The Future is Bright for Business and Brands: Through the Lens of Optimism

optimism lens

Part 3 of 3 on the importance of optimism in building brands and business, written for and appearing first in First 5000, the professional network for Australian mid-sized businesses. 

Look at your business and brand through the lens of optimism

Working with Mid-sized Businesses and the larger end of Small Businesses, I understand that the key challenges are lower profit margins, cash flow and access to capital. As such, a challenging macro environment compounds these challenges. 

Park your problems for a day and think about how you can use your brand to drive optimism, both now and in the future, for your employees and customers, suppliers and partners, the communities in which you work and the environment.

Get out your Edward De Bono Yellow and Green Thinking Hats and run a workshop to look at your strategies and plans through the lens of optimism.

Use these blogs (parts 1, 2 and 3) as stimulus, generate ideas and prioritise for positive, future-facing, forward-moving action. Below are some questions you might want to consider.

Ask your participants to bring their own examples of business and brands driving optimism. Simply encouraging people in your organisation to think of examples of optimism helps them be more hopeful and confident about the future, and as such, drive more optimistic strategies and activities.

Optimism is contagious so a team fuelled by optimism will enthusiastically pay it forward to all stakeholders, building positive relationships and compelling them to buy, work with and invest in your brand.

Some Optimistic Questions to Pose

  1. How is your vision and purpose optimistic about the future? What are you doing to work towards it?
  2. Have your values been translated to behaviours and cultural attributes that drive action towards the vision and purpose?  How can you drive optimism today?
  3. Have you established optimistic objectives and what would you need to achieve them?
  4. How is your brand positioned for the future? How is this relevant to today? 
  5. Do you have a positioning territory with an existing brand or innovation that will bring optimism to your audiences today – such as products or experiences that make people feel good, services that provide support, platforms that encourage altruism and regeneration?
  6. Are you balancing short-term sales activations with longer-term brand-building communications that position your brand inspirationally and aspirationally in people’s hearts, minds and lives?
  7. How are you taking away the pain and surprising and delighting your audience along the customer experience, the employee experience, community engagement, environmental impact?
  8. Have you been planning any activities that may be detrimental to the brand in the future, that send a signal to all stakeholders that something is wrong or that denigrate competitor? What could you do that lays the ground for an optimistic future instead?

Want an Optimistic Workshop facilitated with Energy and Optimism?  

If you’d like us to design and facilitate a workshop to meet your specific needs, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the contacts page or directly: rachel@thehealthybrandcompany.com

Image source: Barbara Pisiolek | Dreamstime.com

Rachel Bevans

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