Fresh Thinking - Fresh Thinking

Breakfast with Toby Hester

Toby Hester has more than 20 years of sponsorship and sport marketing experience. He has presented a plethora of international brands including Coca-Cola, Honda, T-Mobile and Jaguar. Spanning sports events such as the NFL, Tour de France, F1, FIFA World Cups, EUFA European Championship and the England Football team, he has brand and ROI building experiences that have broken new boundaries within the industry. Toby currently heads the Castrol In-Tournament exploitation of the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa and 2014 in Brazil. He is director of the European Sponsorship Association where he represents the interests of the sponsors' membership on the board.

Toby’s passion for sport and football, in particular, stems from his background as former professional at Portsmouth and representing England at schoolboy level. His sporting tenure extended to American football in the late eighties when he was signed up by the San Diego Chargers and was a kicker for the Great Britain team, winning the European Championship in 1989. However his sporting prowess is currently sedately contained to cycling and he is a regular participant in numerous events across the world, including the Cape Argus.

What is Fresh Thinking?

In 2009, FM launched a series of breakfast lectures targeted at all business leaders and owners who have to navigate their operations through these complex times. Drawing from the insights presented by the carefully selected list of speakers, the series aims to stimulate innovative thinking around matters such as business value creation, innovation and overall creativity in business leadership.

The individuals selected for the series are the world’s leading innovators, entrepreneurs and business mavericks. They are not motivational speakers, but individuals who have all achieved greatness in their respective environments.

The breakfasts are targeted at entrepreneurs, business leaders and managers who are tasked with business strategies and creation of sustainable organisations.

The first breakfast event was held at Montecasino on 26 November 2009 and was hosted by BJ Cunningham. As the first speaker, BJ had incredible stories to tell about how to take on market leaders and also about the type of fresh thinking leaders need to survive in tough times when the competition is broader.

In the 1990s BJ established and marketed DEATH as “an honest smoke” giving his Enlightened Tobacco Company such a foothold that it ably took on the might of the tobacco industry. He used the DEATH brand as a case study to illustrate the power of provocation and how to turn a conservative market. His presentation focused on why companies are like people. To flourish in any market companies, like individuals, should understand:

• How they perceive themselves
• How others perceive them
• How they want to be perceived

The event attracted a high-calibre audience, people who are influential in the marketing and general management arena. They rated this first speaker highly.