BRAND AND HAPPINESS!
What a difference it makes when the speaker believes in his/her thing 100%!
This week we had the pleasure of listening to interaction skills coach Christopher Evatt, Professor Kyla Mitsunaga and Mazda Brand Director Markku Riekkola and Brand Manager Aki Kaukola. All of them we’re so excited about their subject that it was impossible not to get excited as well.
Chris Evatt explaining how to to solve conflicts
I absolutely loved the attitude all of them had. Besides from being excited Chris Evatt pointed out that 70% of managers in working life believe that human skills are more important than technical skills. 70%, that is huge!!! Why in the world are technical skills than always listed first in most job advertisements? Maybe the time has come to change that.
Aki Kaukola celebrating Mazda
When Riekkola and Kaukola from Mazda explained to us how Mazda has built their brand I was impressed. I’m sure all of us remember from now on that “Brand is a promise delivered”. Riekkola and Kaukola pretty much left out most of the technical details Mazda has and concentrated on feelings in their presentation. Mazda wants to be playful (zoom-zoom) and celebrate driving and the driving experience. The design is connected to cat movements and the driver feels that driving Mazda is just as smooth as cat movements. All this took me back to Ronja Salmi’s session last week. She explained to us how everything is about story telling. Well, she was right for sure and I think Mazda ambassadors did a great job in telling their story.
Our teacher Anna Ikonen testing the star of our first project: Mazda2
Now we are all pumped up to take on the #MazdaStudentChallenge. The fact that Mazda is giving us a new Mazda2 to use during this project is amazing. So, now it is our time to impress them and show that we are worth the trust.
To avoid this blog turning into a novel, I will just mention a few more really cool things that happened this week; we teamed up with some exchange students to make a happiness video, we learned about video editing and my blog got picked “Blog of the week” by our digicoaches. Thank you so much, it really gave me an extra boost.
I’ll finish with the most powerfull words of the week in my opinion. Chris Evatt shared with us his secret to happy life: “Put people first, not career. When you do that, good things will start happening”. I can nothing but agree with him.
And here is a pic of two crazy girls and a hubby that I promise to always put first my life. Until next time, keep smiling and make people happy!
