Jay Acunzo is waging war on conventional thinking. As a digital media strategist at Google, he was responsible for pushing marketing executives and practitioners more rapidly into the digital age in ways that benefitted both companies and careers. He held multiple leadership positions at high-growth tech startups, including Head of Content at HubSpot and Vice President of Brand and Community at the venture capital firm NextView Ventures. On the side, Jay created the award-winning podcast, Unthinkable, and co-founded Boston Content, the northeast's largest community of content creators and marketers.

WHO IS JAY?

Courses at Harvard Business School have cited Jay’s work, as well as writers at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fast Company, Forbes, and more. He has been called a “creative savant” by Salesforce and named to the city of Boston’s “50 on Fire" list.
Ben Nemtin

In a world where “storyteller” has become a buzzword, Jay actually understands how to tell great stories--stories that entertain, surprise, teach, and push people beyond conventional thinking towards their best work. He believes his job is to hand out compasses, not maps with directions drawn on them. This equips audiences to walk into any scenario they face, get their bearings, find their true north, and feel empowered to proceed confidently and in the right direction.

Today, Jay is the founder of Marketing Showrunners, the author of Break the Wheel, and a decorated show host and executive producer. Marketing Showrunners teaches brands how to create original series, such as Against the Grain, a documentary series launched in partnership with the tech company Help Scout. As the host, director, and writer, Jay traveled the country in search of brands who put people over profits, community over shareholders, and helped spark a movement of for-profit businesses who seek to use capitalism for good. You can find the series at helpscout.com/atg.

WHAT JAY SPEAKS ABOUT

The following descriptions provide guidance on keynote content and in-conference programming and marketing materials for buyers and attendees. Note that Jay customizes each experience for the industry and audience.

BREAK THE WHEEL:

ESCAPING CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES TO BECOME THE REFRESHING EXCEPTION

In this fast-paced, inspiring talk, Jay Acunzo will hand attendees a sledgehammer. This talk takes attendees on a wild ride through Jay’s years of research, with hilarious but eye-opening stories of real businesses from diverse sectors who made the decision to break from best practices — only to do their best work ever.

Finding best practices isn’t the goal. Finding the best approach for you is.

Attendees will learn:

  • The hidden problems with “best practices” and the reasons end up average, not our best.

  • One transformative behavior teams and individuals can make to unlock greater innovation.

  • Six critical questions to ask to make better decisions, faster, when surrounded by too much information.

Our world is overflowing with ideas and answers, available instantly, everywhere, from everyone. Yes, the dark side of the Information Age seems to be Advice Overload. But when everyone inside and outside your team has a million answers for what works best “in general,” the real question becomes: What works best for you?
It feels like we’re caught on an endlessly spinning wheel of best practices, conventional wisdom, and trends we “have to” jump on. To do our best work, we need to break the wheel.

INNOVATION IMPOSSIBLE:

HOW INCREDIBLE TEAMS MAKE CREATIVITY A HABIT, NOT A HAIL MARY

Creativity isn’t a substitute for the real work. It is the real work.

Attendees will learn:

  • The cultural and behavioral forces that causes our once-successful innovations to grow stale.

  • A repeatable system to answer three crucial questions: WHAT needs changing? WHEN should we change? HOW should we change it?

  • The four traits innovative teams share.

When most teams hear the call to “innovate,” the work morphs into stress-induced, one-off attempts to be creative or juice the numbers. Teams try to “go big,” or trend-hop, or sprint all-out in a reactive, exhausting way.

This is simply not sustainable. It would be so much easier if our everyday way of operating naturally led to creative breakthroughs.

In this eye-opening, hilarious talk, Jay Acunzo helps attendees achieve what previously felt impossible: making innovation a habit. Using unexpected stories and powerful studies, Jay helps attendees understand why our tendency is to try and “go big” once in a while, instead of evolve all the time. In the end, they’ll walk away with a framework for making every little thing they do add up to something huge.

START HERE:

HOW TO MAKE THINGS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE BY CHANGING HOW YOU BEGIN

We all want to earn trust and love, but our current approach actually hurts our cause. We're beginning our work in the entirely wrong place. It's time to learn how to more consistently make things that make a difference -- for our careers, our companies, and our communities.

Ready to get started?

Attendees will learn:

  • The fundamental difference between building things that last, things that are beloved — and things people skip, forget, or leave.

  • How to turn “transactions” and “touchpoints” into transformational moments — for others, and for your cause.

  • The specific frameworks you can implement today to move from relevant, to refreshing, to something rare indeed: their favorite.

Building a successful business or project is no longer about grabbing attention. It's all about holding it. Today's best teams embrace: Success isn't about who arrives. It's about who stays.

When that's the job, the only "tactic" that works is to create better, more resonant experiences. This type of work has nothing to do with tools or budget. (With apologies to CapitalOne, it doesn't matter what's in your wallet. What's between your ears matters far more.)

In this inspiring yet practical talk, author and showrunner Jay Acunzo takes you inside the hidden techniques causing some of the world's best creative experiences to feel so darn gripping, unpacking the powerful psychological frameworks and tiny choices that visionary creators use -- and you can use, too. You'll journey through science and story to uncover the root problem with so much mundane work, before learning how to turn passive audience into passionate superfans by changing how you START your process.

JAY'S ENERGY AND APPROACH IS INFECTIOUS AND ENTERTAINING, LEAVING YOUR ATTENDEES WITH A FEELING THAT THEY LEARNED A FEW VALUABLE THINGS THAT GET THEM THINKING FOR BOTH THE SHORT AND LONG TERM. A FEW TOLD US THEY NOW HAD THEIR MARCHING ORDERS FOR THE COMING YEAR. HE WAS A HUGE HIT.

VP of Marketing, PrismHR

JAY WAS AN ENGAGING KEYNOTE SPEAKER FOR OUR EVENT. HE IS A MASTER WHEN IT COMES TO USING TECHNOLOGY TO CONNECT WITH PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. HIS INSIGHTS WERE EYE-OPENING AND ACTIONABLE.

President, Chimaera Labs

EVERYONE AT THE EVENT AND AROUND OUR ORGANIZATION CONTINUES TO REFERENCE SEVERAL OF JAY’S KEY TAKEAWAYS IN OUR WORK. WE’VE EVEN USED THE LESSONS WHEN MEETING WITH A LARGER CLIENT, A CHALLENGER BRAND LOOKING TO MAKE A PUSH FOR #1. THE KEYNOTE WAS SO WELL RECEIVED.

Associate Director, Rise Interactive

JAY IN ACTION

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