On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East’s On The Record podcast, Nicola Porter, Executive Editor, Bloomberg Media Studios opens up about responsible storytelling, the importance of sharing brand values, the need to tell stories that are not only strategic, authentic and drive business outcomes, but are also built on trust and have a positive impact on people, communities, societies and the planet.
Porter begins the conversation saying, “I think now more than ever we’re seeing that campaigns and brand activations need to have impact. There has to be impact on the people consuming them – in terms of utility or education, and that’s where corporate reputation comes in. And there also has to be impact socially, culturally and environmentally. There’s more demand now on organisations to share what their brand values are. We’re seeing a direct connect between that and their business outcomes.”
Bloomberg Media recently surveyed more than 1,250 marketing and communications C-suites and business decision makers as part of its Corporate Reputation Pulse study in 2025. The results from the study reveal corporate reputation as a performance multiplier; one that directly influences investor confidence, customer loyalty, brand equity and overall market perception.
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Of the marketers and leaders surveyed, 44 per cent of global marketing and communications leaders say that brand equity is the single most important factor for their company’s success, closely followed by financial strength and digital or technological infrastructure.
Porter adds, “When we’re looking at storytelling and creative execution, and driving thought leadership on behalf of some of the brands, we see that it drives really good engagement with our audiences.”
Brand personality, market positioning and customer experience are the top three elements that defined brand equity, according to Bloomberg Media’s Corporate Reputation report.
Through the podcast, Porter also discusses the balance between AI-driven insights, AI-generated content and a human-led authentic approach to storytelling, while ensuring storytelling remains a force for good.
She says, “I think it’s about finding the right combination of the technologies and tools at hand, and marrying that with human creativity and execution. We’ve got tools that help us understand our audiences at a much deeper level – what they’re engaging with; what their interests are; and map that against what they like across different platforms.
Porter adds, “We also look at brands and industries and find out what’s driving the narrative in the white spaces. So, while all of these things are incredibly important to a creative strategy because we can approach it from a very data-driven perspective, it doesn’t replace human lived experiences, passion and integrity that we take into a creative strategy, as well. So while AI is awesome, what it doesn’t do is build trust; and we take trust extremely importantly. Building trust and building a brand’s reputation is extremely important to cut through the noise.”
Before the discussion concludes, Porter shares a deeply personal take on the beauty of lived experiences and the beauty of learning from different perspectives within the Middle East region.
Bloomberg Media’s Porter says, “We live in a place that is incredibly multicultural. My little kids go to a school in the region that has children from 80 to 90 different nationalities represented in their school. How incredibly lucky are those kids to be in a playground with all of their peers from different parts of the world? But that also extends to us – the grown ups.
She adds, “We are surrounded by people that have different perspectives, lived experiences, educational backgrounds. This means that we have the opportunity to take ourselves out of an echo chamber and create connections with people we don’t know. I would say go do that. Meet those people; make those connections – because that is such a rich experience that is so rare and we have such a great opportunity to do that here.”
For more details from the highly insightful conversation, watch the full video above.
CREDITS:
Guest: Nicola Porter, Executive Editor, Bloomberg Media Studios
Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East
Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group
Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
