Now that the Sustainable Life Media’s Sustainable Brands Boot Camp* has concluded, I’d like to reflect on the experience.
The Boot Camp confirmed for me that content trumps form. SLM labeled the Boot Camp as an “introductory course for executives and managers seeking to understand how to step up to today’s market demands and learn to build business value and brand equity by innovating for sustainability”. Built around SLM’s “Observe, Design, Measure and Communicate” prescription, the course met, and often exceeded, those expectations.
I summarized four of the 13 sessions that, I felt, held relevance for this blog:
- The changing consumer marketplace (Session #3)
- Sustainable product design (Session #6)
- Green marketing done right (Session #11)
- Designing communications that resonate (Session #12)
Though issues like organizational models, supply chains, or climate change, all covered in the Boot Camp, may not be the sexy stuff of marketing, every marketer interested in systems thinking would be well advised to get educated on them.
As for the form, let me first say I’m not a technophobe. To be honest, however, I’d always tried to avoid webinars whenever possible, and so I was skeptical about the format. Throughout the course, I missed the personal interaction, that sense of a shared place with the presenter and other audience members (the session in which the presenter apologized for power outages in his Costa Rica hotel room came as close as it got to that feeling). There’s always so much to learn from not just the presenting expert but also from fellow participants.
Having said that, being able to watch a session whenever I wanted, live or on demand (typically with about a week’s delay), was a huge plus. I also appreciated the opportunity to hear speakers from around the world, albeit only from English-speaking countries, delivering perspectives and experiences from outside the U.S. And the environmental sustainability aspect of online education supported the spirit of the course.
Did you attend the SB Boot Camp? What was your experience? If not, what prevented you from participating?
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Image credit:Â Darren Hester
* Disclosure: Sustainable Life Media granted me a free press pass for the Sustainable Brands Boot Camp – regular registration for the online seminar series was $395.
