What Great Brands do:
Seven Ways to Build a Great Brand today
Brands and branding are now driving the world’s most iconic and successful businesses. Smart start-ups, companies, entrepreneurs and business people have found a new formula for building strong connections with customers that become loyal followers, even brand fans and fanatics.
Gone are the days when big budgets and saturation campaigns can force brands into your subconscious.
The new era is about heads, hearts and hands
heads making an emotional decision to buy, hearts making a brand commitment and hands buying and using what the chosen brand offers, gives and shares.
Seven Ways to build one:
Understand people’s mind space
What is your target market talking about? What are they doing? What concerns them? What do they need?
Determine your personal brand
Can you describe the single, strongest value you offer to the marketplace? What is your passion? How will the two combine?
Define your business brand
What are you offering not only in terms of products and service, but also advice and guidance, a cause greater than profit and a desirable social context?
Put your brand to work
Under promise, over deliver. Surprise and wow.
Find your “why”
People buy what you believe, not what you do.
Be authentic, real
That is a sustainable business platform
Have a long-term plan
Do you have an action plan for where you want to be in ten years’ time?
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Persuasive Communication:
How to influence, inspire and get to yes every time
The difference between just writing and speaking or communicating in an impactful way is what sets business and other leaders apart. Moving from sharing information to persuasion to inspirational leadership is a journey – where are you on the path?
Learn the skills, insights and techniques from someone who held senior positions in print journalism and broadcasting and then became spokesperson for six organisations.
Pieter will share his experience on how to prepare for a public speech, presentation and meeting.
Learn how to remain calm under pressure in a crisis and put your message across in an interview with a newspaper, radio or television. Gain insights about writing in a warm, personal, inspiring way.
In this presentation, Pieter will explain how to:
- Prepare a great communication plan
- Align your team and execute the plan
- Use the right words to attract, impress and persuade
- Win people over who disagree or are indifferent
- Deal effectively with opposition and bad ideas
- Prepare for that big moment, that crucial pitch
- Handle the pressure of media or other interviews
- Apply the unwritten rules of communicating
- Handle difficult conversations
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How to be a powerful Networker:
What the best Networkers know, do and say
Networking is so much more than exchanging business cards!
Pieter has networked with Royals, Presidents, celebrities, footballers, FIFA, Mayors, mortals and some politicians……and has lived to tell his story to many audiences. He mastered the skill in a career spanning journalism, broadcasting, elections, energy, financial services, government and international consulting.
He shares those skills and tools, but also the powerful impact of connecting with people, growth and possibilities.
A brilliant network is essential for personal and professional achievement. You need teamwork and networks for success. Successful business and professional people learn how to inspire, align and energise their teams through powerful, persuasive communication and networks.
Pieter will take you through the structure, steps and techniques needed to:
- Get the vision and motivation of a brilliant networker
- Learn the art of networking conversation
- Build an integrated and effective plan
- Priorities, focus, time management
- Engage your team
- Successfully build and maintain your network
- Effectively communicate with your network
- Acknowledge, celebrate, grow, debrief, re-invest
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Smart Communication:
A Hard Skill for Business Success
“Communication is too important to be left only to communicators”.
Communication skills are no longer “soft” skills in business. They are “hard” business skills. Get it wrong and you can pay the price in lost sales, opportunity and reputation. Get it right and you turn a buyer into a customer into an ambassador.
Communication mastery is at the heart of the Tom Peters mantra of treating customers like guests and your staff like people. Customers have become informed, street-wise and vocal. They do not have to find a newspaper or radio station to bad-mouth your service or sing your praises. They have connected mobile devices and can instantly air their customer feedback on social media.
Communication and marketing are flipsides of the same business coin, not separate departments. Make sure what you promise your customer becomes true when he or she e-mails, calls or walks through that door. Make a personal connection.
Understand how news and social media work and the do’s and don’ts of using them. Know how to impress customers, handle complaints, make impactful presentations and pitches and create the best possible first impression and, thereafter, a business relationship. This presentation will give you communication insights, tips and tools to use in your profession or business.
These include:
- Understanding integrated communication and the tools in the toolkit.
- Building your personal and business brand.
- Knowing the do’s and don’ts of news and social media and the skill of communicating through them.
- Understanding how news media work and using your daily news to hone your own communication skills.
- Learning to plan and prepare for pitfalls, and handling them when they happen.
- Optimizing, maximizing and leveraging good communication and marketing for business success and growth.
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Bunkers, Bogeymen and Bold Breakthroughs
The ’94 elections: The story and lessons remain valid to this day.
* This talk is especially topical in the run-up to annual Freedom Day celebrations and as a networking opportunity with invited clients, customers and stakeholders.
The inside story of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 is as relevant today as it was dramatic at the time. The lessons and case studies from that pressurised, uncertain, crisis, yet game-changing time are appropriate for South Africa, business, NGO’s and civil society right now.
International election experts warned that South Africa’s first democratic elections would take one to two years to organise. It was accomplished, against all odds, in four months. Imperfect, but widely considered and accepted as the will of the South African people, these elections united South Africans while waiting in long queues to cast their votes.
It was seven times bigger than any previous election, almost 20 million people voted at 10 500 voting stations, a third without water or electricity, in deep rural hamlets and without today’s information and communications technology. Urban violence, sabotage, bloody clashes between political opponents, even armed invasions tested the Independent Electoral Commission, security forces and those who had crafted a peace deal. It simply had to be ratified in a general election and 27 April 1994 was cast in stone.
The IEC grew from one staff member, its chairman, Judge Johann Kriegler, in December 1993 to 350 000 election staff on voting days. A massive voter education drive saw 6 million manuals in 11 languages distributed countrywide to overcome illiteracy: voter turnout was 86% plus, spoilt ballots were less than 1%.
Pieter was in the thick of it: As Communication Director and spokesperson of the IEC. In a fascinating, scary, humorous and uplifting talk, he will take you on that journey.
He will tell the story of:
- The dark hours when the IEC was hit with decisive surprises and crises
- The superhuman efforts and battle-like logistics to give people that precious chance to vote
- Frustrating, humiliating and tense negotiations with Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu to participate in the ballot and allow electioneering in their territories
- Violence on the East Rand, the Shell House shooting, no-go areas and Operation Access
- How Pres. De Klerk was no longer governing and Mr. Mandela was not yet governing leaving the IEC to hold the reins
- How international media descended on South Africa expecting bloodshed
- Court action threats by major political parties on the eve of announcing the election results, almost scuppered a national effort
- What did we learn from 1994?
- What would it take to relive our proud moments?
The story starts in 1994, but does not end there. Pieter gives an insightful analysis of South Africa’s journey and reflects on where we are today, decades down Democracy Road.
What has gone right in South Africa the past two decades? What has gone wrong and why? How do we improve or fix it? This first-hand story is about leadership and ordinary people in extraordinary events. It is South Africa’s story.
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READY! FIRE! AIM!:
My South African Story (a speech by Pieter Cronjé)
From John Lloyd, CEO of Brandstorm:
I recently hosted a Smart Thinking for Crazy Times morning business seminar. I enlisted the services of a friend of mine to share the platform. Pieter Cronjé presented possibly the finest, insightful and irreverent talk that I have ever witnessed.
What made it so brilliant? It was the true story of his colorful, diverse and interesting career. True stories with a strong message make the most brilliant presentations of all.
I strongly endorse Pieter Cronjé as a brilliant strategist, a superb communications expert and a top keynote speaker. He will educate, entertain and inspire any audience.
Contact Pieter at pieter@pietercronje.com to enquire about consulting and speaking engagements.
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