Rebranding 'Academy' to 'Performance'

Just over a month ago we launched our new talent onboarding process, including our three tiers. We’ve taken some feedback since then and we’re making one big change in response.

We’re renaming the ‘Academy’ tier to ‘Performance’.

There’s a very simple reason for this. Academy, quite understandably, is giving people the impression that it’s just a place to learn. And that people in the Academy tier won’t receive representation.

This isn’t the case of course. Everyone, in any of our tiers today, can feed their leads to us and we will represent them to the best of our ability, negotiating, wrapping a contract around them, and chasing payment - even if the fee is small.

So we think changing the name to ‘Performance’ should help to avoid this confusion.

Every tier is about learning

The reason we called the first tier Academy, was really a reference to our focus on learning and development. And this is something we don’t want to lose with this rebranding. In fact, I want to use this opportunity to reinforce to all our talent that we expect everyone to be on a learning journey while we represent them.

The old adage that ‘if you are standing still, you’re going backwards’ is perhaps more true about professional speaking than about any other sector. It’s a constant battle to be visible, relevant, and on a par with your competition as a performer on stage.

At Pomona Partners we’re investing hugely in helping you to keep advancing your skills and your profile. The Talent Map is unique in giving you a single, structured assessment of the key factors in speaking success. Our fast-growing training library is being mapped back to the Talent Map, so that we’re not only diagnosing your key challenges, but offering you solutions. And our panel of fantastic coaches and service providers is there to help you go beyond what you can do alone.

Whatever tier you’re in, and whatever we call it, I would urge all of you to make sure you’re engaging with the Talent Map, with our training content and providers, and keeping your career moving forward.