Consultant and interim manager Erik Saelens has over 20 years experience in brand marketing and communications. He is the founder of Brandhome, where he is currently executive strategic director. Erik specializes in rebranding and renaming, having researched more than 250 brand-change operations worldwide. He is also an expert in brand management, M&A and IPO strategies.
Erik speaks regularly at conferences and universities worldwide, as well as contributing frequently to specialist sector media. He focuses on what makes branding meaningful today and how to make marketing relevant tomorrow. How can brands maintain/initiate contact with their customers? What do those customers want anyway? Erik is constantly rethinking these strategies and looking ahead. His unique storytelling style never fails to enlighten and entertain. Want to see Erik at work? Watch it here! More into reading? Erik is columnist for The Drum. Read his latest columns and take a look at his interviews.
INVITATIONAL EVENTS FEATURING ERIK:
- Get Tomorrow
- Charge Energy Branding
- Arab Hotel Investment Conference
- EXMA Colombia
- STEP Conference Dubai
- SxSw Austin
- Tesla World
- Eurobest
- Miami Ad School
- Benelux Tech Tour
- Cannes Lions
- World Marketing Congress India
- Dubai Lynx
- GCC Economic Summit UAE
- Corporate Image Congress
- Corporate Reputation Forum
- …and many more
Erik has written more than 15 books on brand marketing. He’s the writer behind The End of Marketing as we Know It, The marketing of meaning, The Brandhome method®, The Story Wars, Two Marketing Buddies Walk into Buddha, In Triple-A® We Trust and Branded, a book on how his team won the political elections in Belgium. Want to see Erik at work? Watch it here! More into reading? Erik is columnist for The Drum. Read his latest columns and take a look at his interviews.
Erik will help make your event happen. Years of international experience have given him the qualities every good host needs. Share your objectives with him and he will focus on the efficient and successful presentation of your event. Beyond hosting, Erik also organizes workshops in which he teaches others how to increase one-on-one interaction and explains why it is indispensable. Want to see Erik at work? Watch it here! More into reading? Erik is columnist for The Drum. Read his latest columns and take a look at his interviews.
Erik as
Speaker topics
Erik has a broad range of topics to offer. With his years of international speaking experience and marketing knowledge to spare, there’s bound to be a subject that matches your event. If not, make a suggestion!
Branding & the brandhome method®
A 45’ presentation about branding in general. What it is (not). How to start. The general trends. A look back in history. The building blocks of a brand. The building blocks of brand management. Tips and tricks.
See also www.brandhome.com/books and check out parts 1 and 2. And do the test yourself on www.brandhome.com/methodtest.
Rebranding & renaming
A 45’ presentation analyzing these operations and sharing key observations from Erik’s own experiences. Includes discussion of the theoretical framework and best practices for these kinds of operations.
Storytelling
A 45’ presentation about storytelling. Based on his book The Story Wars and the theoretical framework for storytelling he created. From story-mining, story-lining, story-telling, story-selling, story-buying to story-living.
Want to know more? Go to www.brandhome.com/storywarsbook.
Employer & internal branding
A 45’ presentation in which Erik stresses the importance of identity-driven organizations. A strong identity is the foundation of every successful brand. Strong brands express their individuality in everything they do. How do you build a positive, credible and consistent image in people’s minds? Internally and externally.
Political branding
A 45’ presentation about political branding in Belgium. The book Branded is based on the logbook that was kept from day one of the 2014 N-VA election campaign. Erik shares his professional and personal experiences during the campaign and describes how his team formulated the strategy, concept and plan that led to victory.
Want to know more? Go to www.branded.lu.
Triple-A branding®
A 45’ presentation on how to build Triple-A brands. Based on the book Erik wrote and the index he created: www.brandhome.com/books | www.triple-a-index.com
Triple-A is about balancing three elements to create a strong brand: Authenticity, Accountability and Activation. In today’s modern world – and especially tomorrow’s – these three elements are essential to gaining and keeping the trust of your audience.
Challenges of marketing
Adaptable to a presentation on the ‘basics’ of marketing and the end of marketing as we know it.
Life of a marketeer
A 45’ presentation about what it means to be in marketing. Based on the book Two Marketing Buddies Walk into Buddha, co-written by Erik and the CMO of Pepsi. It’s the first marketing book that reads like a novel; it’s funny while sharing content, challenges and insights in an engaging way.
Legal aspects of branding
A 45’ presentation on the legal aspects of branding, but from a marketer’s point of view. How (not) to collaborate with legal departments and lawyers. Why, when and how it is important. In collaboration with a leading Benelux law firm, we once created a fake brand to test the knowledge of Benelux marketers.
Check out www.boks.co.
Personalized presentation
Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? Erik can develop a customized topic to suit your needs. Here are a few options:
- interactive with the audience
- discussed in advance with the organizer/organization/company in order to best meet expectations
- tailored to audience and homogeneity/heterogeneity
- tailored to other speakers, the concept of the event … you name it
Topics might include:
brand-name and logo design, pay-offs, brand premium, de-positioning and challenger marketing, crisis communication, brand rejuvenation, brand experience, co-branding, ethno-marketing, brand innovation, brand loyalty, brand activation, brand research, brand dashboards …
Quotes
Erik at work
Erik Saelens speaks at Get tomorrow 2017
Erik Saelens speaks at CHARGE Energy Branding Conference 2017
Erik Saelens speaks at AHIC 2017
Erik Saelens speaks at EXMA 2016
5 Meaningfull questions to Uri levine, founder of Waze
5 Meaningfull questions to Marc Randolph, founder of Netflix
Erik Saelens, the author
Erik Saelens about Two marketing buddies walk into Buddha
All revenues of books and speaker events go to the Brandhome foundation. A non-profit organization which aims to support disadvantaged and underprivileged children in Flanders and the southern Netherlands.
Thank you
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