Driven by technology, the future of media is forecasted to inculcate several digital trends, including cutting-edge strategies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. These rapid inculcations of digital trends have surged the requirement for dynamic leaders who possess a vast understanding and in-depth knowledge of the technical as well as personnel aspects of the trends. Currently, various industry leaders are advancing in the media industry with their proficient expertise in their concerned segment of media. One such prominent example of dynamic media leadership is demonstrated by Ants Lusti.
Leveraging a Way with Words
With more than 20 years of experience in the marketing and services field, Ants leads with a visionary approach to the industry. Although a laurelled media leader, Ants’ participation in the media industry was coincidental. He was invited for a photoshoot as a model, as he needed an additional income during that time. Owing to his ability to have a way with words, Ants received a proposal to become a project manager (besides being a model) for a shipping company’s catalog.
After his graduation from the theatre school of Tallinn University, Ants was working as an actor in VAT theatre. During that time, the old political regime was collapsing and the new, Republic of Estonia, was rising from the dust. For Ants and his family, coping up with the then-present scenario was a tough challenge. Shortly after the conflicts, he left to study Diplomacy and International relations.
After a year of graduation, he received an offer from the local Grey office, which he did not want to refuse. He found himself again in the modern creative and media industry, followed self-improvement in Finnish Marketing Institute as well as an Executive MBA grade in Estonian Business School. Today, Ants spearheads as the CEO of Identity and puts his profuse expertise on the table to pilot the company to great heights.
Developing Highly Professional Strategies
Identity was created with an ambition to create a new, highly professional strategic branding and design niche. The company combines strategy development, service design, and product development with value innovation and strategic branding, using outstanding graphic design and integrating special media solutions and operations. With years of experience, Identity delivers results with a real impact to make things happen. Its impactful services and solutions have earned it recognition on local as well as international levels—boosting its credibility as a reliable partner.
Identity combines a strategic-holistic approach (along with its own methodology, a wide combination of design disciplines and tools) with outstanding creative output to make strategic vision tangible. With a compact yet mighty team of professionals, the company succeeds in making a big influence with its offerings. To date, the company has earned various recognitions on local as well as international levels—making it a highly reliable partner.
Understanding the Crux of Culturism
Being at the helm, Ants caters to several vital aspects of the company. In recent years, he has increasingly focused on service designs, product development, and business model consultations. In addition to that, he ensures delegating his duties and responsibilities efficiently. Speaking of the strategies involved in doing so, he adds: “I think on a company level it is involving right people and inspiring them, helping to find the right path and realizing it. On the client’s project-level, it is defining and implementing the right strategy.”
As the leader, Ants also ensures maintaining intact motivation and productivity in the workspace. In this matter, he is ‘self-confidently’ positive. He believes that the culture must support people’s ambitions and self-actualization so that the control is in their hands. Additionally, every individual must deliver their maximum in a cooperative framework and there are no limits to whether a person wants to grow vertically or horizontally. He adds, “Talents have to see Identity as a possibility for self-realization.”
Fragmentation of Media Landscape
“Fragmentation of the media landscape continues, on-the-go and on-demand media channels grow and may divide the whole media landscape generations,” adds Ants. He further continues that digitalization actively impacts how media is produced and consumed. With that said, every individual is going to have their own media channel(s)—however, the question about who is interested to consume it is persistent. In addition to that, the pandemic has highlighted and intensified structural inequalities.
Amid this, people’s expectations are growing for brands to take a more nuanced approach to diversity and inclusion. Ants remarks that to be truly representative one needs to understand the various identities that matter to people in the market and get hyper-local with their efforts.
Vast Influence of Digitalization
Remarking on the influence of digitalization on the media industry, Ants asserts that Digitalization can be defined as the mass adoption of internet-connected digital technologies and applications by consumers, enterprises and governments. He further describes it as a global phenomenon that has affected every industry and nearly every consumer in the world and has changed the way information is produced and gathered.
Ants further enunciates how digitalization has changed the way information is produced and gathered. Information flows very fast, allowing everyone to become a channel owner and news anchor. However, the background fake news has created an untrusted media environment in the present time and has resulted in the dilution of authenticity.
Winner’s Recipe in Modern Media Competition
Speaking of the authentic flow of information, especially on social media platforms, Ants remarks that social media seems to hold a winner’s recipe in the modern media competition. However, it often faces backlashes and suffers from not being trusted. Although social media grows in terms of popularity or user numbers, traditional media channels, especially the state-owned ones, gain an audience through reliability.
Citing an example of a travel encounter, Ants adds how various news channels provide a totally different picture of a conflict. He considers it a dangerous thing since different angles to an event result in varied opinions and creates room for differing values and a basis for further confrontations.
“There is no one Comprehensive Leader”
Being a recognized leader, Ants ensures inspiring his peers by creating a motivating environment. He believes that every leader must deliver their best and continue inspiring others since every leader is perceived as a hero. There is no one comprehensive leader.
Every individual is an inspiring leader in their own way to combine wholeness. To conclude, Ants believes that the recipe is to create an environment and culture that operates by itself, without exclusive rights, chain of command and superintendence.
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Read Full Magazine: The 10 Most Influential Media Leaders of 2022.
