The power of collective imagination with Kian Bakhtiari

In our July You’re MarketingKind discussion Kian Bakhtiari, founder of The People, asked us ‘how can we restore our collective imagination?’.

Kian believes we have a crisis of imagination and we need to use marketing and communications to create a shared sense of language and vision to help us imagine a better future.

Kian inspired us with his work at The People and gave advice for helping to breakdown the notion that the world is fixed and unbending.

He suggested we:
~Nurture the beginner mindset
~Evoke the power of play
~Take people out of their usual setting to give them a new perspective

And together we debated whether businesses have become more or less creative in the past 15 years.

Kian created The People, a next-gen marketing consultancy powered by 150+ diverse young changemakers. He was formerly Youth Insight Lead at Dentsu and is now Advisor to UN Climate Change and One Young World Ambassador. He was named one of the Top 50 Future Leaders by the Financial Times for his contributions to marketing. He regularly writes about marketing through a Millennial and Gen-Z lens for Forbes CMO Network and is deeply passionate about using the power of creativity for good.

The discussion drew on Kian’s recent Tedx Talk on ‘How imagination creates innovation’ and his research for his forthcoming book titled Marketing for Social Change.

You can watch the edited replay below or listen to a longer edit on our podcast here.