted a summit at the United Nations that explored using exponential technologies and innovation to achieve the 17 UN Global Goals. He is writing a book about exponential happiness.

Artist Rachel Sussman created “The Oldest Living Things in the World” (see her 2010 TED Talk here). Her current work includes a massive, handwritten timeline of the history—and future—of the space-time continuum (at MASS MoCA through April 2017), a sand mandala of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Oct. 28 to March 5, 2017, at New Museum Los Gatos), and a 100-Year Calendar, which she will develop during her TED Residency.

Elizabeth Waters is a neuroscientist and educator working to enrich and expand science education. Her school-based research projects engage students in rigorous, purposeful multiyear science experiments. In her K–12 curriculum for the Bronxville, New York school system, kids will collect, analyze and interpret data on water quality in the Bronx River over the next five years.

TED Residents Elizabeth Waters, Abram Coetsee, Kevin Adler at TED HQ, September 2016, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED

In the ever-changing world of brand marketing, the most volatile position is right at the top – the Chief Marketing Officer. Over the years, the role of CMO has been the subject of much scrutiny and introspection. If the “buck stops here” for the CEO, the “buck gets going” thanks to the efforts of the CMO. And that always gets everyone’s careful attention in the boardroom.

Only The Strong Need Apply

Neil St. Clair observed “CMO” is “the most dangerous title around.” No doubt, most CMOs would agree. Estimates of average tenure range from 28 months (less than a coach in the NFL) to a little over 6-1/2 years. Better than the average life expectancy for most CEOs, but hardly destined for a corporate anniversary watch. Indeed, it’s the toughest job in the toughest business of brand marketing. And it keeps getting tougher.

Survival Of The Fittest

Many long for the days when all a Chief Marketing Officer would do was, well, marketing. Mark DiSomma asked in “CMO TO CEO: The Next Generation of Brand Leadership” if the role of CMO would continue to evolve. Just two years later, we can answer a resounding “yes” … and the evolution hasn’t stopped. As Mark quoted Ad Age, CMOs will continue to require “vision, results and leadership.” But in today’s digital and dynamic competitive marketplace, the CMO will need so much more to survive and thrive.

Marketing That Means Business

As St. Clair noted, a “reexamination of the role” is warranted because today’s average CMO must be above average when it comes to wearing many hats. According to him, they must know four things extremely well to succeed: Marketing, the competition, content creation and business engineering (meaning setting the stage for new business development). Hence, St. Clair’s contention that the more accurate title for the position should be changed to “CMBDO” (Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer).

You Can’t Save Your Way To Greatness

But as so often the case, CMOs will be challenged by budgets dispensed by their counterpart CFO. As a friend and CMO would point out, “You can’t save your way to greatness, but you can save your way out of business.” As a rule, no one in the C-Suite is as aware of the cost (and value) of creating the big ideas required for the future than the CMO. Optimistically, we are seeing a small increase in marketing budgets across the board, with an average slice of about 7.5% of revenues. However, one of the most stressing parts of the job is fighting for the funds to drive the ideas you just fought for.

Building Trusted Brands Is Key

Valuable insights about the role of CMOs and the state of brand marketing were revealed in the August 2016 The CMO Survey produced by Deloitte, the American Marketing Association and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. This survey of 427 marketing V.P. level or higher executives acknowledges some shared opinions: A guarded optimism about the economy, a ramping up of competition, a propensity to invest more into existing markets and a growing priority to build “trusting relationships” with customers.

Trust in the brand is everything. It retains brand loyalists and inspires brand advocates. It is a potent defense against challengers and a platform to expand.

Being The Voice Of The Customer

All of that is pure brand building, facilitated in large part by the CMO’s ability to do two things: Smartly dissect and analyze customer data and wield social media effectively. No wonder the The CMO Survey predicts the budgets for analytics will increase 68% in the next 3 years. And no wonder the top three spots on the CMO’s to do list are brand, advertising and social media. Why wouldn’t they be? Of everyone sitting around that boardroom table, the only one that speaks for the brand’s customer (who is in essence “owner” of the brand as we all know) is the CMO. And many, many times it’s a woefully unappreciated position.

As Peter Drucker once observed, the two most important things any company does are innovation and marketing. The rest of it is just overhead.

The Simple Truth

It is important that the business world realize the simple truth. After it’s all said and done, only the CMO speaks for the brand. Only the CMO represents the customer. Only the CMO sees the trends and knows where the ship should be steered. And only the CMO can create and fight for the ideas that move their brand in the right direction.

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In the research I did for my latest Harvard Business Review column, The Best Salespeople Do What the Best Brands Do, I came across a lot of terrific sources on how to achieve sales leadership.  I was only able to include a few in the piece, so here’s a round-up of some more clarifying insights on sales leadership and how they tie to the brand-building principles that great salespeople execute:

In 10 Ways to Be Seen as a Sales Leader by Your Customers, Mark Hunter writes, “It’s not what you sell; it’s how you help the customer that makes the difference.”  Among his list of “list of 10 things every salesperson needs to be doing if they want to be seen as a sales leader” is: “Ask the customer questions both you and the customer can’t answer as a way to spur critical thinking.”

• This is a great example of how “Great salespeople don’t imitate, they innovate,” which is based on the brand-building principle, “Great brands ignore trends.”  In my HBR column, I explained that “Great brands don’t follow what everyone else is doing, nor do they wait to take their lead from customers.  In the same way, great salespeople offer their customers unique perspectives and often seek to push their thinking.  They present a differentiated sales experience by challenging customers’ status quo and teaching them something new and valuable.“

More on not following everyone else comes from a post, Why “Solution-Selling” (Problem-Solving) Is the WRONG Conversation to Have with CXO Buyers, on the CustomerThink blog by Jack Dean of Fast Partners.  He writes, “Don’t follow the Solution-Selling herd.  Break away.  March to a different, more sophisticated, drum beat.  Shift your mindset and change your customer conversation.  Focus on one theme: impacting the customer’s business priorities and outcomes, not solving problems with your solution.  Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to respond.  Stay alert and maintain high-levels of personal curiosity.  Stop following your agenda and start following the customer’s agenda.”

Deb Calvert has an excellent infographic on her topic of Stop Selling & Start Leading.  Deb’s research suggests that sellers are more successful when they replace “stereotypical sales behaviors” with leadership behaviors. One of her points labelled “What Sellers Can Do” is:  “Differentiate yourself from other sellers by stepping into your role as a leader.  Inspire buyers to come to you.”

• This resonated with me on the idea that “Great salespeople attract the best customers for their company” (and “Great brands don’t chase customers.”)  “Just as great brands know they’re not for everybody,” I wrote, “and so they seek to attract loyal and profitable customers through shared values and common interests, great salespeople are selective when engaging prospects.”

In The Customer Doesn’t Care About Your Number!, David Brock covers the stress that many salespeople face about making their sales quotas.  But he reminds us, “It’s not the customer’s job to help you make your numbers!”  He goes on to say, “Strategies we develop to accelerate the sale to meet our needs detract from the value we create with our customers.”  And he offers a different perspective:  “If we can’t help the customer understand the compelling reasons to make a decision now, in terms meaningful to them, we will never get them to accelerate their decision making process.”

• This speaks to the principle, “Great salespeople create real value for their customers,” which is inspired by the brand-building principle, “Great brands never have to ‘give back.’”  If you’re struggling to compel people to buy, then you’re probably not creating real value for them.  In my HBR piece, I observed, “Great salespeople don’t engage with customers simply to make a sale — they look for ways to make their clients more successful.“

Finally, Jeb Blount addresses the final point in my piece about how the best salespeople are brand evangelists.  In Do You Need to Love or Be Passionate About What You Sell to be Good at Selling It?, he explains how you can be a brand evangelist for products that are mundane or boring, or those that you just don’t love.  “Not loving what I am selling is not the same as not believing in what I am selling,” he says.  “There is a difference. I’ve always believed that what I was selling could help my prospect.”

That’s why brand evangelism — and sales leadership — is all about.  The last line of my HBR article reads,

Brand evangelism is about engaging customers in a way that produces stronger and more valuable brands and sustaining long-term business success for their companies and their clients.

related:

• the best salespeople do what the best brands do
• the sales associate of tomorrow
• the lost art of selling

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