Simon Mainwaring
82 quotes
Biography
Simon Mainwaring is a branding expert and author of We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World and Lead With We: The Business Revolution that Will Save Our Future. He is the founder and CEO of Culver City, California-based We First Inc., a brand consultancy.
"Corporations, consumers, and citizens must begin acting in concert to create a powerful third pillar of social transformation if we hope to meet the social challenges we currently face with equal force. This begins with corporations that choose to alter how they practice capitalism in two ways to serve the greater good."
"Any institution faces two basic choices if they hope to spark new ideas. One is to leverage the brains trust within their organization by creating a special event dedicated to new thinking. The other is to look outside themselves to stimulate solutions."
"The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability."
"Refuse to accept the belief that your professional relevance, career success or financial security turns on the next update on the latest technology. Sometimes it's good to put the paddle down and just let the canoe glide."
"Non-disclosure in the Internet Age is quickly perceived as a breach of trust. Government, corporations and each of us as individuals must recalibrate how we live and share our lives appropriate to the information now available and the expectations of others."
"There is a fundamental shift that social media necessitates in business today - the need to transition from 'Me First' to 'We First' thinking."
"The leverage and influence social media gives citizens are rapidly spreading into the business world."
"Not since the digital revolution in the early '90s has technology placed such a comprehensive burden on business, employees and individuals to reinvent their business plans, services and products, and themselves to keep pace with the changing marketplace."
"Business practices and how we treat the planet are also in desperate need of re-humanization."
"What today's business reality makes clear is that brands cannot survive in a society that is failing economically, socially, ethically, and morally."
"As a speaker, business leader or marketer of any type, the onus is now on each of us to become equally capable of communicating very personally with a seemingly endless number of people connected by social technologies."
"In the coming years, if not sooner, social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility - and, I suggest, move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism."
"Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire, engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal."
"The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not, this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause."
"Integrate purpose into your for-profit business model through a long term commitment to a cause that is aligned with your core values and those of your community."
"In today's social business marketplace Facebook is one of the best places for nonprofits to be discovered and connect with a larger audience on the basis of shared values. So to get started, a non-profit should launch a Facebook page and invite your existing real world community to connect your cause and their networks."
"In the social business marketplace, brands that hope to build loyal and growing communities do so most effectively when they demonstrate their core values and allow a community to build and engage around it."
"The new dynamics between brands and consumers, driven by social media, are proving to be a powerful impetus for change."
"Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation and consensus."
"What is sure is that technological change is accelerating in all directions and, like children playing in a fountain, consumers are reveling in the experience."
"The question remains: which brands will commit to creating a private sector pillar of social change, and which will become casualties of their own outdated thinking?"
"The creative destruction that social media is currently unleashing will change more than technology or the leader board of the Fortune 100. It is driving a qualitative shift in the nature of relationships between brands and their customers."
"It is time for corporate America to become 'the third pillar' of social change in our society, complementing the first two pillars of government and philanthropy. We need the entire private sector to begin committing itself not just to making profits, but to fulfilling higher and larger purposes by contributing to building a better world."
"When people align around shared political, social, economic or environmental values, and take collective action, thinking and behavior that compromises the lives of millions of people around the world can truly change."
"Brands must empower their community to be change agents in their own right. To that end, they need to take on a mentoring role. This means the brand provides the tools, techniques and strategies for their customers to become more effective marketers in achieving their own goals."