Scott Bedbury

Scott Bedbury established himself as one of the most accomplished marketers in the world by helping build Nike and Starbucks into iconic global brands. A strategic advisor to leaders in public, private, and non-profit sectors, Bedbury is the founder and CEO of Brandstream, a consultancy that has facilitated his work with more than 30 brands.

In 1987, Nike was a struggling #3 behind Reebok and adidas when the company recruited Bedbury as advertising director to help grow the company without losing its young athletic male core. With Nike’s agency Wieden and Kennedy, Bedbury went to work on what became the “Just Do It” campaign, launching the phenomenally successful project in 1988. In the years that followed, Bedbury helped reposition Nike beyond an exclusive, aspirational brand for serious young American male athletes to a more inclusive, inspirational icon for all ages, fitness levels, and cultures.

In his seven years at Nike, the brand grew six-fold from $850 million in revenues to $five billion. Today, Nike has one-third of the global athletic footwear and apparel market with a valuation of more than $30 billion.

In 1995, Bedbury made the jump to Starbucks as the chief marketing officer. Armed with a $2.5 million marketing budget and 400 stores in 15 US markets, Bedbury and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz set out to move Starbucks from a mass customized commodity to a warm and welcome “Third Place” between home and work. Today, Starbucks serves 10 million customers every day through 17,000 stores across 40 countries with a market cap of $27 billion.

Since leaving Starbucks and launching Brandstream, Bedbury has advised P&G, Coke, Facebook, Microsoft, eBay, Google, Tellme Networks, Deloitte, Corona, Amazon.com, Kaiser Permanente, Russian Standard, Unicredit, South Africa Breweries, the US Navy, NASA, and the Obama Administration.

Bedbury’s first book, A New Brand World, is relevant to CEOs and MBA students alike, with in-the-trenches stories that illustrate how any brand can become more valued, more meaningful, and enduring.

A graduate of the University or Oregon School of Journalism and Communication (SJAC), Bedbury received the Distinguished Alumni and Hall of Achievement awards. He currently serves on the SJAC Advancement Council. Bedbury is also a recipient of the American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement.

Bedbury has spoken in more than 20 countries, enlightening audiences about building and sustaining strong, relevant brands. He also speaks about creating long-lasting customer relationships, brand awareness and resonance, and how to evolve with moving markets.

• 1. Creating Deeper Relationships with Customers

  Brand competition is intensifying, while, at the same time, customer expectations of brands are rising. The growing competition requires a new approach to brand differentiation, and customer trust no longer depends solely on product performance. Customers increasingly expect companies to behave more as humans than as commercial institutions, becoming more sensitive to customer needs and values, more responsible for their actions and more respectful of the world around them. Achieving a deeper, more emotional and trusting relationship with customers requires careful attention to three core brand development principles: Respect, Relevance and Resonance.

• 2. Respect

  Great brands respect everything around them - their employees, their products, their customers, their stakeholders, their communities and the world they profit from. For example, Starbucks became one of the first restaurant chains to offer stock and health benefits to part-time employees and the company worked hard to respect its core product, coffee, and the customer experience around the cup. Bedbury shares his positive experiences as Starbucks' chief marketing officer, illustrative samples of some of Nike's best advertising, and also a few negative examples of companies who have ignored this fundamental of brand development with disastrous effect.

• 3. Relevance

  All the awareness in the world can't help a product or service - no matter how good it is- if customers find it irrelevant. In an age of rapid market change and ceaseless innovation, traditional marketing processes often fail to track customer movement successfully. Bedbury's approach enabled Nike to avoid pre-testing advertising concepts (a practice that often destroys the most creative ideas) and to better anticipate, and sometimes lead, key trends in its industry. Bedbury teaches innovative "market insights" techniques that he's used to keep the brands he's managed in synch with their moving markets.

• 4. Resonance

  Brand awareness, the traditional measure of brand strength, reveals little about the quality of the relationship between brand and customer, and awareness can happen for all the wrong reasons. (Think about the Exxon Valdez oil spill.) On the other hand, brand resonance - how a brand feels to someone - reveals a lot about brand strength. The strongest brands tap into something larger, more inspiring and timeless than any single product or service by aligning the brand with emotional benefits that exist right alongside the obvious performance benefits. Bedbury illustrates how companies like Coke and Disney have become protagonists for universal and timeless experiences that are uniquely connected with their brands. He also shares innovative brand measurement practices that can help track and leverage these deeper emotional connections.

• 5. Other Programs:

  ·Building Intelligent Brandwidth
  ·Cracking Your Brand's Genetic Code
  ·Creating Emotional Ties With Customers
  ·Overcoming the Goliath Syndrome
  ·Grass Roots Marketing
  ·Avoiding the Perils of Traditional Marketing
  ·Brand Leadership Within
  

• If you're looking for someone who not only knows the world of marketing inside and out, but also can project into the future of marketing, Scott Bedbury is your man. Scott has a phenomenal story to tell!

  Fast Company Magazine

• Scott spoke at one of our company's most important conferences ever and was the hit of the show. Sharing the stage with several other heavyweights throughout the week, Scott was by far the best received and most influential in helping our company determine its future destiny. I would highly recommend Scott to anyone looking for an exciting speaker whose material is interesting, relevant and thought provoking.

  Levi Strauss & Co.

• 
  January 2002

  A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century

  How did a company like Nike use "Just Do It" to launch its way to success and become part of global culture? How did Starbucks reinvent a familiar 900-year-old product and change the way people drink coffee around the world? In A New Brand World Scott Bedbury, who was at the heart of both companies as they became two of the greatest branding success stories of our time, explains how to apply the principles that grew these companies more than fivefold and established their trademarks as leaders in their categories. A New Brand World will show any business-whether a Fortune 500 corporation or a neighborhood store-how it can begin to realize its full brand potential and build lasting value.