Chris Baréz-Brown
Most large organisations treat creativity as a campaign, not a capability. They run an innovation sprint, produce a deck, and return to the same operating rhythm that produced the problem. The harder commercial question is how to make original thinking a daily habit of the people who already run the business, without a separate function or a hired-in consultancy.
Chris Baréz-Brown helps commercial organisations turn everyday creativity into a repeatable performance discipline, drawing on twenty-five years inside innovation consultancy and the two firms he founded, Upping Your Elvis and TiO.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Chris Baréz-Brown
- Twenty-five years working the commercial creativity brief as an operator, first agency-side and then running his own firm. The view is from inside the work, not from a research perch.
- Five Penguin titles set out a coherent published thesis on creativity as a learnable behaviour, so buyers can read the argument before booking the room.
- His Unilever programme was written up in Harvard Business Review, a rare credential in this territory.
- He ships a behaviour-change tool with the keynote. TiO and the Elvis Energy Lab let the room run the method the next morning, not just remember the speech.
- A repeat-booking record on the brand side that other creativity speakers don’t match.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Upping Your Elvis, a creativity and energy consultancy working with global brands.
- Former director at innovation consultancy ?What If!, leading offices in London, New York and Sydney.
- Author of five Penguin books: Shine, Wake Up!, Free!, How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas, and Upping Your Elvis. Penguin’s bestselling author in 2014.
- Creator of TiO, a workplace mental wellbeing app with research from the University of Bristol.
- Featured in Harvard Business Review for the impact of his work with Unilever.
- Media appearances include the BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Fast Company and Calm.
Biography
Most creativity programmes inside large organisations fail at the same point. The room leaves energised, the workstreams revert, and within a quarter the operating model has absorbed the change. The problem is rarely a shortage of ideas. It is the absence of a daily practice that lets ordinary employees produce original work under commercial pressure.
This is the territory Chris Baréz-Brown has worked in for twenty-five years. He spent over a decade as a director at ?What If!, the innovation consultancy, running the business across London, New York and Sydney before founding Upping Your Elvis in 2010. The premise of the firm is that human energy, not strategy decks, is the variable that determines whether a creative culture survives contact with the operating model.
His five Penguin titles, including the bestseller Upping Your Elvis, set out a body of practice that treats creativity as a learnable behaviour rather than a personality trait. The work has run inside Nike, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Unilever, Roche, Microsoft and the WPP agency network on the brand side, with Harvard Business Review featuring the impact of the Unilever programme.
What sets the offer apart from a standard creativity keynote is the post-event mechanism. Through TiO, an app developed with research from the University of Bristol, and the Elvis Energy Lab, audiences leave with a method they can run themselves. The thesis underneath all of it is commercial: brave thinking is a function of human state, and human state can be designed for.
Key speaking topics
- Commercial creativity and innovation practice
- Energy management and human performance at work
- Mental and emotional wellbeing in high-pressure roles
- Leadership of creative teams
- Behaviour change and habit design inside organisations
- Brand-side innovation case studies
Ideal for
- CMOs and brand leaders looking to lift creative output across marketing organisations
- Heads of innovation and R&D in consumer-facing businesses
- Senior HR and people leaders responsible for engagement and wellbeing strategy
- Leadership offsites where the brief is renewal of energy and creative confidence, not a strategy refresh
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of creativity as daily practice, not occasional inspiration
- Specific behavioural tools, including TiO, that audiences can use the next morning
- A sharper read on how their own energy state is shaping the quality of their commercial decisions
- Case material on what holds up when a creative culture meets the operating model
Talks
A keynote on how human energy, not effort, drives sustained commercial performance.
Key takeaways:
- A read on the leader’s own energy state and what it is producing in the team
- Practical adjustments that lift output without lengthening the working day
- Tools to keep the change in place after the event
A talk on focus and rhythm in high-stress, high-volume working environments.
Key takeaways:
- A method for separating signal from busy work in a senior calendar
- The TiO practice for clearing emotional load mid-week
- A reset on what brilliance actually requires from a working week
A keynote that treats creativity as a commercial discipline, not a personality trait.
Key takeaways:
- Case material from Coca-Cola, Unilever and other brand clients
- Techniques for producing usable ideas under deadline
- A model for embedding creative practice across a marketing or product team