Brand belongs in the Boardroom

"the danger is that we optimise ourselves into a corner. Chasing clicks, tweaking CTAs, spinning short-term wins while forgetting that brand is the thing that carries you when campaigns don’t."

I’m suffering from cobbler’s shoes again.

I spend so much time telling other people to do ‘thought leadership pieces’ that I leave mine to a time that never seems to arrive! This really needs to stop. So I’ve made a promise to myself to write more (I know, I know, I’ve said it before!). The big difference as I see it is the advent of all this lovely ‘Ai tech’ and don’t worry, I’m not going to be asking ChatGPT to write vanilla blog posts every week with big hyphens and American spellings in them! So hopefully you should start to see more quality content from me, helped along by these tools. At least that’s the plan but feel free to remind me again in 6 months :)

So when I sat down to consider my first ‘thought piece’ in a while, I wondered what to tackle. What have I been talking to people about this last year? What are the big re-occurring themes? Then it hit me – Brand.

Brand as a topic is everywhere I go. For example, my agency Optix Solutions has an amazing creative division which helps companies create and activate their brands. Then when I look at what’s changing in the search world (with Ai search starting to get a foothold), a big part of the tactical play there is to increase brand awareness so that Ai engines cite you and not others. Then of course there is the work I do in the ‘Personal Brand’ space. Its everywhere. It feels like an apt place to start.

So…

Brand isn’t just how you look or sound.

It’s how you’re remembered.

It’s how customers feel when your name pops up in their inbox or their feed.

It’s why they choose you over the cheaper option.

Done well, brand strategy guides everything from recruitment to retention, pricing to partnerships. It shapes culture just as much as it shapes creative.

So why would you keep that conversation tucked away in the marketing corner, when it belongs at the heart of leadership?

Long-Term Thinking

We live in a world of dashboards and data. Marketers, myself included are under constant pressure to prove return on investment in real-time.

And I get it. I really do.

But the danger is that we optimise ourselves into a corner. Chasing clicks, tweaking CTAs, spinning short-term wins while forgetting that brand is the thing that carries you when campaigns don’t.

A strong brand is compound interest. Something that lives on your P&L, not just in your Canva. It’s a business asset.

You don’t see the impact immediately, but give it time and it builds trust, shortens sales cycles, and attracts the kind of loyalty performance marketing simply can’t buy.

Brand needs Translators at the Top Table

If you’re a senior marketer reading this, here’s my nudge: your job is not just to execute brand strategy it’s to elevate it, to educate, to wax lyrical about its virtues.

You’ll need to translate it into the language (and interests) of your leadership team, don’t just assume they’ll know…or care! Just because you’re passionate about it doesn’t mean they are.

According to the IPA, companies that invest in brand building outperform those that focus purely on activation by up to 9X over the long term! Tell your board things like this and you’ll soon see a few people leaning forward.

Ask and answer the following questions:

• How does brand equity lower customer acquisition cost?

• How does brand consistency improve employee alignment?

• How does brand value impact pricing power?

Bring those answers to the boardroom and brand stops being “the colouring-in department” and starts being treated like the strategic lever it truly is.

My Final Thought

You don’t need a new logo (well maybe you do and if you do, call me 😉)

You do however, definitely need a leadership team who understands what your brand really means.

You need your CEO to be just as obsessed with it as your CMO.

Because when brand becomes everyone’s business, that’s when the magic happens. And if you think that’s cheesey just look at Disney!