Fast Company Innovation Festival Brings the Latest Marketing Trends to Life Through Pathways of Hope

This year – truthfully, like all others – has already flown by. I’ve had the Fast Company Innovation Festival marked on my calendar since May, and it always seemed to be something I’d be attending in the distant future. When the week approached to head to New York City, I was expecting a week of good sessions with expert speakers in their fields, but I’m honestly thrilled to report that I left that conference with so much more than new ideas to give me (and our team!) a burst of energy to bring through the end of the year.  

The Main Stage  

This year, Fast Company honored ten top innovators of today throughout the conference and in their magazine. Festival goers were able to catch some of these biggest names on the conference main stage throughout the week. A few of the week’s stars that took the stage were Ryan Reynolds (cofounder, Maximum Effort and Chief Creative Officer, MNTN), Ted Sarandos (Co-CEO, Netflix), and Lin-Manuel Miranda (songwriter, actor, director). While at first you might think, “what does this group know about marketing?”, the answer is actually quite a lot. A few of my favorite key takeaways from this impressive lineup are:

• The detailed work is the stuff people remember. Don’t go half-measured on something – this advice from Reynolds really stuck with me, as it’s something I believe we exude at Greenough Communications on a daily basis. Our success as an agency, I believe, comes from going the extra mile for clients (any cool social metric we could share? How are you tracking against competitors?) and showcasing our full skill set as their agency and partners.  

• Admit that you don’t know the answer to everything – this is what brought me back to agency work. Having a team to bounce ideas off and ask for advice is what keeps me going. Reynolds explained he faced this time and time again when purchasing the Wrexham football club and leaned on partners and those who grew up in the area to make business choices about the team.  

• Netflix has found success by making shows that will engage a certain area and does not necessarily need to be a global success – this can be a hard pill to swallow in PR and marketing as we often want to get the largest reach for our news and campaigns, but oftentimes, our field requires more personalization to a certain group or area that requires all efforts to be utilized in that direction.  

• Reserve the right to get smart – Sarandos admits he found himself using the word “never” when he first joined Netflix as he wanted the company to be good at video distribution and did not consider creating their own programming. What has obviously become one of the greatest strengths of Netflix is their original shows (Squid Games is one of their top performers globally ever) and is in part to giving people grace and allowing them to change their mind and pivot to new revenue streams when the market changes.  

• A good idea does not leave you alone - Lin-Manuel Miranda is known for his musical excellence from Hamilton to the upcoming Mufasa/Lion King prequel. When knowing when to move forward with an idea, he shared that the good ideas are ideas within ideas, and they don’t leave you alone. In our own work, it’s interesting to relate this to tapping into our creative sides and encouraging clients to take on projects that might be out of their vision, but if it’s one that keeps coming back to us, it may be worth pursuing.  

Girl Power

Now that I’ve mentioned three amazing male leaders, I must transition to highlighting the many, all-female-led panels at the festival that brought tears to my eyes.  

“The Art—and Science—of Truly Disruptive Communications” was standing room only and featured the minds of Liz Golden (EVP, Communications, Marketing, Government and Community Affairs, NYU Langone Health), Leena Jain (Chief Marketing Officer, Canyon Ranch), and Jennifer Lowney (Global Head of Communications, Citi). The companies that these women oversee marketing efforts for shared they have seen stronger success by monitoring internet trends and not immediately jumping on them. Success came from innovating and thinking outside the box to be the first in their fields to take on new projects, lean into advice from younger generations, look to podcasts over traditional news outlets (as they’re picking up more popularity), and knowing it’s ok to pause a partnership with an influencer if the final product did not reflect their brand.  

“Intelligent Experiences: Utilizing AI—Intelligently” was another standing room only session featuring Jenny Storms (Chief Marketing Officer, Entertainment and Sports, NBCUniversal) and Emily Wengert (Executive Principal, Experience Innovation, Huge) who shared how they created OLI, the natural language chat system NBC created with Huge to serve as the official chat bot of this summer’s Paris Olympics. In less than a year, the two teams came together to create OLI and fed potential questions (such as, when is Simone Biles competing today?) to the intelligence. They knew their audience would be looking for a quick tool to digest and move through all the hours of content NBC was producing and OLI was a hit.  

The Future of Work (!!!!)

An overused phrase, perhaps, but it’s one I love and love learning about. A key theme from the festival was that a company’s culture is still a HUGE way to retain and recruit employees. It has always been one of the main reasons I’ve chosen to work at companies, as well. The following are some of the culture perks that stood out to me across multiple sessions of leaders who are committed to creating a workplace of growth and innovation.  

• The future of work cannot be thought of as 9-5 anymore. People are prioritizing what means most to them in their careers and on weekdays.  

• Where you spend your time is equally as important as how you spend your time.  

• Sleep is a huge factor in taking care of our mental health. Focus more on the time that you go to sleep, not the hour that you wake up.  

• October 10^th is Mental Health Day, a day many companies observe or find time to provide employees with a day off to recharge.  

• In 2040, we will run at 4x the speed we are today. To meet these innovation speeds, employees at all levels (from the top to bottom) must be driving this change.  

• The CEO is the ultimate decider of engagement. This applies to both culture and adoption of new technologies within a company, such as the use of artificial intelligence internally to be more efficient.  

• Lean into the simple use cases that AI can solve and reassure employees of how it will be used internally (i.e., not taking their jobs).  

Not only is the future of work about having an innovative culture and clearly defined expectations of where and when to connect with coworkers, it is also about the other AI: "Appreciative Inquiry."  

Appreciate inquiry is a leadership method that believes that leadership is not just top down or bottom up – it is the whole piece of the pie. During a time that can feel challenging (physically, mentally, emotionally, or socially), there is still the assumption that there is good in human beings. The Fast Company Innovation Festival really drove home the idea of hope and provided me with a new way of thinking about my personal and professional life when things get tough.  

A truly great place to work is often a unicorn – creating a strong culture is magical, but also takes commitment. It takes courage to embrace voices from within your organization and learn more from one another, which I think we should be very proud of at Greenough Communications. I’m excited to take all of these learnings from the festival with me into 2025!  

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