“This means prioritizing customer relations and establishing effective communication to cultivate strong relationships with clients, which is essential for business or brand growth.”
It has been an honor hearing from one of the most looked-up individuals who manage the most famous gasoline brand in the world. Mr. Dean Aragon’s talk focused on marketing and managing a brand that will lead it to the top of its industry.
Like all of us who experienced road bumps and problems, he also experienced turnarounds, challenges and issues in personal and professional aspects. His work mainly focuses on brands. He is currently the CEO of Shell Brand International. This made me even strive in my business, as growing your brand takes work. Imagine managing the leading gasoline brand in the world, depending on his decision-making to ensure the sustainability of the brand.
I have learned that giving brand awareness to the public makes the business more noticeable and will leave a mark on their mind. Managing a brand is more than just creating a logo or an advertisement. It is more about connecting with your customers to further promote the brand you are advertising. He added that AI is one of the technologies that helped the brand to be easily promoted in the market.
Being in the marketing industry for 30 years took work; he experienced high competition and challenging situations, including turnaround, failures, etc. However, he foresees these scenarios and adapted and rode (and even created) the trend.
Prior to the CEO position at Shell Brands, he was with Unilever, rising to a global vice [resident position. During that time, he mastered his skills and ideas in marketing and brand management. He shared that he didn’t know where to go when he was living in the Philippines, but he dreamt big and aimed for something better. He always believed that the heart leads the mind to unthinkable places, which made me realize that staying in your comfort zone is very dangerous. As a leader of a large enterprise, he is passionate about inspiring, mentoring, and empowering diverse individuals to guide them on their path to success.
This talk aligned me with my business as I created my own brand and learned how to manage and expand my network through it. A marketer should focus on leveraging a brand’s power and potency by harnessing its humanity, which ensures customers and stakeholders buy into the brand’s value proposition. This means prioritizing customer relations and establishing effective communication to cultivate strong relationships with clients, which is essential for business or brand growth.
This talk will guide me as I effectively utilize this learning and adequately execute it in my business. These strategies from this course have molded me into a better businessman and gave me more fuel to reach my goals. He advised that the effective utilization of emerging social media advertisements could potentially increase the business’s success rate as most people are now on their phones 24/7. Having the right visual creatives and target market could expand the brand’s and the business’s reach, creating efficient and positive outcomes.
He still manages to learn from emerging trends and ride the development of the business, as it will let them stay ahead of the competition. Learning is unending even though you are already successful in life. I am very thankful for this experience, as it fueled me to push myself further and work on the business that I am currently doing. Being a leader is not easy; it is an unending experience with continuous learning that will help my subordinates become better people in their careers and personal development.
The author is an MBA student at the Ramon V. Del Rosario College of Business of De La Salle University. He can be reached at aedric_ruas@dlsu.edu.ph.
The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty, and its administrators.
