BenAnyan.com

Last week, I was part of a meeting discussing major advertising activities my client should invest in across the region for the rest of the year. It was an important meeting with key stakeholders in attendance; one was a new management team member who had just joined from another region on the continent. When the client announced she doesn’t plan to deploy any promo during Ramadan as it was a natural peak season for her brand, my colleague asked innocently “What’s Ramadan?”

My mind processed an answer and sent it to my mouth. As my mouth opened to utter the first word, bright red lights started flashing in my mind and my tongue came to a screeching halt. I was about to answer, “Ramadan is the second Christmas.”

Those five words are dangerous because of how innocuous they seem. However two of the seniormost clients present are Muslims as were a few from the agency side. Ramadan is sacred for them. It is as precious to them as Christ is to me. Describing it as a second Christmas means stripping it of its unique religious significance and positioning it as secondary to what is primary to me. It would have been an insensitive thing to say. Insensitive and fairly stupid.

I am Creative Director, it’s unlikely I’ll have been called out then, but it surely would have dented my reputation and affected my relationship with client. It was a comment that didn’t need to be said. In meetings like that, every comment should contribute to a more meaningful discourse. The more intellectually provocative your questions and comments are, the more client respects you and requests your presence in meetings. Needless, un-thought through, inappropriate comments have the reverse effect.

As I reminisced my close shave, I realized how easy it is to spit on your own reputation because you didn’t think well enough before saying something, not just in high level client meetings, but internally, even on the agency’s whatsapp page. Depending on how ambitious you are, you must always be conscious of what you say.

What You Say Is Who You Are…

Never say something that gives a colleague, superior or subordinate the opportunity to disrespect you. Avoid snide and lewd comments. Be careful of dirty jokes. Don’t always be the loudest person laughing or the person laughing after the joke is dead. Be friendly and jovial, but don’t be the office joker. Even if you have nothing doing, sometimes act busy when the expectation is that you will crack a joke or do something silly.

See, what is true for a corporate brand is also true for a personal brand; every action or inaction, color choice, tone of voice, logo choice CSR initiative, communication etc. contributes to the building of a brand, because a brand is nothing more than what people think and say when your name comes up.

So always think carefully over what you say at work. Don’t be rigid or mechanical, but set up a mental double authentication system in place to help you filter your words. Don’t get lost in the now, always keep your eyes on the big picture of what you want to achieve in the long term and assess if the brand you’re building with your comments are helping or hurting.

The better you become at filtering your comments and balancing it with a sense of humour and an interesting personality as well as a formidable business acumen and strong analytical prowess, the stronger your brand and the more indispensable you become.

PS: Originally written in Mar 2019 @ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-sound-dumb-important-meetings-benjamin-anyan/

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