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Denise Lee Yohn

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Denise Lee Yohn is the go-to expert on brand leadership for national media outlets, an in-demand keynote speaker and consultant, and an influential writer. 

 

Denise is the author of the bestselling books What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest (Jossey-Bass), Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do, and FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies (Nicholas Brealey/Hachette Books). 

 

With her expertise and inspiring approach, Denise has become an in-demand keynote speaker on building great brands and exceptional organizations. She has addressed business leaders around the world at corporate events such as Facebook, NFL, and Lexus, and conferences including the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), The Art of Marketing, and Sustainable Brands. 

 

News media including CNBC, FOX Business TV, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR call on Denise when they want an expert point-of-view on hot business issues. 

 

Denise enjoys challenging executives to think differently about brand leadership in her regular contributions to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Smartbrief on Leadership, and has been a sought-after writer for publications including Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Knowledge@Wharton among others. 

 

Denise initially cultivated her brand-building approaches through several high-level positions in advertising and client-side marketing. She served as lead strategist at advertising agencies for Burger King and Land Rover and as the marketing leader and analyst for Jack in the Box restaurants and Spiegel catalogs. Denise went on to head Sony Electronic Inc.’s first-ever brand office, where she was the vice president/general manager of brand and strategy and garnered major corporate awards. Consulting clients have included Target, Oakley, Dunkin' Donuts, and other leading companies. 

 

Outside of her professional roles, Denise counts hiking to Everest Base Camp, dancing with a professional ballet company, and solo-flying a helicopter as some of her greatest life experiences.

Speaking Topics

READY & RESILIENT: Leadership For Now & Next

The new world of work requires leaders to lead differently. Emotional intelligence, people development and engagement, and the ability to align short-term changes with long-term goals are the new leadership competencies you need now. Denise Lee Yohn shows how to navigate the way work and business has changed and lead your organization to greatness.
 

Drawing upon her work with business leaders around the world through financial crises and major disruptions, Denise Lee Yohn has cracked the code on leadership and will teach you:

  • The roadmap for aligning and motivating your workforce and addressing employees’ and customers’ elevated expectations
  • How to develop organizational resilience and agility by operationalizing your purpose and core values
  • How to inspire confidence and instill clarity so employees are productive now and prepared for what’s next 

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DISRUPTED

Employee experience has been disrupted and a new work reality is emerging. You must rethink your approach to organizational culture and employee engagement, now that employees are dispersed, divided, distracted, and demanding authentic diversity and inclusion. Denise Lee Yohn, author of FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies, shows how to ensure your workforce is engaged and productive today and ready for tomorrow. You will learn:

  • How to design employee experiences that address today’s challenges and anticipate the future of work
  • The tools to engage employees with empathy and motivate them with meaning
  • How to transform your culture into a force for growth and thriving, and avoid common culture-building mistakes

BRAND LEADERSHIP: How to Break Through, Blaze New Trails, and Build a Great Brand

New market conditions require your brand to be more authentic, powerful, and valuable than ever before. Bestselling author of What Great Brands Do Denise Lee Yohn shows how great brands inspire trust, establish competitive advantage, and lead their field. Drawing from case studies, analyses, and interviews with business leaders from the world’s leading brands, Denise will show you:

  • The seven actions that successful brands consistently implement to achieve brand leadership
  • How to cultivate sustained customer and employee engagement and loyalty
  • The proven tools and templates for positioning your brand and delivering superior customer experiences

THE FUSION FORMULA: Brand + Culture = Results

Forget everything you think you know about workplace culture!  You don’t need perks and parties.  You need engaged employees who produce the right results and help you build a great brand.  Denise shows you how to infuse your culture with your core brand values and align your people with your unique brand identity, so you produce a healthy organization and a valuable brand. Based on her new book, FUSION, Denise shares the secrets behind the world’s greatest organizations and lays out the leadership playbook for achieving the brand-culture fusion you need to power your performance and future-proof your business.

Brand Leadership: How to Build a Rock Star Brand

You know how great brands dominate their fields.  You experience it every time you pay a premium for a certain type of jeans, or see a line of people camping out to catch the newest smart phone release.  Denise shows you how to achieve rock star brand status.  Drawing from case studies, analyses, and interviews with brand leaders from the world’s leading brands, she shows you what great brands do and how to achieve the kind of brand leadership that everyone — from customers to employees to investors — wants a piece of.

IGNITE EXPERIENCE: Fuse Customer Experience and Employee Experience to Drive Your Growth

Customer experience is the new competitive battlefield where customer loyalty is won or lost.  And among employees, the war for talent is intensifying.  How do you win on both fronts?  Denise shows you how to align and integrate your employee and customer experiences—and unleash their combined power to fuel your growth.  Learn how to design and deliver employee experiences that fully engage your people and translate into customer experience excellence.  Denise lays out the complete game plan you need to win the hearts and minds of customers and employees.

Extraordinary Experiences: How to Win Customers' Hearts and Dollars

How do some companies break through the clutter; compete with bigger, better-resourced competitors; and manage to grow and thrive when so many others fail?  They earn customer love and loyalty through extraordinary experiences.  Denise gives you the complete blueprint for creatively designing and consistently delivering customer experiences that win over customers for life.  Learn how to get the edge that everyone else wants and excel at customer experience.

What Great Salespeople Do

If you’re worried about how the role of sales and selling is changing, you need to know what the best salespeople do to succeed in this new business environment.   Denise shows you that great salespeople do what great brands do.  She explains how to innovate — not imitate, how to create extraordinary experiences that embody your brand, and how to cultivate strong, emotional connections with customers.   You’ll be inspired to engage with clients in new ways that cut out competitors and create long-term business success. Learn why and how the most effective salespeople operate as brand evangelists — and how you too can win the new sales game.

Brand-Building Isn't Just for the Big Guys

It’s true!  You don’t have to be big to be great.  Even if you’re an entrepreneur who’s short on time and money, you can build a brand that stands out and has a big impact.  Denise shows you what you need to beat the big guys at their own game.  She reveals the Minimum Viable Brand (MVB) framework and how to lay the foundation for getting traction in a crowded, cluttered marketplace. Learn the 6 “What’s” that every start-up and small business must answer — and how the most successful entrepreneurs have built powerful, profitable brands.

Denise Lee Yohn's Experiences

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Testimonials

“Not only inspiring but highly actionable”

"Best speaker of the day...a fresh perspective."

"Denise delivered an outstanding presentation to the 1000 participants to the STIMA Congress in Brussels. She translated her vision on what great brands do into ready-to-use tools and made her methodology very actionable. Her clarity, her enthusiasm and her passion made everyone feel like making her or his brand great."

“Denise really took the time to understand our organization and our challenges. Her presentation was insightful and included many actionable tips for our teams.”

"You were our highest rated speaker as people loved the handouts, the stories and the passion with which you spoke."

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