They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the second-best time is today. I think the same goes for communities. I am so grateful to Ia Lising for sparking the thought of an online brand the change community all the way back in 2015. As we slipped in and out of a pandemic panic, 2021 hardly felt like a year to me - more like an extension of 2020. Through the ups and downs of these years, the community around Brand The Change has really kept us going.

Wanjiru and I were reflecting on the year, and I put some highlights and lowlights and everything in between to paper.

We learned about new topics (highlights!).

We failed miserably on a few fronts (lowlights!)

A group of community members really went all the way in supporting the group (highlights),

And we had some big internal changes changes (high-low, and everything in between). 

Here we go…

We explored great new topics this year

We dove into Audience Research with George Beverly, and how to look at the world through the eyes of an audience detective.

We learnt more about what life looks like as a brand lead inside companies like Etsy - from Former Etsy Brand Director, Alison Feldmann. I couldn’t get enough. 

We spoke to Ben and Carlos of the Happy Pricing Course about overcoming our dysfunctional beliefs around money, and finally charging for the value we deliver (instead of the time we invest).

Angel Figueroa shared the investment journey of Meet Jack, and even opened up his investor deck to us. 

Roshan Paul spoke to us about how we can all build careers of purpose, where we can start, and what might surprise us along the way. 

We debated what ethical branding is (say what you do, do what you say) - and how we all pursue it in our own ways. 

Sarah Bacom from Growth Tribe unpacked the concept of growth marketing for good with us - and how rethinking a digital onboarding journey lead one of her participants to boost the adoption of electric vehicles by 200%. 

We’re closing the year this Thursday with our annual Pub Quiz on all things brand and social and environmental change - to see if you paid attention. 

We failed and failed, and then some!

We put a proposal for a new version of the brand thinking canvas in front of our community of facilitators - but the vast majority was happy with the old version, so we put the work on hold. Over Q3, we implemented some of the ideas into our new concept of a Brand Strategy on a page. 

We started the year with an Oatly brand jam to unpack what this popular brand has to teach us about building stronger brands for change. It was an experiment that did not fully work out - we should have structured the session much more clearly for those people who did not yet know our tools - and not everyone was enamored with the session. That’s the downside of experimentation: you fail publicly. We then worked with Oatly to create a full case study of their brand - which was a tough challenge in a busy year at Oatly, and it took us 8 months to release it. 

We turned our live programme Brand The Change Academy into a fully on-demand course, ‘Create and test your brand strategy’. We had planned it for release in June - and it’s still not fully done, with final modules scheduled to be tested early january. We just kept encountering ways to improve it - including our new tool, the brand strategy on a page. Testing took longer than expected, and video is not Anne’s happy place. The course will go live quietly in the next week - with a big bang scheduled for early next year. 

We ran the 2021 strength of community survey - and got great feedback. But some great feedback can hurt. So we’re nursing some of our wounds and figuring out how we can do better. 

We finally got around to that rebrand to Brand The Change. Which is a correction of several years of failing to address an important problem.

You really proved that it takes a village to build a brand:  

The amazingly generous Hanneke Laaning hosted 9 sessions on personal branding - helping independent professionals all over the world to get some feedback and support to embark on their personal brand journey. 

Emily, Kanika and Mariana gave their talent and time to host five meetups in Lisbon, helping local changemakers to get answers to their sticky brand questions. 

Wanjiru and Anne hosted 10 think tank sessions with our facilitator community, who brought their questions - from how to live the brand on the shop floor, to dealing with tough clients and finding better pricing models.  

At two global meetups, you rallied around 6 brands in medical technology, habit coaching, a podcast on mental health, wellbeing courses, a recycling label for textiles, and a community garden project. 

People come and go - and it tugs at our heartstrings. 

We ran two editions of Brand The Change Academy and decided that we love our alumni so much - we don’t want to miss them for too long. So we started hosting quarterly alumni hangouts that bring all classes together. 

Maira is leaving us for a new step in her career after three years of delivering training sessions with us. She will be sorely missed. Welcome to Maja (only two letters difference!) Who will be joining us in restructuring the business and comms in a marketing role. 

Here’s to 2022!

We’re kicking off the year with a crowdsourced trend forecasting event featuring Raquel from Brazil, Mark from Kenya, and perhaps: you? More to come!

Have a lovely end of your year with people you love, some time to rest and recover from both victories and defeats, and hope to see you again soon in the new year. 

Cheers,
Anne.