The Architects of Perception and Trust | Editorial Series by The Diplomat-Bucharest

“Consistency between strategy, operations, and communication is critical to a brand’s health. The organization must genuinely support the direction it communicates. We’ve definitively moved past the point where communication could run ahead of reality to project an idealized version. Today, any gap between the two is exposed almost instantly, both through technology and through how people interact,” Simona Andron, Chief Brand & Sustainability Officer, Adrem Group told The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“From my experience, trust is earned through consistency and honesty and spectacular moments are nice, but only that. Trust should be seen as a balance brands must maintain every day, rather than capital they accumulate over time.

In a context where technology enables almost instant reactions and massive volumes of content, there’s a risk of confusing presence with relevance. There’s a lot of communication, but not necessarily better understanding. I would bring back more patience, the patience to understand before reacting, to truly listen, and to build messages that last over time, not just within short attention cycles.”

How would you describe the biggest changes in brand communication in recent years?

The most important shift is that a brand is no longer defined by what it says about itself, but by how well it aligns what it says with what it actually does. We’ve moved from communication built around messaging to communication built around consistency. In the past, perception could be shaped through campaigns but today, perception is the result of an organizational reality that is far more visible and much easier to verify.

At the same time, technology has accelerated everything. AI, in particular, has turned communication into an almost real-time system where messages can be generated, adapted, and distributed instantly. But this also creates a major trap, the easier it becomes to produce content, and the more accessible it is to everyone, the harder it becomes to create meaning.

Another notable shift is the fundamental change in the relationship between brands and people. In recent years, we’ve moved from audiences to communities, and from messages to conversations. Why? Because people are no longer just looking for information, they’re seeking validation, meaning, and a sense of belonging.

Beyond all these transformations, there’s also a deeper, more paradigmatic shift in human expectations. It’s no longer enough for a brand to communicate well, it has to be good, to do good in a real, not just declarative, way. In this context, communication has largely lost its role of shaping perception and has instead become a mechanism for validating, or invalidating, the reality behind a brand.

At Adrem, working in a sector like energy, where impact is direct and long-term, this distinction is very clear. We can’t afford to gloss over reality, and we know we can’t build trust through messaging alone. Communication becomes less about storytelling and more about truth-telling, about translating complexity into clarity and consistently backing up what we say through actions. And I can assure you, at Adrem, if we ever tried to take the “cosmetic” route, our colleagues would raise a red flag immediately and I’m grateful for their engagement and vigilance.

What do you think will define successful brand communication strategies in 2026?

I don’t believe 2026 or the years that follow, will be defined by strategic sophistication or even maximum visibility. Instead, successful strategies will come down to three things: consistency, relevance, and courage.

Consistency between strategy, operations, and communication is critical to a brand’s health. The organization must genuinely support the direction it communicates. We’ve definitively moved past the point where communication could run ahead of reality to project an idealized version. Today, any gap between the two is exposed almost instantly, both through technology and through how people interact.

Relevance will mean the ability to tailor messages to specific audiences, or rather, communities, without losing substance. We live in a context where content is optimized for algorithms and AI, but people don’t operate like algorithms. One of the biggest challenges will be communicating what truly matters, to both brands and people, not just what performs well.

In the energy industry, for example, we have a responsibility to make complex topics like digitalization, automation, and the energy transition understandable without turning them into superficial messaging. The balance between accessibility and depth will make the difference.

And courage will likely become the key differentiator. The courage not to join every conversation, not to always say what is comfortable or popular, and not to promise more than you can deliver. Even more so, the boldness to build for the long term in a context that constantly pushes for quick reactions and immediate visibility, that’s what will underpin brands that endure for decades.

How has consumer trust in brands evolved recently?

Trust has become more lucid, even if in some ways more fragile. Trust is not something people carry around and give blindly, it’s built over time through dialogue, not message absorption, and constantly tested. People continuously revalidate honesty, authenticity, and the alignment between message and reality, between declared values and actual behavior. A powerful example is what happened during the pandemic, when consumers supported or criticized brands based on the good they actually did. That’s when we clearly saw the pressure around purpose and contribution, people wanted to understand a brand’s role in society and its real impact and at the same time, functional value dropped significantly in importance for them.

This shift also comes from the fact that brands are no longer perceived as mere providers of products or services, they’ve become ecosystems that constantly interact with people’s lives. The broader a brand’s presence, the higher the expectation for consistency and integrity and in many ways, brands and consumers now seem to be in a continuous process of negotiation.

From my experience, trust is earned through consistency and honesty and spectacular moments are nice, but only that. Trust should be seen as a balance brands must maintain every day, rather than capital they accumulate over time.

What are the top three priorities for brand communication teams in 2026?

The first is internal alignment because without it, even the best communication strategy won’t hold. And, in fact, everything starts from within, it’s nothing new, this principle is the basis of brand and organizational communication and supports the idea that if there is no internal coherence, any external message becomes fragile.

In 2026, this alignment will matter even more because the brand will clearly be a real business driver, not just a communication tool. We’ve been talking for years about brand as an asset that directly influences growth, loyalty, and purchasing decisions. At Adrem, with over 1,600 employees nationwide, more than 30 locations, and thousands of projects across the energy infrastructure value chain over the past 34 years, the brand has played a key role in business growth, attracting talent and partners, building long-term relationships, and increasing revenue. And this is a local entrepreneurial brand that has only seen consistent investment over the past 15 years. I wonder where we will be in another 34 years!

The second priority is translating complexity, as businesses become more sophisticated, communication must make them understandable without artificially simplifying them, because once substance is lost, meaning is lost too. Technology, especially AI, accelerates this need due to the fact that we have more data, more content, and more speed, but not necessarily more clarity. In fact, I belive that the human role in communication becomes even more important because it must filter, to give meaning, and to build relevant messages and conversations.

The third is building relationships with all stakeholders connected to the brand. The ability of the brand to build trust and maintain it daily, to create genuine connections with relevant communities and have a real impact on their lives may well define effective communication.

I believe the difference will be made by teams that understand that it is more important for their brands to remain relevant to the people they reach, not the volume of people reached, to assume responsibility of the messages they give, not their quantity, to more deeds than promises and overall, to how well they can demonstrate, in a real way, what they communicate.

How should communication teams demonstrate their value to business leadership?

Through business impact, not just communication metrics which are also relevant to some extent, they’re not enough on their own. The value of a communication team becomes visible when it connects perception to tangible outcomes, from growth, loyalty, retention, to the ability to attract partners and talents. We’re increasingly looking at indicators that reflect the real health of a brand, from direct interest for the brand and market positioning to how trust translates into measurable behaviors. But beyond numbers, I belive that the true value of communication lies in contributing to strategic clarity, internal alignment, and the organization’s ability to navigate complex situations.

At Adrem, we’ve seen that real impact happens when communication is involved in major transformation processes, like digitalization, and is embedded in the organization’s day-to-day dynamics. We see communication as a cog in the mechanism that keeps the organization functioning properly, not just a final, supportive layer.

But beyond strategy, communication’s value is most evident in real-life outcomes. For example, we ran a large internal communication campaign on health and safety together with SMURD, which included first aid training for all employees, with a focus on field teams. In our industry, safety is a deep responsibility, not just an operational priority. About a year later, one of our colleagues applied what he had learned and saved another colleague’s life. For me, that’s a clear example of real impact, when communication goes beyond informing and actually changes behavior in ways that can mean the difference between life and death. We later extended this initiative to our partners, because ultimately, safety is a shared industry standard, not a competitive advantage. Examples like this say more than any report because in this way, communication proves its value when it changes behavior and produces real effects, both in business and in people’s lives.

Which communication channels are currently most effective for building brand equity?

What really makes the difference is message consistency and a coherent brand experience across all touchpoints, rather than the channels themselves.

That said, digital plays a key role and we’re seeing a polarization, on one hand, short-form video platforms that drive rapid awareness and visibility and on the other, platforms that build trust and authority over time, like LinkedIn, long-form content, or specialized communities. At Adrem, we focus primarily on platforms that build sustainably over time.

At the same time, a new dimension is emerging, in which communication is now equally directed at people and intelligent systems. It is becoming important for brands to be more than just visible, they must be “understood” and recommended by AI, which changes the way we build content and consistency in the message.

Ultimately, brand equity isn’t built in a single channel, it’s built in an ecosystem that includes internal communication, visible leadership, customer experience, direct interactions, digital platforms, and more. In industries like ours, and certainly at Adrem, the most powerful channel is direct interaction, in projects, in partner relationships, in operational delivery. That’s where trust is built, or lost, regardless of how strong digital communication may be.

What initially attracted you to a career in communication?

At first, it was more intuition than a conscious choice. I was drawn to the idea that communication is about people and the connections between them, even if I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time. I was in my first year at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies and had to complete an internship at an agency. I was given a list and chose the first name, it was Ogilvy Romania. I insisted until they accepted me, and without realizing it then, it became the start of a nearly seven-year journey.

Ogilvy was more than an agency for me where I started my career, it was a deep learning experience and a community where I truly discovered communication as a living practice. I was fascinated by everything around me, how account teams built relationships with clients and the press, how creative teams turned ideas into concepts, the attention to detail in DTP, the rigor of media planning, the energy of audio-video production and much more.

I had the chance to see communication from all these angles and understand that beyond messages, it’s about collaboration, discipline, intuition, and above all, people building something meaningful together. Looking back, I feel like I learned in those years what you might not learn in a lifetime, and more importantly for me, that’s where my passion for communication and for people truly began.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned working in communication?

The biggest lesson is that communication doesn’t happen when you speak, it happens when the other person understands. Early on, I thought it was about crafting messages correctly, aligned with business objectives. Today, I believe it’s primarily about the responsibility to reduce the gap between what you say and what actually reaches the other person.

Here comes another lesson, inseparable from the first, that authenticity is not optional. Any form of communication not grounded in reality will eventually, sooner or later, be exposed. People can sense when something isn’t authentic, even if they can’t explain why.

I’ve also learned that to truly understand a situation, you need to look at it from multiple perspectives. Beneath the surface, there are always contexts, motivations, and tensions that must be understood before building a relevant response. That’s what it really means to listen, not just to respond. The best communicators are, first and foremost, great listeners.

Most of the time, good communication comes from deep understanding, not quick reaction. But there are moments, especially in crisis communication, when speed becomes essential. You can’t afford to wait or disappear because you have the responsibility to communicate, you need to be present, even when you don’t yet have all the answers. And again, authenticity matters, to have the courage to say what you know, what you don’t know yet, and what you are going to do next. In my 20 years of experience, I have not met people who expect perfection in such moments, but most of them have expected presence, clarity and accountability. I strongly belive that communication is about being honest, relevant, and present when it matters, it is not about always having the right answer.

 What inspires you in your day-to-day work?

People, most days and challenging projects on the other days.

Working with different people across the organization is probably my greatest source of energy and learning. Every interaction brings new perspectives and nuances that reshape how I understand things. At Adrem, with over 1,600 colleagues involved in complex projects, I see every day how things take shape not just through competence, but through how people connect, trust one another, and build together. That’s where organizational culture is born, one rooted in trust, openness, and growth.

For me, communication isn’t just about messages, it’s about the relationships that make those messages credible and sometimes, it’s even about the tensions within those relationships, because they also reveal something important and when managed well, they can lead to clarity and growth. Inspiration comes precisely from this living and imperfect space where, when there is real trust and mutual support, things don’t just work, they gain meaning.

If you could change aspects of today’s communication models, what would they be?

I would change the tendency to oversimplify and artificially accelerate everything. We live in a communication model where speed often matters more than meaning, and visibility more than consistency and real impact.

In a context where technology enables almost instant reactions and massive volumes of content, there’s a risk of confusing presence with relevance. There’s a lot of communication, but not necessarily better understanding. I would bring back more patience, the patience to understand before reacting, to truly listen, and to build messages that last over time, not just within short attention cycles. I’m fortunate to be able to build in this direction alongside our group CEO, Corneliu Bodea, in an environment that values coherence and long-term thinking.

And perhaps most importantly, I would bring back more responsibility. Communication has a real impact on how people understand the world, and that comes with a responsibility we cannot afford to treat lightly. In recent years, especially in an increasingly unstable socio-economic and political context, I’ve seen this responsibility diluted. There’s a lot of communication, but not always with meaning or accountability. And trust is lost precisely where words are used without weight.

Share three keywords or mottos for brand perception and trust in 2026.

In 2026, trust will no longer be a reaction to communication, it will be a consequence of behavior.