Inspirational speaker Afdhel Aziz has a unique approach to business. His career as a marketing and entrepreneurship specialist with brands like Procter & Gamble, Heineken, Absolut, and Nokia informs his approach, which he calls “Conspiracy of Love.”
“Doing good is doing business,” writes Aziz. Aziz joined Bobby Jones, also a marketing expert, and Nadia Petrik, a business consultant, in forming Conspiracy of Love.
“I want the HR community to think about re-framing what they do: from being managers of ‘resources’ to becoming liberators of ‘human potential’,” says Aziz. “The single largest force for good in the world is sitting inside corporations, all too often watching the clock, and waiting out the day in their cubicles.”
So, he lays out suggestions out in his book and life to offer ways to make work more meaningful on a personal and external scale.
Afdhel Aziz has experience with a variety of industries and multiple large campaigns
Aziz’s marketing career began with a summer internship at Procter & Gamble. Soon, this turned into a full-time position lasting 3 years.
Next, he moved to Bauer Media to work on the Kiss 100 radio station. While there, he launched several interesting campaigns. For example, he once gave pirate (illegal) radio DJ’s a chance to compete for a real show.
As part of Nokia, he led even more ambitious projects. For example, he organized a series of huge concerts sponsored by Nokia on New Year’s Eve in 2006. These concerts happened simultaneously in Honk Kong, Mumbai, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and New York.
He worked with Heineken, Deadmau5, and Absolut in the following years. “To me [the sum of my experiences] speaks to the future of marketing: how do brands create physical or digital experiences that exist at the ‘intersection of useful and delightful’?” asks Aziz. “…That’s how brands can play positive roles in people’s lives and future-proof themselves. And that’s also how we marketers can find meaning in what we do for a living, and feel like our craft is a genuinely noble one.”
From writer to marketing expert to writer once more
Aziz originally wanted to be a writer. In fact, he first earned his Bachelor’s in English Literature at King’s College London. He followed that up with a Master’s in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics.
Then h returned to Sri Lanka and wrote newspaper columns, hosted radio shows, and wrote/presented television shows. However, his career took a turn when he decided to stay in London after his Master’s degree. At this time, he realized that he would have to switch gears since “no-one in London wanted to give a work visa to an ex-journalist from Sri Lanka.”
Aziz’s father was Shibly Aziz, former Attorney General of Sri Lanka for many years, and influenced Afdhel very deeply.
“He would go to courts in the morning, come back and have lunch, and then have a nap until it was time to start his meetings in the afternoon and into the evening,” he reminisces, “To this day, my idea of success isn’t making a lot of money – it’s having enough freedom and independence to be able to take a nap in the middle of the workday.” Aziz adds, “I can think of no better role model to have in my life than him.”
Afdhel Aziz explains what’s cool about doing good
In 2016, Aziz and Bobby Jones co-authored the book “Good is the New Cool: Market Like You Give a Damn.”
The book describes a new business model which emphasizes brands being able to do good. “Capitalism was created to serve the needs of the shareholder and maximize profit,” explains Aziz. “but what we are seeing in the 21st century is a new form of capitalism that serves the need of a wider group of stakeholders, including consumers, society, and the planet.”
“As leaders in business and culture, we have the opportunity and the resources to exercise not just our creative imaginations, but our moral imaginations,” Aziz writes. “To visualize the world that we would like to live in and to commit our energies to making that world a reality.”
One of the catchphrases from his book is “think transformational, not transactional”. This philosophy taps into this very idea of making use of technology to “unleash human potential on a massive scale”. Moreover, it focuses on experience over “things”.
Purchase Afdhel Aziz’s book here.
