Mohammed Albawardi, Sales & Marketing Director, Riyadh Cement Company, explains the compounding combination of product consistency, technical credibility and purposeful emotional connection.

The cement industry’s branding conversation has changed. Generic claims of strength no longer move markets, and price alone no longer holds customers. In this interview, Mohammed Albawardi, Sales and Marketing Director, Riyadh Cement Company, outlines why brand strength is the most durable competitive moat a cement manufacturer can build, and what the next five years will demand from brands that intend to lead.

How has branding evolved from being a support function to a strategic growth driver in the cement industry?
Not long ago, branding in cement meant a logo on a bag. That era is over. Today, branding is a strategic business asset one that directly influences customer preference, pricing power, dealer loyalty, and long-term competitive positioning.
The shift has been driven by two forces. First, customers’ knowledges and understanding have broadened and can compare and choose the suitable product fit to his requirements. Second, markets became more competitive, new players, and blended products have forced established manufacturers to articulate their value more clearly or lose share on price alone. A brand built on genuine product quality, reliable supply and consistent technical expertise creates a competitive moat that price alone cannot erode.

What are the key pillars that define a strong and differentiated cement brand today?
A strong cement brand based on four core pillars, and each must be delivered consistently not just communicated in advertising.
• Product quality and performance: Every bag
must meet or exceed stated specifications. Inconsistency destroys brand equity faster than any competitor can. Compressive strength, setting time, and quality moduli must be controlled tightly, batch after batch.
• Trust through reliability: Customers need consistent supply, available technical support, and honoured commitments. Trust is built over years and
lost in a single failed delivery or unanswered service call.
• Sustainability and innovation: Low-clinker formulations, reduced embodied carbon and third-party certifications are now commercial advantages, not optional extras as green procurement requirements expand across markets.
• Customer value beyond price: Technical guidance, product education, project support, and the confidence that choosing your brand reduces risk. A brand that makes its customers more successful earns loyalty that discounting never can.
Consistency across all four pillars not excellence in one and weakness in another is what separates a brand from a commodity.

How do you balance product performance, trust, and emotional appeal in your
branding strategy?
These three dimensions operate at different levels of the customer relationship, and all three must be active simultaneously. Performance establishes credibility – before any emotional connection is possible, the product must do what it claims. Trust develops through repeated positive experiences: the quality of a technical call, the reliability of a delivery, the transparency of a complaint resolution.
Emotional appeal operates above the functional. Cement brands that connect with the aspiration behind a project, a family building their first home, a contractor proud of their craftsmanship, a developer committed to green construction, create preference that goes beyond rational evaluation. The strongest cement brands understand that their customers are building something meaningful, and they align with that purpose. The result is a brand that wins rationally on performance, retains customers through trust, and generates advocacy through emotional resonance, a combination that is very difficult to replicate quickly.

What role does digital marketing play in influencing dealers, contractors, and
end consumers?
Digital marketing has become an essential engagement platform, not simply a communication channel. Each stakeholder group requires a different approach, and digital tools allow us to tailor messaging with precision and measure impact in real time.
For dealers, digital platforms provide sales training, product updates, scheme communications, and performance dashboards. For consultants and contractors, technical content is the currency, digital specification guides, and contributing and assisting in preparing suitable mixtures design, and webinars build credibility and create dependency on the brand as a knowledge partner. For end consumers, particularly individual housebuilders, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook are now primary decision-influencing channels. Testimonial content, construction tips, and partnerships with local masons and architects generate awareness and trust at scale. Data-driven campaigns allow us to optimise spend and track the journey from awareness to purchase with measurable precision.

How do you measure the effectiveness and ROI of your branding initiatives?
Brand investment must be held to the same commercial accountability as any other capital allocation. We measure through two interlocking sets of indicators.
Brand KPIs track awareness, customer preference, net promoter score, digital engagement rate, dealer satisfaction, and brand associations — measured through structured market research, dealer surveys, and digital analytics. Business KPIs connect brand health to commercial outcomes: market share growth, premium product adoption rate, customer retention, lead-to-conversion ratios, and revenue from new segments. The most powerful signal is when brand strength allows us to maintain pricing discipline in competitive markets, when customers choose our product even when a cheaper alternative is available. That premium is the clearest return on brand investment, and it compounds over time.

How has consumer awareness changed the way cement brands communicate their value proposition?
The informed customer has fundamentally changed the rules of cement brand communication. Today’s customers arrive at purchase decisions already researched and peer influenced. They want to understand not just what a cement does, but why it performs, the clinker quality, the consistency controls, the technical support behind the bag. They expect transparency on sustainability: embodied carbon, clinker factor, and environmental certifications are now questions that come from educated buyers, not just institutional procurement teams.
This has shifted communication from broadcast to dialogue. Technical content, which includes videos, guides and live Q&As, now generates more brand equity than traditional advertising because it builds genuine credibility. Brands that continue to communicate in vague superlatives are losing the trust of the next generation of builders and specifiers.

What challenges do cement manufacturers face in building brand loyalty in a largely commoditised market?
The fundamental challenge is that price remains the dominant decision criterion for a significant segment of buyers. Overcoming this requires a deliberate strategy on multiple fronts. Product differentiation must be real and demonstrable, claims of superior quality must be backed by independent test data and visible quality control. Loyalty must be earned at every touchpoint beyond the product: consistent supply, responsive technical service, fair dealer schemes, product stability, and fast complaint resolution. These operational disciplines are brand-building activities, not back-office functions. When customers understand the long-term cost of substandard cement – structural remediation, durability failures, contractor reputation damage, the economics of quality shift decisively in favour of trusted brands.

What branding trends do you believe will shape the future of the cement industry over the next five years?
Several structural trends will reshape how cement brands compete and communicate.
• Green branding will become a commercial necessity: As embodied carbon disclosure requirements expand and green building certifications proliferate, brands without credible sustainability credentials will be excluded from significant institutional and export markets.
• Hyper-local digital engagement will replace mass communication: Brands building communities around local contractors and masons, through WhatsApp groups, regional influencers, and vernacular content, will develop loyalty networks that are very difficult for national competitors to displace.
• Technical brand equity will grow: As building codes become more demanding, brands known for technical depth, such as helplines, certified training and specification support, will attract the professional specifier segment that drives premium volume.
• Data-driven personalisation: It will allow brands to deliver relevant messaging to each stakeholder at the right moment in their purchase journey, replacing one-size-fits-all communication with precision engagement at scale.
The cement brands that will lead over the next five years are those investing now in sustainability credentials, digital relationships and technical authority, before these become baseline requirements.

• Kanika Mathur