
What Happens Next: 4 Practical Ways to Prepare for the Post-COVID Future
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A global authority on Innovation and Strategy, Will predicts how future customers are going to behave, and recommends the best strategies clients should use to reach them.
He’s the man who championed Strictly Come Dancing to the BBC, warned the drinks industry about the New Sobriety, and saw the Wellbeing Consumer coming a mile off.
His engaging and inspiring talks leave audiences excited to face the future: armed with new, smarter ways to handle tomorrow’s consumers; and an arsenal of opportunities for innovation-led growth.
His keynote talks have inspired thousands globally: from conferences organised by the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review to corporate events for Walt Disney, Barclaycard, Marks and Spencer and Primark.
Will runs strategic consultancy Next Big Thing, helping clients from Amazon to HSBC, Sainsbury’s to MTV understand what their customers (and employees) will think, do, expect, demand and buy in future.
He wrote the first practical handbook for trend strategists: ‘The Next Big Thing: Forecasting Consumer Trends For Profit’ (Kogan Page, 2009), which has since been translated into five languages.
He’s been interviewed across media: BBC to Bloomberg TV, Fast Company to The Times. He presented a TV show for CNBC, and written for The Economist, Advertising Age and Huffington Post.
He’s taken part in academic programs like Cambridge University’s Open Innovation Forum and been a judge on prestigious panels such as WARC Innovation Awards.
Will made his name in the Music industry. Working at Sony, Virgin and Universal, he marketed artists from Michael Jackson to The Rolling Stones. His fascination with music fans led him to the Research industry, as a consumer trends consultant for brands from Levis to BT: and later as managing director of research company OnePoll, whose clients include Kelloggs and Findus.
When Money Can’t Buy You Engagement: 3 Ways to Grow & Inspire a Post-Covid Workforce
In a nutshell, the pandemic has changed the way people approach their work:
As a result, it’s never been more important to engage employees and contractors alike:
Audiences will leave the talk:
Three ways to reach the Post-Covid Consumer. Many of your customers’ behaviours and attitudes changed during Covid. But which will they retain after lockdown ends? Will family, locality, community and safety still matter? And how might that impact your company? What threats and opportunities might it offer?
In this inspiring talk, Will takes you on a journey into the future to show you the three macro trends that’ll drive what your customers will want and expect from your brand over the next two years. For each trend, he will:
1. Analyse what’s behind it and how it will manifest
2. Explore the implications for the individual audience’s specific industry
3. Identify the opportunities to:
4 Great Ways to Get ‘Post-COVID-Ready’: Look to the future now. Thanks to the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, many companies are having to spend most of their time dealing with the day to day. That can mean finding ways to integrate new working and sales practices, or just trying to juggle cash flow.
This topic will cover the four things any company can do to better prepare themselves for this post-COVID landscape:
Changing Fortunes: How you can make sense of and monetise consumer change. We are living in turbulent times. Few industries or parts of our lives are safe from change. But change offers possibilities as well as threats.
This topic takes you on a tour of emerging trends, drivers, and ideas shaping tomorrow’s customer, identifying implications and opportunities for individuals, and helping you anticipate and adapt your strategies to all these changes.
You will also:
Future-Proof Your Business: Create products strategy to appeal to tomorrow’s Smart Consumer. Everything we create in business succeeds or fails due to consumer demand.
But how can you predict what that demand will be? This topic helps you take the guesswork out of planning by helping you identify the key needs, attitudes, and behaviours of tomorrow’s Smart Consumer.
You will also:
Customer Revolution: The rise of the new Smart Consumers and how to appeal to them. Once brands and advertisers drove the business agenda; today consumers are taking charge. Aware of their power, they seek greater control over their purchasing and media behaviours, and are subsequently developing a whole new set of attitudes, expectations, and needs.
This topic shows you how to anticipate and appeal to tomorrow’s new Smart Consumer. In this talk, you will:
Customer-Driven Innovation: Develop business models to resonate with new Smart Consumer. Innovation is increasingly being driven not by company needs but by those of the consumer. As part of an Innovation program, this talk offers emerging foresights on future consumer needs. Audiences will learn about key trends and future thinking to inform and drive business innovation in a fast changing market.
You will also:
Smart Staff: Adapting to the opportunities and threats of new employee attitudes. Employee attitudes to work, schedules, hierarchies, and rewards are changing. Tech change is driving individual empowerment. Traditional ways to attract or retain staff are failing. How can you please employees while improving bottom line?
This topic helps you understand how to get the best out of the new generation of ‘Smart Staff’. By the end of the day, you will: