Denise Lee Yohn

Now more than ever, business leaders are looking for fresh ideas, new understanding, and actionable insights to jumpstart their business. Speaker Denise Lee Yohn inspires, informs, and instructs them with a completely different way of thinking about their business. Blending a fresh perspective, twenty-five years of experience working with world-class brands including Sony and Frito-Lay, and a talent for inspiring audiences, Denise is a leading authority on building and positioning exceptional brands. +

Denise initially cultivated her brand-building approaches through several high-level positions in advertising and client-side marketing. She served as lead strategist at advertising agencies for Burger King and Land Rover and as the marketing leader and analyst for Jack in the Box restaurants and Spiegel catalogs. Denise went on to head Sony Electronic Inc.’s first ever brand office, where she was the vice president/general manager of brand and strategy and garnered major corporate awards.

An influential speaker and writer, Denise enjoys challenging audiences and readers to think differently about brand-building. She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and FOX Business TV, and she contributes the monthly column Brand New Perspectives to QSR Magazine. She has been quoted by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail, and more. In 2008, she launched her blog, Brand-as-Business Bites, which the Marketing Executives Networking Group named as one of the “Top 20 Marketing Blogs.” Denise also penned the book What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest (Jossey-Bass).

Denise is a sought-after expert and an electrifying speaker who teaches and inspires her audiences with provocative insights, powerful case studies, and practical tools and approaches to implement right away. From national conferences to CEO peer groups to corporate meetings, Denise’s audiences learn how to transform their organizations and their brands. --

Denise Lee Yohn Speaking Presentations:

Leading Through Challenge and Change +

COVID-19 is the newest, but not the only challenge you have faced, and more change is on the horizon with economic recessions, continued disruption, and increased competition.

Drawing upon her work with business leaders through three recessions and against fierce competition in fast-paced industries such as retail and digital technology, Denise Lee Yohn shows audiences how to lead organizations so that they can thrive in uncertainty and perform under pressure.

Audiences will learn:

• The roadmap for engaging, aligning, and motivating your workforce.
• How to cultivate an innovative culture that produces more with less.
• How to inspire confidence and instill clarity so employees are productive now and prepared for what’s next.

This virtual presentation is highly interactive and can be customized for your specific industry and context. --

Cultivating Culture and Building Brands in Crisis +

Now more than ever, you need a vital organizational culture and a valuable brand so you can retain employees and customers. Denise Lee Yohn, author of Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies, shows how to infuse work culture with core brand values and align people through a unique brand identity to produce a healthy organization and a powerful brand, so that they can thrive in uncertainty and perform under pressure.

Audiences will learn:

• Why brand and culture alignment is critical to business performance, especially during crises.
• How to produce workforce alignment, competitive advantage, and valuable relationships with customers and employees.
• How to transform your leadership and avoid common culture- and brand-building mistakes.

This virtual presentation is highly interactive and can be customized for your specific industry and context. --

Lead Your Field: Establish Competitive Advantage +

The current crisis will separate the winners from the losers — how do you ensure your company emerges stronger than ever? The bestselling author of What Great Brands Do, Denise Lee Yohn shows how great brands establish and maintain competitive advantage.

Drawing from case studies, analyses, and interviews with business leaders from the world’s leading brands, audiences will learn:

The seven actions that successful brands consistently implement to achieve brand leadership.
How to cultivate sustained customer/employee engagement and loyalty.
The proven tools and templates for positioning your brand and delivering superior customer experiences.

This virtual presentation is highly interactive and can be customized for your specific industry and context. --

Employee Experience Disrupted +

Employee experience has been disrupted and a new work reality is emerging. We must rethink our approach to organizational culture and employee engagement now that employees work from home. They are often stressed and distracted, and demand authentic diversity and inclusion. Denise Lee Yohn, author of FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies, shows how to ensure your workforce is engaged and productive today and ready for tomorrow.

Audiences will learn:

• How to design employee experiences that address today’s challenges and anticipate the future of work.
• The tools to engage employees with empathy and motivate them with meaning.
• How to transform your leadership and avoid common culture-building mistakes.

This virtual presentation is highly interactive and can be customized for your specific industry and context. --

Ready & Resilient: Leading Through Challenge & Change +

Continuous disruption, increased competition, a pending recession…the challenges you face are greater today than ever before and more change is on the horizon. Is your organization prepared to perform under pressure? Denise Lee Yohn shows you how to ensure it is. Drawing upon her work with business leaders through three recessions and against fierce competition in fast-paced industries such as retail and digital technology, Denise has cracked the code on organizational readiness and resilience. She shares an informative and practical guide to future-proofing your business with a strong brand and vital culture.Learn how to not just survive, but thrive in turbulent times. --

Brand Leadership: How to Build a Rock Star Brand +

You know how great brands dominate their fields.  You experience it every time you pay a premium for a certain type of jeans, or see a line of people camping out to catch the newest smart phone release.  Denise shows you how to achieve rock star brand status.  Drawing from case studies, analyses, and interviews with brand leaders from the world’s leading brands, she shows you what great brands do and how to achieve the kind of brand leadership that everyone — from customers to employees to investors — wants a piece of. --

The Fusion Formula: Brand + Culture = Results +

Forget everything you think you know about workplace culture!  You don’t need perks and parties.  You need engaged employees who produce the right results and help you build a great brand.  Denise shows you how to infuse your culture with your core brand values and align your people with your unique brand identity, so you produce a healthy organization and a valuable brand.  Based on her new book, FUSION, Denise shares the secrets behind the world’s greatest organizations and lays out the leadership playbook for achieving the brand-culture fusion you need to power your performance and future-proof your business. --

Ignite Experience: Fuse Customer Experience & Employee Experience to Drive Your Growth +

Customer experience is the new competitive battlefield where customer loyalty is won or lost.  And among employees, the war for talent is intensifying.  How do you win on both fronts?  Denise shows you how to align and integrate your employee and customer experiences—and unleash their combined power to fuel your growth.  Learn how to design and deliver employee experiences that fully engage your people and translate into customer experience excellence.  Denise lays out the complete game plan you need to win the hearts and minds of customers and employees. --

Extraordinary Customer Experiences: How to Win Customers' Hearts & Dollars +

How do some companies break through the clutter; compete with bigger, better-resourced competitors; and manage to grow and thrive when so many others fail?  They earn customer love and loyalty through extraordinary experiences.  Denise gives you the complete blueprint for creatively designing and consistently delivering customer experiences that win over customers for life.  Learn how to get the edge that everyone else wants and excel at customer experience. --

Sales: What Great Salespeople Do +

If you’re worried about how the role of sales and selling is changing, you need to know what the best salespeople do to succeed in this new business environment.   Denise shows you that great salespeople do what great brands do.  She explains how to innovate — not imitate, how to create extraordinary experiences that embody your brand, and how to cultivate strong, emotional connections with customers.   You’ll be inspired to engage with clients in new ways that cut out competitors and create long-term business success. Learn why and how the most effective salespeople operate as brand evangelists — and how you can too to win the new sales game. --

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