I was at a presentation given by The Right Honourable The Lord Coe, often known through his career simply as Seb Coe, the other day, and one of the recurring themes in his speech was about being unafraid to do things differently.
He believed that the key to his success, or in his case, many, many, successes was to change the paradigm of what it took to ...break world records (8 outdoor and 3 indoor) or to win 2 Olympic gold medals, and even to bid to host the Olympics games.
For instance, when it came to presenting London’s bid for 2012, he challenged accepted wisdom and took a group of East London schoolchildren with him to make the point about the next generation of sporting stars.
At the time, he was told “they won’t like that”, but as he pointed out, not only was London 2012 successful but now every bid city adds a cast of ‘supporters’ to their core team.
As you may imagine creating a “new way” means opening yourself up to criticism and being objectified in the spotlight.
It also means the pain of sometimes standing alone.
This is something I've done all through my business life, and although I can't say that I have a cabinet full of gold medals, I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of wins.
So if you really want to be successful, show no fear and be prepared to stand out.
The rewards are worth it.
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About Me
- Kevin Jackson
- The glasses are important, since I’m almost totally blind in one eye. This means I have zero depth perception. Instead of making snap judgements, I have to think around a subject and look again to try and gain a sense of perspective. And that’s what I’m doing here - taking a different view of the trends and patterns around us to see if they’re as close as they seem, or further away than we thought. There’s not a discipline within the communications mix that I haven’t spent time in – what connects them though, is my passion for igniting advocacy and word-of-mouth. I’ve also worked on multi-platform campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands, we are all on first-name terms. Ultimately, whether it’s a consumer, business or internal audience, no one is exempt from my belief in engaging experiential communications. Over the last four years ago, I’ve been busy developing relationships across the telecoms, technology, FMCG, retail and energy sectors, to name a few.
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