A fulfilling career - that feeds both our body and the soul - takes time to build. So does a brand.
If you are building a brand, your most critical skill is patience and building slowly. The fundamental thing in communication is that it should not be felt hurried.
That’s equally true for a satisfying career.
The mistake that we all commonly make is that we mistake noise for the signal. We tend to believe that things can happen overnight and popularity is the achievement. Not true.
Building a meaningful career takes decades of relentless hard work. That equally applies to building a brand.
In life, most things come without a map. It is futile to look for a playbook for living a meaningful life or successful one for that matter. The job of life is to figure out. That said, at times a little head-up does help.
This post aims to do that, to bring the point home, we present you our six must-read interviews on both finding a fulfilling career and communication.
I hope you find them valuable - and that they help in your journey to figure things out both in life and in building a brand. - Ruhul
The Art Of Communication: An Interview with Towheed Feroze, Head of Communications, IFC, Bangladesh
Invest in yourself and in improving your skills. Try to take your skills to the next level. Do not be complacent thinking that you already know enough or have done enough. Constantly upgrade yourself.
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You can be creative in sports. You can come up with new ways or strategies for your game. The nature of creativity is that it is sector agnostic. You can always come up with new and more innovative ways of doing things regardless of your field of work. You just need the willingness and inspiration to work hard.
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The nature of life is that it is uncertain regardless of what we do. Life is a risky affair by design.
This is my second lesson; the upside of trying something is that you are already 50% ahead of everyone else. Even if you fail at the end of the day, you will end up ahead of everyone else who did not try.
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In the long run, only the brands who are truthful to their consumers will survive and do well. That’s what informs our marketing strategy.
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Finally and most importantly, be interested – not interesting – in everything and be curious. Curiosity is of short supply in our context. Hence, if you are really curious it can be your competitive advantage.
Career, Communication, and Life: An Interview With Zara Jabeen Mahbub, SVP, BRAC Bank
Ever since my childhood, I was a little rebellious though ‘little’ is an understatement. To my family members and cousins, I was extremely difficult to handle. I never resorted to my gender identity. “Zara you are a girl and you cannot do that because you are a girl” – nobody got away with saying that to me. And luckily, in my family, no one ever said that either. They said that girls should follow certain norms of the society but that was not about holding us back from pursuing our ambition. And of course, I never adhered to rules fully.
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Brands will have to act and operate in a more responsible way in a world where everything is public and everyone has a voice.
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Love your work, it will become your calling.
Think long-term. Branding is not a short-term or instant thing. You can’t build a brand overnight spending millions in advertising. Hire the right people for the right job and give them the freedom to work. A great company is all about great people. This is equally true for every department of your company, be it marketing, technology or something else.
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Be open to experience. Diverse experience is an invaluable asset for marketers. The more diversified your knowledge base is, the easier it gets for you to take risks and understand a complex problem and come up with brilliant solutions.
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The world is increasingly becoming smaller. Internet is making national boundaries irrelevant. In order to compete, you need to think globally and act locally. This requires a willingness for continuous learning.
An Interview With Jane Alam Romel, Group Chief Marketing Officer, IDLC
Then and again, there are underlying connections. The advantage of working in diverse industries is that you can connect distinct ideas and generate new ones. You can apply cross-industry solutions. You could see things below and above the line that most people would miss.
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I think every experience we live, adds something to what we become as a person. There is something good to take away from every experience. There is something bad as well. It depends on what we want. I think we become what we want to become and places where we work probably influences this ‘what’ and shape us over the years.
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I don’t think brands do well when they are imposed. I believe they become a success when a story is created around. The more you push your brand on people, the more it backfires. My philosophy is: think from your customers point of view.
An Interview With Khandaker Anwar Ehtesham, FVP, and Head of Communications and Branding, Dhaka Bank
Your talent and degrees matter little in real life. In my short career I have seen people with superior talent and degrees from prestigious institutions and still fail just because they did not put in much hard work, show passion and dedication. Talent is important but passion, dedication, hard work, and honesty these things are way more important than talent.
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You have to find a connection between what your customers want and love and what you are offering as a brand. While doing so you have to maintain consistency, you can’t change your promises often or slogan often and all that. Most importantly, it takes a long time to build a brand, you can’t do it overnight. You can’t have it as you want.
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Digital is no more a mere channel it is becoming a part of our everyday lifestyle and as a brand, you have to fit into this lifestyle. If you look at Uber or other services, these are becoming part of our lifestyle.I think digital is the next big thing. Digital is no more a mere channel it is becoming a part of our everyday lifestyle and as a brand, you have to fit into this lifestyle. If you look at Uber or other services, these are becoming part of our lifestyle.
