Núria Vilanova participated in OPENDIR Alicante last September and was recently interviewed by the regional edition of El Español. She talked about reputation, sustainability, and, above all, listening in business strategy. The complete conversation, which can be viewed here, is shared below.
Question: Big brands are often like politicians: they are disconnected from reality and people. Is it ATREVIA’s and other agencies’ job, in general, to give them a wake-up call so that they manage to connect with society?
A.- Yes, I believe that society is changing so rapidly that one of the biggest risks for brands and political leaders is disconnecting from society, people, employees, and customers.
Q.- In the face of a reputational crisis, as we periodically see happen, is immediacy the most important factor for a company to consider if it wants to save its reputation? Would you also say that it is a double-edged sword if you respond too quickly?
A.- Well, I believe that crisis management begins before the crisis itself, so it is very important to first create trust. Some people believe that the best way to avoid a crisis is to have a low profile, but having a low profile does not prevent you from experiencing a crisis; what it means is that at the moment you have a crisis, you cannot cling to reputation, to actions, to concrete facts that make you trusted. We are human and being human means that many of our behaviors or ways of reacting are linked to primates and to genetic instincts. By survival, we are programmed to be suspicious or distrustful of what we do not know.
When our ancestors tasted an unfamiliar fruit, they did much more cautiously than if it was a strawberry they loved. In the face of a crisis, it is not the time to establish a relationship of trust; it is the time to lean on what you have built. Another aspect is the level of tolerance to response time. One thing that has changed significantly is the level of tolerance to late response times because now everything has become instantaneous. What we care about makes us connect within seconds to see what has just happened, for example, in the war in the Ukraine. Therefore, if a brand needs hours, let alone days, to give an answer, we suspect it has something to hide.
Q.- With a pandemic, whose effects have not yet disappeared, and with the aftermath of the war in Ukraine on the rise, is sustainability the weak link in your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy for brands?
A.- Well, nowadays communicating is more complicated in that you not only communicate as before: what you do, what your product is, what its characteristics are… but why you do it, how you do it and what your purpose is with respect to society. Now, somehow, we ask companies to do something for society, not only to produce, not only to create companies, not only to make profits. In addition, there are multi-channels, and there are all the stakeholders. Today it is much more complicated to be a CEO and to lead a communication strategy.
We have to change the whole process, always start by listening, by understanding the moment of society, what is happening, what is worrying us at that moment, and what other issues are in the conversation. This forces communication companies such as ours to change. We can no longer simply be very good at digital marketing and corporate or employee communication; we must go one step further.
Q.- Your mother is more than a mother. She has been a major partner of your company. As a matter of fact, is she still a partner today?
A.- Yes, my mother is 80 years old; she is still a partner and continues to do what she has always done: take care of me and take care of the whole team and the company. We split up. I was dedicated to the business, and she was dedicated to the invoices, paying the taxes. Today she still keeps an eye on it even though we are a 500 person team in 15 countries.
Q.- Perhaps that is one of the keys to your success. The vision that a mother can bring to a world, such as the business world, is so gray it is clear that it adds up.
A.- I think so, but she has also influenced us a lot in terms of boldness. Both she and I have done what was not expected of us. My mother is a woman whose father did not help her to study, ‘what’s the point if what you have to do is get married? So, she was not expected to work or to be an entrepreneur. She did it when we founded the company. She was 42 years old at the time, and she started studying accounting.
When you learn that you can do what nobody expects you to do, it gives you strength, it makes you brave, and it makes you, why not, a little bit rebellious. I think that is a sign of the identity of our company. Why are we not going to open in Latin America, why are we not going to do other practices that we didn’t know, and why not so many things…?
