I have been interested in brands ever since I walked into my first marketing class in MBA. In the beginning, it was all glamour and shallow. I loved the magic of advertising and its effect on people’s mind. I felt advertising had a kind of power, a power over you and me and our subconscious minds. The power to influence minds and do it without knowing. I fell in love with the creative mindset and the vast opportunity for storytelling that exists in the world of brands and advertising.

Well, school ended and thus began my real life tryst with brands and power of Marketing Communications. I was lucky enough to start with an organization that had rebuilt its brand recently from an unfortunate incident and was focused on building a company on values.  I cannot stress this enough, there are only two kinds of brands, brands who live their values and brands who don’t. This is made a lot easier when you have responsible leadership at the helm who set examples with their actions and not words. My first company was a beautiful brand to learn from and grow with. It was as B2B as they get, and yet each business unit had a human touch to what they were trying to sell. It was a global manufacturer, that had a similar line of products in different industries ranging from automotive to consumer appliances to network solutions, with one common target audience that was an engineer. It was an engineering company run by engineers creating products for engineers. Imagine what a perfect setup that is to build a brand story. You have a direct connection to your target persona’s heart because both your hearts are humming similar songs. The brand voice was genuine, straightforward talk engineer to engineer. This for my naive 22-year-old brain was such a beautiful thing to watch. The fact that what I take away as a feeling from a certain communication and what a design engineer takes away as a feeling from that very communication are so worlds apart. This was my very first learning from the world of brands.

Find the kind of music your audience likes and create that kind of music

Speak directly from your heart to your identified target audience and resonate with that chosen chunk of people. The rest of the world can go to hell. 

This was also a brand that was in an interesting transition of the old and the new meeting each other. A lot of new leadership, a lot of new policies, an entire shift to a whole new culture while still trying to retain some core values. I saw a steady flow of youngsters coming in and growing to be responsible and confident professionals. I think very few brands have achieved that. There were so many leaders who took mentoring seriously and made sure it was a win-win for the employee and the Org. Again this goes back to the right kind of leaders who have the integrity and the character in them to drive the right culture and build a good brand. Because the leadership cannot expect any culture to sustain if they don’t live and breathe it full time.

What is a brand really? A bunch of people living a certain way to create something unique.