Founder of Kill Boring Dead. Speaker on attention, creativity, and why most brands deserve to die.
As heard at SXSW Sydney. Webby winner. Professionally allergic to beige.
“The best talk at SXSW Sydney.”
As delivered at SXSW Sydney. Why safe, consensus-approved marketing is a slow death sentence, and what the brands still standing in 2050 will have done differently.
Best for: Conference keynotes, marketing and media events.
The financial case against boring. Why the safest campaign is the most expensive one, how memory actually works, and why your brand book is not your customer.
Best for: CMO forums, leadership offsites, brand teams who need a shake.
Not on this list? Good. Tell Marcus what your audience is sick of hearing and he'll build a talk around it, from scratch, for your conference.
Best for: Conferences and summits that want a talk nobody else has heard.
Every talk is rebuilt for the room. No off-the-shelf decks, no recycled keynotes.
“By far one of the most engaging speakers we've worked with.”
Marcus Willis spent a decade running a polite, profitable, soul-destroying social media agency. Then he burned the playbook and founded Kill Boring Dead, a social-first creative agency built on one idea: attention is earned, never bought.
Since then KBD has picked up a Webby, built campaigns for Red Rooster, Bank of Queensland, Cathay Pacific and Advil, and turned down roughly 99% of the brands that knock on the door.
On stage he's the same as he is in the work: fast, funny, and allergic to safe. Audiences leave with fewer safe ideas rattling around their heads and a genuine fear of posting Happy Friday with a stock photo.
Marcus Willis is a business owner, creative agency founder and speaker who's spent more than a decade building companies, making mistakes and developing increasingly strong opinions about creativity, careers and why doing things the normal way is wildly overrated.
He speaks about what he's actually lived.
Creativity. Business. Marketing. Ambition. Careers. Taking risks. Doing work you actually give a shit about.
Underneath it all is one question: what could you do if you stopped playing it safe?
Marcus is still trying to find out himself.
Fair question.
Marcus has spent more than a decade building businesses and is now attempting the slightly ridiculous task of building Kill Boring Dead into one of the world’s most creative agencies.
He doesn't speak from the mountaintop.
He speaks from somewhere halfway up it, slightly out of breath, occasionally lost and with some pretty good stories from the climb.
Fast. Funny. Honest. A little chaotic.
Think 478 slides in 55 minutes.
Stories. Ideas. Failures. Questionable decisions. Uncomfortable truths. Very few opportunities to check your email.
If Marcus is doing his job properly, 55 minutes should feel like 15.
Yes.
But nobody will be asked to chant, hug the stranger next to them or wake up tomorrow at 4:13am for an ice bath.
Marcus wants people to think bigger, back themselves, take more creative risks and stop sleepwalking through their careers.
Work takes up far too much of life to spend it bored.
Permission.
Start the thing. Pitch the stupid idea. Speak up. Change direction. Aim embarrassingly high. Make something you actually care about.
Not because it'll definitely work.
Because we're all going to die one day. May as well find out what you're capable of before then.
Quite possibly.
Marcus speaks at conferences, company events, leadership sessions, in-house presentations and your company conference where you desperately need something exciting to happen.
He can tailor talks around creativity, business, marketing, ambition and building a career worth remembering.
Fast, funny, useful and very difficult to sleep through.
Keynotes, panels, CMO events and the occasional podcast. Melbourne based, travels anywhere boring needs killing.