“Good advertising can kill a bad product even faster. That is why developing a strong product must always come first,” said Madison World’s Executive Director, Lara Balsara Vajifdar, at the convocation ceremony of the School of Branding and Advertising (SoBA), SVKM’s NMIMS (Deemed-to-be University), Mumbai.
A graduate of Harvard Business School and a 20-year veteran at Madison, Lara urged the graduating class to combine strategic thinking with passion to drive innovation and growth. “You’ll have the opportunity to work with diverse clients, products and services, helping them navigate the ever-changing landscape of consumer behaviour. So today, I wanted to talk to you about you, and you as a brand, about building ‘brand you’,” she said.
Highlighting that branding today extends well beyond products, Lara remarked, “Countries are brands, communities are brands, delivery infrastructures are brands, and even individual personalities of legal consequence are big brands. Do you know about the Kardashians?”
Sharing lessons from her own career journey, from a Master’s in Marketing in England to joining Madison in 2004 as a management trainee, she emphasised the value of long-term commitment to an organisation. “It’s not about counting your work experience in terms of years, but in terms of what you have actually learned. In many companies, the people promoted to managing director are often those who joined as management trainees or have stayed for a fairly long period,” she noted.
She cited Shailesh Jejurikar’s career at Procter & Gamble as an example. “He joined the company in India in 1989 after his IIM degree, and after 36 years in multiple global roles, he has just been made the global president and CEO,” she said.
Speaking to Director of the School, Dr Kiran Desai, she emphasized the importance of training and imparting relevant and updated branding knowledge to the young talent. Urging a rethink of generational perceptions, Lara concluded, “Gen-Z is widely considered an employer’s worst nightmare, entitled, easily offended, and unable to handle feedback. Prove them wrong.”
Lara appreciated the four-year BBA in Branding and Advertising, offered by NMIMS, since the institute’s branding education was founded in strong business and marketing fundamentals taught through an applied and experiential pedagogy.