COVER STORY
COVER STORY
Summer 2017 / Issue 54
Ethical Advertising of Telecom Services
Properly applying brand values in our everyday work is one of the keys to maintaining high ethical standards in advertising . Makedonski Telekom , as a part of Deutsche Telekom Group , has established a strong corporate culture that permeates all spheres of its operations , both internally and externally . Trust and reliability are at the core of this corporate culture , brand identity and promise . We see this as a key success factor in designing communications that are honest , truthful , socially responsible , and more .
Gaining and maintaining customer trust when selling intangible services such as in telecommunications is not easy . That is why Makedonski Telekom takes the following 4-faceted approach :
Reinforcing a strong corporate culture to replicate our core brand beliefs and ethical standards , including via a well-defined Code of Conduct ;
Self-regulating via interdepartmental activities that control and pre-check all communications before they are released ;
Educating customers since well-informed clients are more loyal ; and
Performing regular research and collecting customer feedback most often with the expertise of international organizations . The results are highly relevant for marketing communications and help us constantly improve our customer care .
Radmila Dimova , Director of Marketing Communication & Brand Management , Makedonski Telekom
Still , unethical advertising practices are not uncommon in Macedonia . They seem to be emblematic of smaller , younger companies with a less well-established brand identiy . Unethical communications may be seen as a means to quick wins , but they only harm their brands in the long run . Strong corporate principles and the systems that reinforce them help prevent such shortsighted mistakes .
16 AmCham Macedonia Magazine