Returning to our Roots

Last week, our Master Distiller, Steve Wheen and Head of Musings, Margaret Sherer, had the opportunity to go back to their graduate schools and share their passions with the current students.

Steve, who has a Masters of Design / Applied Imagination (yes, that’s a real MA) at Central Saint Martins, visited the current students to talk to them about his experience on the course, and to help brainstorm some current briefs the students are working on.

The course is based around iterative research, and so sends the students on an investigative journey to challenge their ideas through a series of real world interventions by obtaining feedback from end-users and key practitioners.  During his time at the course Steve began researching happiness. One of his first “artefacts” was a series of pothole gardens.

Steve wrote his thesis on social television. Much of his research methodology from the course is still very relevant to his work at The Distillery 5 years later.

Going back to visit the course was a fantastic experience to reconnect with the current students and the whole Distillery London team is looking forward to visiting the end of year exhibition at Central Saint Martins. Thanks to Richard Reynolds for extending the invitation!

Margaret, who has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, returned for the StartUp Weekend.  This 48 hour activity encouraged current MBAs, MScs, and PhDs to ‘hack’ through their entrepreneurial ideas to pitch to a group of dragons at the end of the weekend.  Over the course of the 48 hours they would practice and perfect their pitch, hear about best practices when pitching and be inspired about other entrepreneurs and their stories.

The session was entitled:  Defining your audience: how to create an end to end marketing session.  Over two hours, Margaret coached the entrepreneurs on aspects to think about when defining their audience; who are they? where are they? what do they read? where will you find them?  Once the students had gathered this information, they walked through an ideal customer journey and then discussed the digital ecosystem they might create to foster that journey.

Photo Courtesy of Dr. Stephanie Hussels

It was a fantastic time and a special thank you to Dr. Stephanie Hussels for the invitation.  

If you would like to learn more about your customer journey or creating moment of delight and happiness for your audience, do contact us at info@thedistillery.tv