We’re at a crossroads of new beginnings. We need connectedness, we need community, now more than ever. There is a lot riding on us as we try to future-proof our marketing communications efforts and dollars during these dynamic times. You don’t have to tackle this alone. Geno Church, Director of Discovery and Strategy for We Must Be Bold, will dig into brand community building and how community can power word of mouth at AMA Madison’s 2021 Virtual Annual Conference: Power of Community on Sept. 30th.
Attendees will learn how to create a “human grid” through human connection, advocacy, and the science of word of mouth. We sat down with Geno for a Q&A to see what we can expect from his presentation:
What do you expect the audience to take away from your Community Mythology presentation?
Change the perspective of what is a brand community. Tools to better start their journey into community building. Inspire more time and budget spent in the discovery process of community building. Connect the dots from community to word of mouth.
What is holding companies back from building communities?
Urgency is a community killer. Most communities that are launched fail. A discovery process is critical to discovering how your customers’/advocates’ lives benefit from your products or services. Discovery takes time, money, and the willingness to discover a truth that might not be totally positive. The next issue is we need to move beyond a marketing-based definition of community. Communities are defined often by how we can create a channel that we can amplify messaging and encourage user-generated content. We have to move companies to a deeper understanding of the width of community, and the opportunities of building community experiences that are beneficial and valuable to our advocates, customers, and fans.
If you were not engaged in your current career, what would you be doing instead?
A children’s book author by day, a science-fiction author by night. An explorer or archeologist – I almost went this route but I fell in love with design and marketing in college.
Don’t miss Geno and other marketing thought leaders at AMA Madison’s 2021 Virtual Annual Conference: Power of Community. Register Now!
About Geno Church
Geno is the Director of Community Strategy and Design for We Must Be Bold. Geno has built youth-led prevention movements, sparked wonder and curiosity in the nation’s classroom, grew a creative community around scissors, empowered people to take care and appreciate their public parks, developed a beacon of hope for those affected by addiction, and birthed a community for cheese lovers. For 23 years, Geno was Discovery and Strategy Director at Brains on Fire but has always considered himself more of a “Passion Pirate” and explorer for the agency’s clients. Geno shines when uncovering the DNA of clients and their customers and has walked that path with brands and organizations including Fiskars Brands, the National Center for Families Learning, National Council of Teachers of English, Australian Childhood Foundation, BFGoodrich, Michelin, The Environmental Defense Fund and Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. Geno is also a highly sought after speaker and has been a presenter and a workshop facilitator at events hosted by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Blackbaud BBCON (Australia), WOMM Japan, EXMA Bogota, EXMA Peru, EXMA Ecuador, The Good Business Summit, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, just to name a few. He is a co-author of two books, Brains On Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable Word of Mouth Movements + The Passion Conversation: Understanding, Sparking, and Sustaining Word of Mouth Marketing. Geno was named to the Word of Mouth Marketing Hall of Fame in 2015.