Recently Shashwat Sharma, Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, Bharti Airtel spoke about how brands being connected to their origins. This relationship relies on human insights, practical and emotional advantages, and brand essence. Sharma used the instance of Hindustan Unilever, which had started creating the concept of brand name love during the identical period, which fundamentally restrained ‘Doing good to try and do well as a brand’. Sharma mentioned as convenient it was for Hindustan Unilever, it had been very challenging to do the same for Airtel.
The telecom industry, where the network differs from one street to a different or one house to a different, poses the most important challenges. At that point in time, everyone thinks about damage protection rather than brand love or persona.
This influenced the session on the subject of excellent leadership by adding a secret sauce to it which is trust. Sharma shared four principles associated with trust and leadership, which were authenticity, courage, responsibility, and care. Authenticity means it’s all about being faithful your origins. It’s sync between what one says and what one does, and being inauthentic will fail to make trust among the purchasers.
About courage, Sharma emphasized the importance of brands having the ability to form the proper choices, which can be difficult to create. “We have the courage to mention the way things are, and have the courage to take the blame if anything goes wrong, and have the courage to confront the issue”, he said.
Responsibility and care are crucial, a decent leader takes responsibility for his actions and cares for his people, and this is often what guides to good followership. Relating leadership and brand persona, Sharma said that it’s difficult to create trust as both a pacesetter and a brand.
Sharma shared Airtel’s control tactic, which revolutionized the way customers checked out the brand, which was the Open Network campaign, which was followed by another campaign called Open Telco. These were supported the authenticity system that Sharma spoke about earlier and associated with how a brand can build and maintain its persona, by anticipating the issues their customers may face and reach bent on them with an answer beforehand.
Sharma made his concluding statement that each one of the items that are observed to form a brand weaker, actually makes it stronger In this digital era, people see and speak about everything, and there exists a world stuffed with dazzlers that customers stumble upon.
