Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About

Learn About the "Eight Engines of Conversational Capital" from the chairman of Sid Lee

Bertrand Cesvet

In this Leadership edition of Total Picture Radio, Peter Clayton interviews Bertrand Cesvet, chairman of Sid Lee, a leading purveyor of experiential design and communications services that leverages commercial creativity for breakthrough brands including Cirque du Soleil, adidas, and Red Bull.

Bertrand Cesvet biography
Bertrand Cesvet is chairman of Sid Lee creative global boutique, and Founding Partner of Cirque du Soleil Lifestyle Group, which is extending the brand beyond live entertainment. He provides creative and strategic leadership for leading word-of-mouth innovators, including Adidas, Cirque du Soleil, Red Bull, and MGM Grand. 

For someone who now defines himself at the intersection of creative and analytical thought, the road for Mr. Cesvet hasn’t always been clear. As a student at McGill University, Bertrand obtained an Honours degree in Economics. His creative side was present even then as he pursued, unbeknownst to his parents, a second major in Art History. Immediately after the completion of his undergraduate studies, Cesvet was offered a place in McGill’s MBA program, a path that later led to the launch of his career in the realm of strategy consulting.

At Mercer Management Consulting (later Oliver Wyman), Bertrand Cesvet developed a reputation as a rigorous and analytical strategist who formed disruptively elegant business interventions; Bertrand became known for his creativity. But alas, creativity and strategy consulting made strange bedfellows and when the opportunity arose to embrace life in more creative strategic pursuits, Bertrand Cesvet took it.

Bertrand’s arrival at Sid Lee, then a nascent enterprise trying to exist as a communications firm, signalled the arrival of strategic thinking to the upstart operation. The first realization of he and his team centred around the potential of interactive marketing. Among the young leader’s intellectual epiphanies was to include the planning discipline within the realm of interactive marketing. The first keynote client to prove the case was Cirque du Soleil — a relationship that was as formative then as it is today.

The timing, however, of SID LEE’s big foray into the Internet age was by most measures subprime. The dot com implosion thrust the firm directly into the maelstrom of instability surrounding interactive marketing. In a matter of days, Cesvet and his partners were forced to lay off half of the company’s workforce, and indeed, sustain themselves without pay. Thankfully, sound leadership, a committed team and the enduring loyalty of a handful of clients helped SID LEE weather the storm.

Emerging from that struggle was a lean firm focused on what was then termed “integrated” communication. This was Cesvet’s early vision for the firm — to develop a consistent strategy around marketing interventions, regardless of whether they flexed interactive, design or advertising disciplines.

And so it continued, the firm resurgent, gaining momentum and worldwide respect. Then something happened that proved the harbinger of a second tipping point for Cesvet and his partners. It occurred on a walk around Lake Léman in Switzerland accompanied by Bertrand’s close friend and associate, François Lacoursiere. Surrounded by Geneva’s splendour, Cesvet posed a question that led to an epiphany — he wondered why “some people talk more about some destinations than others.” From that simple inquiry began a three-year effort to understand the antecedents of word-of-mouth. Armed with extensive research, a wealth of practical experience with the world’s leading brands and a team of partners who challenged his ideas and injected their own, Bertrand Cesvet presented a philosophy he termed Conversational Capital.

The essence of that notion was that word-of-mouth was an invaluable currency that could not only be managed, but instead built into branded experiences, destinations, objects and indeed, personalities. From that idea and its components emerged a treatise that taught marketers and leaders everywhere how to create stuff people love to talk about.

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