Speaking
with Doug & Heather
Doug Griffiths believes communities are worth saving, which is why he has dedicate the last 20 years of his life to helping them find a pathway to success. He uses a straight-shooting, no-punches-pulled approach to show how attitude is the biggest factor – and roadblock – to building a successful community.
Using his vast experience working with municipal and community leaders from across North America, Doug uses powerful stories and research to drive leaders to find solutions to challenges that plague communities and prevent them from reaching their full potential in a rapidly changing world.
Heather Thomson is an expert in consumer behaviour, and the perfect cup of tea to help warm up your local business strategies. Her first piece of advice? Don’t do things differently, do different things.
Invite Heather into your community to help your local businesses spice up their strategies! Heather will help your business better understand your target market, ease the transition from physical to digital engagement and promote it to your local community.
It’s a tall order, but Heather will help you fill it!
Click below to view Heather & Doug’s presentations:
The Arrival of the Inevitable
The COVID-19 pandemic did not create change, but rather accelerated the change in consumer behaviour that was well, inevitable. Doug Griffiths and Heather Thomson are dedicated to helping communities not only survive these pandemic changes but thrive within them as well. Together, they deliver a fresh, engaging presentation focused on helping your local businesses thrive and your community succeed..
Doug will ensure that your community understands the ins and outs of economic success, while Heather tackles the changes of consumer behaviour – the shift from physical to digital engagement. This dynamic duo will help you to learn more about your audience, understand their spending habits and how to build a stronger relationship with your fellow business. Be inspired as you learn from unique examples of other communities the two have worked with! Make the most of the pandemic and succeed beyond it, with Doug and Heather.
Future of Business - It’s a Tall Order
1. Understanding How Consumer Behaviour has Shifted
Create an amazing experience (engaging your customers physically and digitally)
2. Supporting & Protecting Local
Ensuring businesses are doing everything they can to support customers to support their business
3. Know Your Audience
Businesses cannot be everything to everyone. Understand the spending habits of your target market
4. Be Inspired
Learn from unique examples locally and across the country of how to make the most of the pandemic and beyond
Everything is About to Change
Disruptions have impacted almost every industry, but our communities have remained relatively unchanged in the last 50 years. That will not be the case in the very near future, and simply catching up to today will not work. Technological and social changes will challenge communities, and those who are not prepared for what is coming will not prosper. You must be prepared for tomorrow now, if you want to succeed.
Your audience will:
- Feel shock about the change coming to their community;
Understand why they and others resist change, even when it is inevitable;
Realize the greatest challenge to their community/organization is in not being prepared;
Give greater consideration to the opportunities created by change and how their community can take advantage of it.
13 Ways to Kill your Commerce
Following in the footsteps of the original 13 Ways to Kill Your Community presentation. This spin off tackles common mistakes we see every day in communities regarding their economic centres and chambers of commerce. Too many businesses are not equipping themselves with the tools and education to survive this retail shift; and as a result, many businesses are throwing in the towel too early.
This presentation will spark inspiration for communities to take their business in their own hands to make the necessary changes to ensure a vibrant economic core for their future.
Topics included: online shopping data, importance of aesthetics, experience over commodity retail, building your brand and demographic data and trends to name a few.
13 Ways Presentation
Based on Doug’s bestselling book, 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, the presentation is sometimes startling and often revelatory. Doug’s conversational style makes every member of the audience feel he is speaking directly to them about their own community. The anecdotes are delivered with both wit and wisdom, and in a way that ensures audience members are inspired and confident in their role to make their community, organization, or business successful.
Your audience will:
- Feel inspired and motivated;
Find a renewed sense of ownership and responsibility toward the community in which they live;
Recognize the challenges their community faces, and the reasons why it is challenged;
Receive Basic tools to begin moving their community toward success
Laugh