I worked in advertising for 10 years before becoming independent and founding MulticomHBP, a strategic communication company. Although my clients often came to me for marketing campaigns, I developed integrated marketing and advertising strategies through a strategic communication approach.
Over time, I realized that advertising alone was not enough. There was a disconnect between what advertising promised and what the company actually delivered.
As a student of Justo Villafañe, a pioneer in reputation and corporate image in Spain, and Joan Costa, one of the leading authorities on identity and strategic communication, I came to understand the source of this disconnect: the lack of coherence between what a company said it was, what it actually did, and how it communicated.
My understanding of reputation and corporate intangibles deepened during the eight years I led MERCO Bolivia, the Corporate Reputation Business Monitor. Its founder and director, José María San Segundo, taught me the strategic dimension of reputation and the real impact of intangibles on growth, sustainability, and business trust.
My background in advertising and marketing later led me to represent Professor Philip Kotler’s Kotler Impact project in Latin America. Through that experience, I came to understand something even more important: marketing and corporate intangibles do not operate separately. They coexist in a dynamic and deeply interdependent relationship.
From this experience, AIRE was born: Architecture & Infrastructure of Reputation, a model built around 4 pillars, 17 dimensions, and 67 variables, designed to help companies build coherence between who they are, what they do, how they operate, how they communicate, and how they are interpreted.
Managing intangibles means building a culture of honesty and trust, because consistency is good business.
Elena Moss (Hurtado)