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The Aboitiz Group, through its Data Committee chairman David R. Hardoon, PhD, discussed how companies should take advantage of technology in evolving their brand strategies at the 27th Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) National Congress.
In line with the digital congress’ overall theme of encouraging communications professionals to help with nation-building in this time of pandemic, Hardoon talked about how these professionals can use of technology to aid businesses enter the new normal.
Hardoon’s presentation entitled “Power of Tech: Recalibrating Strategy While Keeping Brand Vision Amid Changing Time” focused on how technology empowers and enables organizations to communicate to consumers. For him, every consumer now is his own brand. Brands are now communicating to another brand. Therefore, the messaging should always be relevant to the brand of the consumers. In this age, it is important to understand and engage the audience in a hyper personalized way. To do this, there is a need to transform strategies and identify why there’s a need for such transformation.
“Be clear on why you’re doing it. You don’t transform for the sake of transforming. You don’t incorporate technology for the sake of technology. It’s because of something. The reason for being is constantly reviewed,” shared Hardoon.
For the Aboitiz Group, the main ‘why’s’ are financial inclusion to support life moments and financial protection for the people’s resilience and safety. This is the perspective that fundamentally changed how the Group does and communicates their projects.
According to Hardoon, who is senior advisor for Data Science and AI at Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), a member of the Aboitiz Group, there are several aspects to consider technology in amplifying brand strategy. These are scalability, perspective and technologically human. Hardoon emphasized here that technology is used to elevate the lives of people. In UnionBank, they think of themselves as a tech company with banking services. “As a technology company, everything we think about is to make sure there’s a seamless or fluid experience not only for ourselves but also for our consumers,” shared Hardoon.
It is important to just start. For Hardoon, organizations can begin their recalibration with people, data, technology, or organization. What matters for the organization is to start changing. With this change also comes the acceptance that everyone involved should be agile and ready for continuous recalibration if the need arises.
Hardoon also said that it is important to communicate your projects. “PR is key in letting people know that business is running. Messaging is focused on how the Aboitiz Group may provide comfort in these trying times.”
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