TED Community » Nancy Giordano
About Me
With an embarrassing amount of energy and passion, I've spent my career building, shaping and reviving many of the country's most iconic brands. We launched Play Big Inc, a brand futurist company, to inspire companies see what the future needs from them and have the courage to chase it.
This is actually the growth of Purple Telescope, future-forward strategic consultancy I founded in 2006 to inspire our clients and better leverage the powerful possibilities that exist at the intersection of consumer/business trends and authentic brand stories.
I frequently present our unique Trend perspectives at conferences and client boardrooms. And with an especially strong interest in health, nutrition, travel and the conscious economy, I'm a strong advocate for values-centric branding and building brands with purpose. I bring over 20 years of strategic and executive leadership experience at leading advertising agencies in NYC, Chicago and LA and have managed the brand positioning and communications efforts for a wide range of national brands including Nestle, NATPE, Sprint, Safeway grocery, Del Monte foods, Tourism Australia, the Tournament of Roses, parts of Burger King's business and the even the City of West Hollywood. Though a strategist at heart, I'm also a certified ontological coach -- its all about leveraging energy and creating momentum!
Frustrated recently by watching my clients struggle with gaps in the ways big ideas are created and nurtured, we are building a new offering focused on fresh, flexible and highly creative and collaborative idea generation: p y n k: people you need to know.
HQ'd in Austin, we do our work in dynamic teams all over the country (and the world).
- Location:
- United States, Austin, TX
- Current organization:
- Play Big, Inc
- Past organizations:
- Purple Telescope, TBWA \ Chiat \ Day, Draft FCB, Ogilvy & Mather
- Current role:
- CEO | Brand Futurist
- Gender:
- Female
- Areas of expertise:
- Health & Wellness, parenthood, generating ideas, Trends, Strategy Development, Connector, Intuition , Innovation, generational learning/marketing theories, TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
- I am:
- Business adviser, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Marketer, Parent, Potential employer
- Associations:
- TEDxAustin, Leadership Texas, Corporate Rebels United
- Languages:
- English
- My website links:
- TEDxAustin, Play Big, Inc
- Universities:
- Agnes Scott College - B.A. Psych + Econ
- TED conferences attended:
- TEDActive 2013, TEDActive 2011, TED2010, TED2009
More About Me
I'm passionate about
Ideas that inspire leaders, parents and the planet to PLAY BIG!
Inspiring bold leaders to embrace a path of humble audacity
Motivating healthier products + practices in the food industry
An idea worth spreading
I'm currently extremely passionate to share that future of business is shifting from Extraction (and protectionism) to Contribution. Once organizations and leaders can embrace this shift, huge opportunities are available to them and tremendous growth is possible.
Part of this shift requires a new style of "leader" (within every rank of an organization) who is able to stand in humble audacity -- being able to listen generously, be comfortable not always "knowing", have an orientation to contribution and open to collaborations -- creates a path to design and deliver truly audacious solutions. As Marianne Williamson said so perfectly, you're play small does not serve the world. Playing with humble audacity, allows you to play bigger than ever imagined.
Talk to me about
"cultural acupuncture", "humble audacity", the future of business, transformative leadership, the need to take our health much more seriously!, the future of work. Atlas Shrugged (I'm obsessed with it
People don't know that I'm good at
upcycling ripe bananas into a very decent bread
making up words that really should exist already -- or that capture a unique shift
My TED Story
I have evolved from early TED voyeur to TED evangelist to TEDx leader to TED talks activator. We recently held a workshop with high school kids working on our first TEDxYouth event and was stunned again to hear how TED has impacted them. I know -- I was so moved my Hannah's talk on Love Letters to Strangers that over the holidays I hosted a Dear You party for all my girlfriends inviting them to write and exchange anonymous love letters (it was awesome!). I feel honored to gift Austin with a helluva TEDx event each year -- and am humbled by the passionate team we have assembled to pull off this magic. We calculated that we leverage about $1MM in volunteer talent (against a cash budget of $140K) to create an adult and a youth experience that literally stretched what anyone believes is possible.
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A comment on Conversation: Why do we always want to brainstorm new ideas for issues that may already have brilliant solutions begging to be scaled or refined?
The strategist in me is eager to better understand the problem, break it down into more actionable issues and then hunt for what is / isn't already working before we jump to create more "instant fixes". For example, rather than ask "how can we fix education?" (literally a whiteboard question I was invited to comment on), one could ask, "what are the barriers to better science/STEM education in grade schools?", or "what prevents more parents from being involved in their schools and what approaches are working best?"
Bottom line I wonder how we can harness all that enthusiasm and energy that drives the need for "credit" and "instant gratification" in more effective ways??
A comment on Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius