OCT 22 I S1E2

How To Forge a Global Brand

In episode two, host Shahar Silbershatz meets Ian Louden, the head of brand worldwide at ArcelorMittal, a leading steel and mining company.

They discuss Ian’s journey from graphic designer to brand consultant and ultimately into his current role at ArcelorMittal, where he’s been for 16 years.

Shahar and Ian talk about:

  • ArcelorMittal’s longstanding sponsorship of the Olympic Games — and why you won’t see the company sponsoring other sports
  • how brand communications have evolved, highlighting the impact of social media, globalization and the rising demand for real-time data
  • brand purpose, reputation management and the need for brand professionals to be strategic advisors to senior management.

Finally, Ian offers some advice for young professionals looking to enter the field and have a successful career in brand communication

Watch the video episode

Read the full transcript

Shahar Silbershatz: Welcome to “Always On”, the podcast about protecting your brand reputation in today’s complex world. I am your host, Shahar Silbershatz, and today I have the pleasure of having an old friend as our guest. So, Ian Louden is the head of brand worldwide at ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel and mining company. Welcome, Ian. 

Ian Louden: Thanks, Shahar. I’m pleased to be here. Nice to see you. 

Shahar: Yeah, you too. And it’s great to have you here. And we’ve known each other for a long time. And there’s a lot of things I want to ask you. But let’s start with something very, very simple. How do you introduce yourself? So, who would you say Ian Louden is if you met somebody in a cocktail party?  

Ian: I mean I start off by saying that, you know, I say I’m the head of brand for a great big steel company, but the very next thing I say is, “I’m not a steel guy.” You know, you might think I’m a steel guy, born, brought up and bred in the steel business. And indeed there is a little bit of steel in me now, because I’ve been in my current role for 16 years. 

But I actually say I’m a brand guy. So I’m a guy who believes in the power of the brand. That’s really, ultimately, the kind of vocational thing that caused me to get into this world. Because I originally trained as a designer a long time ago, but I got into the world of brand and brand consulting. Worked for a few of the larger brand identity consulting firms around the world. And then my last job in brand consulting was to create the brand strategy and brand expression of ArcelorMittal. As you say, we like to say, the world’s leading steel company. 

We’re not the biggest anymore, by the way, because the Chinese are now bigger than us. But we like to say that we’re the world’s leading. But anyway, I say that I’m a brand guy because I’m fascinated in the way that brand can create preference, even from a hard-bitten analyst who trusts his spreadsheets, even they are affected by brand in terms of creating preference, and that makes brand a powerful tool, even for industrial B2Bs like ArcelorMittal.  

Shahar: And you experienced the world of brand from these two sides, the design side, the strategic side. What got you into it to begin with? What attracted you to a career in brand and communications?  

Ian: Well, I think that I, even thinking right back to my school days, I just thought that there was, I didn’t really know, couldn’t really verbalize it or rationalize it. But I just thought that there was something about the way that products are identified, the way that products and services are identified. And by the way, I mean, I suppose back then graphic design, how they looked and how some things, the way things look, is powerful. I think we ignore too often that the way things look is really powerful. 

That’s why, for example, you know, I think that companies who understand the power of the brand are also companies who will make their interior design environments, in their offices, pleasant places to be and places that reflect the persona of the company. 

Because, as I say, brand is a powerful thing. Just that dawning, slow realization of the power of the brand took me into the world of design. I worked as a graphic designer. But then I had a bit of a “road to Damascus” in my career. I could see that, you know, I was a good designer. I still have an eye for design. But I could see, frankly, that there were better people at design than me around. 

And also I never learned the Mac. I’m a bit too old to have been in on the Mac at the beginning. So I switched to brand consulting. And I worked for three companies. Your listeners will know some of the names: Siegel + Gale, which goes back a long time. Enterprise IG, which became the Brand Union, which was the brand agency of WPP. 

And then FutureBrand, which was the brand agency of Interpublic Network. And that’s where my last main consulting assignment was ArcelorMittal and creating their brand. And then they made me an offer, and that was 16 years ago. So, did I answer that question? 

Shahar: I think you did. You also led us through the different milestones of the career. And that’s helpful because, as you’ve gone through that journey, you know, starting as a designer, going through several agencies and ending up on the client side, doing the strategic work, what would you say that you like most today about this profession? 

Ian: It’s a double-sided coin, right? So I think that when you’re in consulting, it’s kind of cool because you’re having new clients coming along. I mean, sometimes too many clients and you get too busy, but that’s another story. But to have several clients going on at the same time is great learning, when you see how different companies are operating, and that’s really, that’s great learning. 

But then I think then you also sometimes get to a point of, you know, the designer brand consultants gets hired to, let’s say, refresh the brand or develop a new brand, and then they do that and they hand over the brand book, the playbook or the online guidelines website, and then you walk away. But then I kind of think it’s then that the main work starts to happen. So what I wanted to do was to get involved on the client side. 

And I really was pretty lucky that, you know, when ArcelorMittal, well at that time it was Mittal Steel, right? So we had been involved with Mittal Steel and had worked with them, but then a couple of years later, they set out to merge with Arcelor. And so we worked on that from a consulting point of view. And then I was hired by the company that we’d created, ArcelorMittal. 

So the beauty, and the really lucky thing for me, is that I was in right at the beginning. I didn’t join a company that already had a mature brand. I was there at the birth. I couldn’t do the job I do without all that brand consulting experience, but actually for me, I prefer to be in the company that’s really making it happen. 

And then I get to sometimes travel and go and see what’s happening with the brand and different parts of it. It’s kind of more, it’s more rounded and more complete, I think. And I think the truth is, and people listening to this can draw their own conclusions, but I think in 16 years, we’ve built a significant brand.  

Shahar: It’s quite a unique privilege, I would say, to be part of both creating a brand and actually overseeing it over the many years of evolution, and that’s quite cool. And I think it also gives you a good vantage point when you look around you, which leads me to my next question. How do you think the field has changed, the field of brand communications, over the years that you’ve been in this profession? 

Ian: Social media is the first thing that comes to mind. I think the power of social media has grown over the years since we started to use this and it keeps on growing. So I think that brands, even B2B industrial brands, they have to engage with social media because that’s where people are getting so much of their information. I think the other thing that I’d like to say is trying to… in the old days, you would have been… back in my consulting days, right, you would’ve… You would have said, “Right, these are the rules. These are the rules and we will have, you know, absolute consistency globally and there’s no room for flexibility in this”, you know. You have the brand police, right?  

Shahar: I remember those days.  

Ian: We all have, yeah. And so was only one way to do it. Now, particularly with a company like us, you know, manufacture steel, I forget how many countries, but 12 or 14 countries around the world. And we sell steel in pretty well every country in the world. 

So I think that you have to have a brand strategy and a brand expression that is consistent within a parameter, but allows for flexibility within that parameter. You know, because the culture of — and I’m picking countries that I know a little bit about — the culture of Brazil is real different to that of Germany, let’s say. 

And so it’s no use, I didn’t think it’s smart or clever to try and expect both to be behaving in exactly the same way with the brand. 

Shahar: And would you say also that the field has become more challenging over the years? So you mentioned social media and globalization. Do you see more challenges and more, maybe, demands on professionals in the field? 

Ian: I suppose it is, I mean, but I would characterize it in a different way. It’s broader now. The subject of brand is much broader. I mean, for example, these days, we’re talking a lot about talent attraction and talent retention, and we’re talking a lot about the need not only to have policies on diversity and inclusion, but be able to prove that we’re living by those policies. So I think that brand definitely is broader. 

We’re realizing, and it’s a good thing for brand professionals, but we’re realizing that brand touches rather more than we perhaps thought that it did in the past. And I just happened, I mentioned talent attraction retention and DEI because those are in my head at the moment, but they’re not the only, they’re not the only areas. I mean, you know, the real huge thing that just happened is digital, you know. 

Clearly, you know, websites and digital communications and all of that. The other thing I think that we’ve really come to realize and utilize, and I’m going to give a shameless plug in a minute, is the power of video. You know, think back to the days at Siegel + Gale or whenever, you know, the idea of having a film crew and making a video, it’d be like, you know, “we don’t, that’s not really for us”, but, we are using video a lot. 

We’re making several videos each year at different levels. Here comes the plug. We’ve made three fantastic videos for our support for Paris 2024 Olympic Games. So your gift to me, Shahar, for doing this podcast is that you’re going to let me ask your readers to go to YouTube and put in “The Steel and the Torch” and view the three four-minute videos that are there. 

They are pretty cool, particularly episode three, which is about the hoisting up onto the Eiffel Tower of the Olympic rings, which were made of our low carbon steel.  

Shahar: I definitely recommend our listeners to do that. And I’m going to get back to the Olympic Games sponsorship, which is an interesting topic. I wanted to ask you, though, something else. Some of the changes that we’re seeing in the industry over the years from our perspective is, I mean, you mentioned the brand gets broader, touches everything. 

There’s more of a multi-stakeholder environment out there that has a lot more involvement, a lot more opinions, a lot more influence on how the brand evolves. And we’re also seeing that communications increasingly need to consider what’s happening in the world around them. There’s geopolitical events.

There’s different macro events, economic, social events that require brands and communicators to be constantly aware and reactive. And that’s partly why we call this podcast “Always On”. Do you also find that your job has become more “always on”? 

Ian: Yes, I think so. I’ve recently been having a discussion with my husband about, because normally I get my work iPhone out before I go to bed. And I’m now prohibited from looking at the work iPhone  

Shahar: That sounds familiar, by the way. 

Ian: Well, because it’s actually, I mean, I think it’s very true because it sends you to bed thinking about work, which is really not smart for health or anything like that. So, but I mean, a company like us, we do have to be “always on”. We are global. We have a press monitoring service, and a social media monitoring service, and we get reports daily and the reports are read and they’re sifted and they’re edited and the most important things are sent upstairs, so to speak, and we do act on those. 

So we do have to be always on because there are you know, what is the existential challenge facing the steel industry? Well, hopefully your viewers know that it’s decarbonization. So there’s huge, difficult issues there because, you know, leaving aside things, the technologies such as hydrogen and electrolysis, which may in the future be providing us with near to carbon-neutral steel, but they’re nowhere near it yet. There’s one or two companies doing it in a very small way.

 Normally they have a lot of government investment and normally they’re in areas where there’s availability of very cheap energy, but until that day, there’s two ways to make steel. There’s the way which has relatively less carbon emissions, which is where you take scrap steel and you melt it down and you turn it into new steel. And you can do this again and again and again. And indeed the steel which we used for the Olympic Games, for the torch and the rings and the Paralympic agitos, is made from that steel which is melted down. 

Problem is, there’s only enough scrap circulating in the world to meet 30 percent of global demand. So the other 70 percent has to come from somewhere and the place it has to come from is the blast furnace, where you have coal or coke and iron ore and you make the steel that way. This is the polluting method. 

This is the one with all of the carbon emissions. The truth is until we, you know, the steel industry globally has to satisfy the world’s demand for steel. And if there’s only enough scrap for 30 percent, then what we have to do is try to make the blast furnace method less carbon emitting. But it’s incremental. It will still always be carbon emitting. 

That’s one of the problems that we have. So, to come back to your question about “always on”, you know, one of the things which we’re watching is, what are people saying about us, about our positive efforts to reduce carbon emissions, sometimes about the things that they think that we should be doing, which we’re not doing, and also to watch what our competitors are doing in that regard as well, because, for example, we have much tougher regulation in Europe, where we are a major steel manufacturer. 

You know, one could say, you know, “Why don’t you just avoid that tough regulation and go to countries which don’t have such strong regulations?” And the Chinese are taking advantage of that. But we are in Europe. We want to retain the jobs that we have in Europe. So we try to introduce new technologies to incrementally reduce carbon emissions. So that existential issue is certainly something for us that is “always on”. 

Shahar: That makes sense. And you mentioned that you use tools like media monitoring, social media listening, to understand and to help you in being “always on”. Tell me a little bit more about how you use both technology and also data, what kind of data you and your team use to help you be “always on” and constantly kind of have your finger on the pulse. 

Ian: Honestly, you know, this is an emerging subject for us. You know, we’ve done reputational research in specific countries, frankly, usually countries where we had a problem, you know, a few times over the years. And you get the data that comes back, and it tells you some things, it confirms, it mostly confirms what you knew, but it also sometimes tells you some things that you didn’t know. And then you pass that information on to senior leadership. And the truth is, I’ll be really honest, sometimes they use that data and they act on it. And sometimes they say, thank you very much. And actually not much changes. 

Now, I think that the world is changing a bit, slowly, and data does become more important, but I mean, I have to tell you, I don’t have our senior leadership barking at me down the phone saying how many percentage points has our reputation increased over the last week? They’re not asking, they never asked me that. They never asked me that. I think they feel rightly or wrongly that that they have a pretty good finger on the pulse themselves. You know, we do use those media monitoring and social media monitoring to kind of take the temperature of how we are. But I mean, we kind of do it in a kind of analogue way, if you will, rather than a digital way. 

But, you know, it is a subject that we’re interested in, to see if we might step into a world of maybe, you know, real-time reputational measurement, but we’re not there yet. And I think the main reason, perhaps, why we’re not there yet is because we have to be sure that if we’re going to go down this path, we will actually then do something as a result of the results. Yeah? Do something as a result of the data you get. 

There’s no point doing it if you’re not actually going to do it. So turning a company round from one, which is, let’s say somewhat, I mean I don’t want to characterize this too much one side and the next, but to move from something which is somewhat instinctive to something which is much more data-driven is a big kind of character personality change. 

And I think that’s only going to come about when it becomes imperative, proven imperative, to do it that way, because until it becomes proven imperative, I think leadership — and I’m not just talking about our leadership, I’m talking about other leaderships as well — they would say, why am I doing this? Why am I doing, what am I going to do with, what am I actually going to do with this data? You know, I think that’s the really… I think that’s the thing that’s really important.  

Shahar: The fact that things are happening very quickly today and brands need to react to them, and communicators need to react to them, means that communicators need a lot more real-time input. And the question is, of course, what kind of input and what they do with it. 

But there’s a need for having tools that support you, not just in understanding what’s happening there, but understanding what’s relevant and how you might need to respond. Because, you know, you can follow your Twitter feed and see something there brewing. But that might not be relevant for your stakeholder universe and for your brand. 

So you need to have some of those, right? So we’re seeing communicators more and more looking for data points that help them focus on what matters and helps them react to things that are happening in a kind of agile, more agile way than they did in the past. I imagine you do the same, maybe more, with media monitoring, but it sounds like you’re not one of those who have a big TV screen in the department with KPIs and flashing greens and reds and stuff like that.  

Ian: No. No, no. And I kind of think it would require some kind of event to push us into a world where we’re saying, “God, okay, let’s get data.” But it’s not a place — I’m just giving you my view of it. It’s not something, it’s not something that management, that leadership here are pushing me to do, because I don’t think they… I think they’re happy with their knowledge that they know what the temperature of the company is. 

They might be wrong by the way, but they believe, and maybe it is the case that they actually do know what the temperature of the company is and its reputation around the world. So they are happy with that. But I think what it would require, what it might require, is something to go badly wrong. 

So that they would then say, hell, you know, I thought I had my finger on the pulse, but actually I didn’t. I need to have my finger on the pulse. What can I do to help me do that? And then that might be a scenario that might take us down a data path.  

Shahar: So how do you handle things when things do go wrong, and “go wrong” doesn’t necessarily need to be something very big, but for example, for a very global decentralized company such as yourselves, there’s always something going on, right? You have, I don’t know, labor disputes in Mexico or health risks in a plant in Italy. And how do you in your role, how do you see, how do you address those challenges?  

Ian: Well, the first thing to say and to recognize is that, despite ArcelorMittal being a huge global company, we’re very decentralized. So each of our operating business units around the world, they’re obviously all reporting into the center and we obviously have some global policies, but, you know, to some extent, they are discrete businesses, and they, when they… I mean, frankly, it’s when the problem gets really big that it gets escalated up, to the center. 

So, I mean, if we have a labor dispute in Brazil, that our Brazilian colleagues and our Brazilian CEOs are going to be negotiating with the unions and they’re going to be dealing with that. We will hear it in the press reports, but it won’t be something that we will be trying to deal with here.

 On the other hand, let’s — so we’ve just been through the Olympics. That’s obviously a global event. So we were dealing with that. So, I mean, I just think it’s part of the function of a company that’s chosen to organize itself on a decentralized yet with a corporate center strategy that that leads to localization of the need for data. 

You know, it may very well be — and you might be surprised to hear me say this — it may very well be that one or two of our business units around the world may be doing, you know, real-time reputational data. They may be deciding locally that they’re going to do that. I can think of one that, I think, has certainly done something in the past, but that’s because that CEO has decided, I think I want to go down this data route. Even if it’s just to confirm what I think I know.  

Shahar: Let’s talk a little bit about the Olympics. You had a very high-profile sponsorship. You just mentioned the Paris Olympics. Also I remember back in 2012 in the London Olympics. Tell me a little bit about the thinking behind those sponsorships and how do you actually track, measure the impact that that has on your brand?  

Ian: I think the subject that I just want to mention first is: why do we sponsor the Olympic Games? So you will not see ArcelorMittal from the corporate center sponsoring football, motor racing, yachting. In fact, you won’t see us sponsoring anything apart from the Olympic Games. So why is that? So what I like to say is that I believe that our senior leadership and the company believes that the… you know, we could say the Olympics is about sport. 

Yeah, of course it’s about sport. It’s a multi-sport international competition, but beyond and away from that, the Olympics… we believe that the Olympics sits above sport. It transcends the idea of sport. It’s sport, but it’s so much more. And you have to be involved, as I’ve been lucky to have been a couple of times, to really get that feeling that this is, notwithstanding political disputes and wars, this is the world trying to come together. 

And that’s such an evocative and inspirational idea that I think that we think as a leading — well, we hope that we’re seen as a leading global company — it is the kind of thing that we should be supporting almost from a moral, ethical point of view. So that’s thing number one. Thing number two is, you know, we want to be seen to be a partner of this amazing event that happens every four years in the summer, but every two years, if you include the winter games. 

We think it causes people to admire us and it raises preference for us in their minds when they see us not only sponsoring the Olympic Games, but not sponsoring other things. Because this is the special thing. As regards trying to get some data for this, it is… we did it back in 2012. We did do pre-games and post-games research. This time we haven’t done that. We’ve done… we’re certainly doing research with our guests, because everybody… well, in fact not everybody, but many, many sponsors have… Part of what they want to do is have some hospitality, bring their VIPs, their suppliers, their customers, some of their key stakeholders, they want to bring them to the games to be able to socialize with them, to be able to give them a bit of this Olympic experience, Olympic experience and the feeling that ArcelorMittal is wanting to be part of this thing. 

So when they come along, we do surveys with them in advance of the games, you know, what do you think about the fact that ArcelorMittal is again sponsoring the Olympic Games? And then afterwards, you know, after they’ve had their experience, we do that as well. But we are thinking now to do a little bit more, but also, you see, one of the things about the Olympic Games is unless you — you need to understand a little bit about the way the levels are occupied. 

There’s a level called the tops. These are people like Visa and Coca-Cola and about 10 more more who are, they get their rights from, they buy their rights from the International Olympic Committee who are based in Lausanne, Switzerland. And they buy packages. It’s a minimum of four games. You know, winter, summer, winter, summer. So they buy packages and they get global rights of association, of association of their brands with the Olympic rings. 

But then everybody else just becomes a sponsor of the national organizing committee who’s organizing that particular games. And they are organized in three levels, one, two, three. We were at level two with Paris 2024, which is the name of the organizing committee of the Paris games. So that gives us rights, but only in the country of France. And you pay a lot of money for those rights, you know, because what does the Olympics… the Olympics costs a huge fortune to put on, and they only get their money from three places: ticket sales, TV rights and sponsorship. So it’s a pretty expensive thing to be a sponsor of the Olympic Games. 

So you have to really believe in it. And I do think it is something that we really do believe in. It is, I think it’s instinctive. I think it’s instinctive. You know, I was with a colleague from our sports hospitality company, who used to work for the IOC and she says, you know, there really isn’t any proven data, you know, scientific data that really proves the value of being a sponsor of the Olympic Games, although everybody knows that it does have that. so I think that’s an interesting area of discussion where sometimes you just I won’t call it blind faith, but you have faith. You believe that this is going to be helping and other people need to have it.  

Ian: That’s a very good point that I want yeah, to dwell on a little bit… This idea of proving the value, because we’re seeing a lot of… We work a lot with chief communications officers, chief brand or reputation officers. They often have the ask from above, from the CEO, CFO to show some kind of proof of ROI. I mean, if we are investing such and such in communications or brand, can you show me the return on that investment. Do you also face that ask sometimes? 

Ian: Honestly, no, I don’t. I don’t face it. I think that maybe I should face it but I don’t. And I think that the company is, you know, what can I say? I think I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think that the company believed in the power of the brand and investment in the power of the brand. You know, by the way, I wouldn’t mind having a kind of magic pixie dust that I could sprinkle over the brand and then suddenly double my budgets.  

And maybe data would be the thing to do that. But honestly, maybe we’re the exception to the rule, but I don’t have… So, for example, we spent about some hundreds of thousands on those three films that we were talking about. I think you only have to look at them to know that they’ve done us good. You know, we’ve got thousands of views on YouTube. 

People are interested. There’s been press about them. People are talking about it. So I think that’s great. No one is asking me to… I mean, apart from, yeah, we watch the YouTube views. It’s great to see more people watching it. 

Shahar: And that’s data as well, by the way.  

Ian: Yeah, it is data as well. It is data as well. It is data. So we do like that, but I haven’t got people… it’s interesting actually, because in this situation, right after the games, we’re building up to a meeting in November where we’re going to do a full debrief. 

And after the debrief of everything that we did, criticism, congratulations, whatever it is, we’ll be making a report to go to the most senior levels of the company. I have relative confidence that… I know pretty well already that they were super happy with what happened and I think that they believe that it positively affects our reputation.  

Shahar: I’m interested in your opinion about… we talked a little bit about some of the changes in the field and the profession. Maybe also talk specifically about your role, the role of a head of brand. How do you see that role today and going forward as different from how it used to be? 

Ian: I think it’s more strategic than it was. I think it focuses more on issues such as purpose. You know, we’ve all heard about the idea of purpose-led companies as being something which… the idea of companies being purpose-led and the benefits that brings to business have been discussed now for 10 or 20 years. 

So I think that, you know, what I like to talk about is, so I have a little model, which I call the brand idea of ArcelorMittal. Uh, and the brand idea consists of three things. The first part is our purpose and what we say, or the short form is that the purpose of ArcelorMittal is “smarter steels for people and planet”. There’s quite a lot built into those words. 

Smarter steels. It’s not just regular steel. It’s talking about smarter, not just from a lower carbon-emitting content but also steels with new technical characteristics. I mean, we have thousands of researchers at several research R&D outfits around the world working hard to develop new steels. You know, steel has a bit of an image problem. People think that steel is steel is steel. Well, it’s definitely not. So smarter steels, that’s the first part. 

And then for people and planet, so, you know, if the viewers could just have a think, look around the room that they’re in, they may not be able to see any steel, or the windows may be steel, or the chair may be steel, but mostly there’ll be paint on the wall, there’ll be carpet on the floor, there’ll be glass in the windows. 

That paint and that carpet and that glass were all made with machine tools that are made of steel. Steel makes modern life possible. I mean, it really does. None of us are smart enough to imagine a world without steel because it’s so inherent to everything. It has a role in just about everything that makes modern life possible. So there’s the people part. Smarter steel for people and planet. It makes modern life possible. And then the planet part is obviously, you know, referencing the existential issue of carbon emissions. 

So if the promise is part one of my brand idea bundle, part two is two or three paragraphs, which we call our narrative, which just talks about, expands on smarter steels for people and planet, and just plays it out in a little bit more detail. 

And then the fourth part is our brand values, which are not unique to us. Many other companies have them. I’m going to try to make sure I get them all right. Safety, leadership, quality and sustainability. That’s right. Values, narrative, purpose. We wrap them together and we call that the brand idea. 

And I think what has changed over the years is much more emphasis on the concepts behind the brand so that the emphasis, which has always been there about graphic consistency and logos and colors and typefaces is now being matched or even perhaps succeeded by the emphasis on what the brand actually stands for, you know, because what I like to say is, you know, what is a brand anyway? And I make no excuse… some of you will have heard this before. my favorite quote was an executive, apparently at CocaCola years ago. 

And he said that a brand is a promise and a great brand is a promise kept. And I think that’s such a it still raises the hairs on the back of my neck because the idea of a promise kept. Make a promise and keep your promise. That’s how to build your reputation. That’s how to build your preference. 

Shahar: I fully agree. Would you also say that this role of head of brand, especially for a company, a global company such as yours and a high-profile company, is increasingly also becoming an advisor to the senior management, to use brand also as a filter for decision-making in operational areas, strategic growth, financial? 

Ian: Sometimes but not as often as it should. 

Shahar: So tell me more about that. 

Ian: Telling you more about that makes one think about using a slightly different word than the brand word and using the reputation word. So I think brand and reputation are obviously closely linked. I think that, you know, we do try… and not just me, but my boss, who’s the head of corporate communications for the group and other senior colleagues, you know, are giving advice in various forums up, going up in the company to say, well, I think that there’s a reputational risk here, you know. Are you, have you, are we considering the reputational risk? 

And I do think that we consider that all the time and it does cause us to modify our actions. Does it… I mean, at the end of the day, decisions have to be made at the top of the company, as to balancing reputational risk with whatever we were, with whatever risk we were taking and whatever prize we were hoping to get from taking that, from taking that risk. 

But it is, it’s a tough, you know, it’s a tough issue and a very, very difficult industry to be in because it is… It has inherent problems of carbon emissions, of safety, of an industry that’s far too dominated… far too many… nowhere near gender balance. 

All of those things are creating risk and we are trying to move. We are showing some success in moving those things. But it’s a long haul. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s a long haul, but I do think that if we transfer the concept, if we talk about brand and think about it more in terms of reputation, I do think that the company is constantly thinking about its reputation and that’s why, for example, we do things at the Olympic Games because we think it adds plus points on the reputation side.  

Shahar: Do you feel that the role of head of brand, and not necessarily in your company but in general, do you see that role evolving in a different direction considering all the evolution, the challenges that we talked about? How do you see that role evolving?  

Ian: It should be evolved to be more influential. You know, brand is what people think of us and what people think of us is important. What people think of us can create preference for us or can create rejection. So I think the brand is becoming more and more a boardroom issue, because it affects preference. 

You know, if you get your brand right, the broad subject of brand, the broad subject of what we stand for, it can clearly add points, whether it’s in sales or reputational indices, but you have to get your hands around it and take the decisions that we are going to make investments, for example, in brand, because we know that it’s going to improve our situation. So I think it’s becoming more and more a boardroom issue, because without it you’re leaving part of your armory of business unused.  

Shahar: What advice would you give to young professionals in the field of brand and communications, people entering the field, you know, being aspirational, ambitious? What kind of advice would you give looking back at your younger self? 

Ian: The advice I would give is: if you really love it and you’re really turned on by it, then I would pursue it because you can have a great career from it and it’s engaging and it’s interesting and you can see results and you get to do great things. 

Don’t just go into it as a choice out of a list of six different things that you thought you might go into. You can have a great career in brand, but you have to you have to really want it. You have to…. you have to emotionally buy into it. You have to want to do it. 

Shahar: Thank you so much, Ian. This was great. We covered a lot of ground, and it’s really inspiring and interesting to hear your perspective on things. So thank you so much for joining us today. 

Ian: Thanks for the opportunity, Shahar. It was a pleasure.