Our Perspective
What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.
The Strategic Gap
When brand sits as a marketing workstream, strategy gets diluted in the execution. You see the symptoms quickly: discounting creeps in because the value story isn’t crisp; decisions slow as product, sales, and delivery chase different goals; reputation drifts as competitors define the narrative. None of this is about a logo. It’s about coherence.
The chief executive officer (CEO) is the only leader with the vantage point to make the hard trade‑offs across ambition, audience focus, and positioning. If those choices are delegated, you end up harmonising decisions after the fact rather than directing them at source.
Non‑Delegable Choices
Treat brand as a handful of non‑delegable choices the CEO owns: what you’re building towards, whom you serve, the problem you solve uniquely, the promise you make, and the proof you will stand behind. When these are explicit, they anchor product, pricing, service, and hiring in one story.
McKinsey reports that leaders who weave marketing into core strategy are roughly twice as likely to achieve growth above 5% a year, underlining that brand stewardship is a growth lever, not a communications task.
Operating With Principles
Structure matters. McKinsey’s analysis also finds organisations with a single customer‑growth leader reporting to the CEO grow up to 2.3 times faster than those splitting the brief across multiple roles, which suggests clarity beats diffusion.
Translate the non‑delegable choices into simple rules:
- Pricing follows value, not category norms, and we explain why.
- Product priorities ladder to the promise; features that don’t serve it wait.
- Service behaviours are named and measured as proof of the promise.
- Hiring criteria include the story candidates must be able to carry.
Lead The Moments
There are a few moments only the CEO can credibly own: the board narrative, pivotal client pursuits, and senior appointments. Show the choices and the evidence—don’t outsource the conviction. We often see that when the CEO voices the promise and backs it with proof, the organisation converges faster and with fewer detours.
Practical cues help:
- Open quarterly reviews with the promise, not the pipeline.
- In major bids, name the trade‑offs you’ll make for the client’s outcome.
- In executive hiring, test for the judgement to protect the positioning.
A Compound Advantage
When brand is recast as the system that carries strategy into every decision, you reduce friction, protect margin, and speed up execution. The result is compounding: clearer choices, stronger proof, and a market story competitors struggle to dislodge. Over time, alignment isn’t a workshop output; it’s how the organisation thinks, decides, and grows.
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