During 2017 I taught a tertiary (university) level ‘Strategic Marketing’ course and ‘Branding’ course at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT). Throughout the delivery of lectures in the case of each course, I repeatedly encouraged students to apply their “imagination muscle” – to think about the respective assessment exercises with an open and explorative mindset.
A number of students responded to this challenge with real vigor, and in 2 cases such was the quality of their work that – with the full support of EIT School of Business management – I elected to expose their work to outside business leaders who I felt would be interested in what they had produced.
One of these pieces of work was exposed to the Managing Director of one of the largest companies operating in N.Z.; which led to this MD arranging for the student concerned to meet with one of their senior marketing people.
The other piece of work reflected some of the most thought-provoking and innovative branding ideas I have seen in my commercial career; ideas that have the potential to transform the behaviours and attitudes of society at large through providing experiences that focus on encouraging people to interact positively with one another, to collaborate and cooperate in order to realise greater gains than those they would otherwise be able to achieve acting as individuals. In fact I rate this piece of student work as being both “extraordinary” and “visionary”. The ideas in this piece of work are poised ready to be presented to carefully selected Hawkes Bay leaders; to explore how they might be operationalised.
Both pieces of work were produced by people who were driven by passion, strong positive attitude and the pursuit of being the best that they can be. These are key ingredients for changing lives – as has been proven in the above cases.
I implore more people to profile and celebrate the successes of others as/ when they happen. Give your colleagues/ friends a “leg-up” onto the next rung on their career ladder. In other words “give them wings to fly”, to bring out the best of themselves.