Author: Louise Stewart-Muir

In today’s communication driven world, there is no ignoring the critical role of CEOs when it comes to driving brand awareness and building brand-customer intimacy.

The most successful of brands be it global MNCs or enterprising start-ups have leveraged on the power of personality led CEOs to generate awareness, drive interest, draw inspiration, attract aspiration, instil trust and when that need arises, establish the calm amidst chaos.

Coming up to the fore, to attain that level of credibility, influence, visibility and commercial advantage, is not an easy task for many business leaders. This very often requires a mindset change, as not everyone feels comfortable in being put under that spotlight position. It also involves a commitment of time, resources and stamina to not only start, but also stay the course of a CEO profiling journey, a critical component of any successful corporate positioning strategy.

Asia’s ascent as the engine of growth in this globalised economy has attracted a surge in Foreign Direct Investment with European and North American companies jostling to either set up manufacturing plants, or sell their products and services to the burgeoning consumer markets.

While many have been very successful, there have been those who have made the mistake of over-simplifying the complexity of communicating in a cross-cultural environment. The biggest mistake of course has been to broad brush Asia as a non-Western ubiquitous entity, and relegating global rollouts to needing nothing more than just direct translations of materials into the respective foreign languages.

In reality, the concept of plug and play global communications strategy just won’t work in a region as diverse as Asia, not only with the different languages and cultures, but also media landscapes, with different journalistic practices and in some cases media regulations.