Brayden Lumley
On Nov. 14 at the Knapp Center, roughly 250 people had the opportunity to listen to Greg Hoffman speak at the 2nd annual Bucksbaum in Business Lecture. Hoffman had five key points in his speech: Never Play it Safe, Play to Win, See what Others See, Find what Others Don’t, Get Outside Yourself, Dare to be Remembered and Spark a Movement.
“The good news about curiosity is it is like a muscle and you can train yourself to be more curious,” Hoffman said.
Greg Hoffman had a 27-year tenure at Nike. In his most recent role as Nike’s vice president of global brand innovation, he led teams tasked with envisioning the future of storytelling and consumer experiences for the brand.
The five key emotions he hit in his speech were courageous, empathetic, curious, memorable and visionary. Hoffman talked about how in his childhood he had a poster of Michael Jordan and he ended up working with the man who designed the poster. Hoffman touched on how emotions can be used as an advantage in creating a brand.
“Emotion is most successful in separating a good brand from an average one,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said he worked with the Brazilian national soccer team and noted that Brazil’s own Ronaldo, regarded as one of the best in the world, faced racial discrimination. He said incidents of racism in Europe inspired the players to create a commercial supporting the movement to end racism.
“Now the reality is we could run this campaign today, because there still is a frequency of issues around racism in Europe, right?” Hoffman said. “But again, the point here is that we spoke through our authenticity, because at the end of the day, authenticity is your cultural currency, both as a brand and as a leader. And if your audience can’t see that connection, then it’s not your time to speak or get involved in that arena.”
Hoffman ended his speech on how humans should be making brands instead of AI.
“Humans take risks, humans collaborate, humans create art, humans tell stories, and most of all, humans leave legacies. Hoffman said. “So let’s leave a legacy we can be proud of,”
James M. Sanigular attended the speech because he is a business owner of a clothing brand, and he knew he could learn from Hoffman with his background at Nike. He said he was happy going to the speech and he is going to use what Hoffman said for his business in the future.
“One thing that comes to mind for me that I learned is definitely using social media as it is,” Sanigular said. “Yeah, using it that way I believe you can.”
Vice President for University Advancement, John Smith, was in attendance for the speech. He said this year the committee wanted somebody with a universal and cultural appeal and Hoffman’s Nike background was what attracted them to choosing him. He said he was happy with the speech.
“My role with the university is to manage a division of about 40 people, so recognizing that each of those five areas lean into leadership roles of responsibilities and trying to drive messages and be authentic and to be empathetic, but ultimately, also reminded even after a number of years of leading teams,” Smith said. “It also comes down to just yourself, and that that message was applied to each of us individually to apply that how we position and tell our own personal stories and find our own motivation,” Smith said.