Dustin Garis

Routine is the greatest enemy of innovation.

Profile

Dustin Garis is a world-renowned brand innovator and customer experience pioneer, pushing the boundaries throughout his career at the most breakthrough companies around the globe.

This includes the likes of The Coca-Cola Company and Procter & Gamble FutureWorks — an innovation epicenter responsible for incubating a billion-dollar pipeline of disruptive ventures worldwide.

His changemaker tactics break the mold of typical executives, such as embarking on a global expedition to 50 countries across six continents to uncover the secret to building life-changing brands.

Expertise

Talking Points

The Next Frontier of Brand Innovation

Every organization must continuously transform itself to capitalize on the changing world around it.

When faced with the challenge of disrupting the world's largest marketing company (P&G), Dustin Garis integrated lessons from his global expeditions that spanned 50 countries, thousands of consumers, and thought-leaders from the most innovative Fortune 500’s and entrepreneurial ventures. What he uncovered is a brand revolution that focuses on life-enriching experiences. Coined “LifeProfit,” this creates the single most desired brand engagements by consumers, and it’s the engine behind innovative work forces.

He inspires audiences with a customizable talk that takes you on a fascinating journey, transforming the way
you approach your brand... and your life.

Sales/Marketing: The Experience Revolution

As the Chinese proverb states, “Hearing something a thousand times is less impactful than experiencing it once.”

Why then is our primary focus on brand messages instead of brand experiences? There’s a shift taking place -- leadership brands (from Coke to Mr. Clean) have stopped talking about their brand, to now focus on experiences that get people to live their brand.

This is the single largest white-space opportunity for brands to grow: real life. Taking your brand off the shelf and out of media, to authentically enrich people’s life, generates the highest level of loyalty, advocacy, and sales (with a game-changing 95% lift).

Innovation/Culture: Human Innovation

Considering that “over 95% of consumers and employees are human,” how could our approach to innovation be more human? From his years helping global megabrands act like entrepreneurial startups, brand humanist Dustin Garis proved that the greatest opportunity for brands is not just innovating on products and marketing, but rather innovating on the full human experience.

In this talk, Dustin Garis shares mind-bending principles for reinventing the organization from the inside out, creating a culture of creativity/agility and unconventional approaches to human understanding, for breakthrough market impact.

Change Leadership: Be a Troublemaker

Changing the world begins with changing the way people experience the world, both customers and employees. But this isn’t easy -- it takes change leadership. Those willing to be a troublemaker, a changemaker who can stretch the organizational comfort zone to try new things.

In this talk, Dustin Garis shares the unexpected best practices of corporate troublemakers behind breakthrough market innovations (from Virgin to Southwest Airlines). Whether c-suite executives or frontline managers, they don’t just adapt to change, they lead the change that has been behind all great human advancement in history.

Digital/Media/Retail: The Future of Digital

Now that the world has gone digital, it’s time to get offline. In our blind rush to prove our tech savvy, we’ve lost sight of our true brand purpose. To fix this, we must look beyond the noise of shiny new gadgetry, to focus on key drivers of market disruption, which are rooted in fundamental human behaviors.

We now have the clarity and capability to leverage digital media as a gateway (a means vs. an end) to true brand engagement and customer experience. Brands from The North Face to Zappos have discovered that in this age of authenticity, “virtual” will always be secondary to “reality.”

Futurist/Trends: The Gen X/Y/Z Movements

“80% of people prefer experiences over stuff.”

This is the most powerful, yet untapped, human insight driving the marketplace. It can be seen in how generational social movements are changing the traditional model of consumption, employment, and lifestyle. These experience-first generations present a challenge to brands, with implications across all functions (marketing, product design, hiring, etc), but also an extraordinary opportunity to tap into it.

In this talk, Dustin Garis teaches brands and retailers “how to fish” for hidden insights, and offers a futurist look at the trends (and countertrends) of experiential brands like Red Bull and AirBnb that are changing the world of business... and the world.

Media

Video

Dustin Garis | Chief Troublemaker

Pursuit of a memorable life | Dustin Garis | TEDxRenfrewCollingwood

This talk may save your life, or inspire you to get a goat. Innovation guru Dustin Garis shares his improbable around-the-world quest for the meaning of life. What he discovers is a deadly epidemic of monotony, and a mind-bending solution called LifeProfit that is sparking a global uprising against the ordinary approach to business and life. Dustin Garis is on a mission against monotony. After venturing to more than 40 countries on an around-the-world quest for the meaning of life, he discovered his true purpose to help people break from routine and live a memorable life.

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