Leadership Role In Brand Building

IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) CRISIS WASN’T IN THE SKIES. IT WAS IN THE LEADERSHIP CABIN. Three things stood out. One: Employees were left alone to face furious customers. No leader should ever let that happen. If you don’t stand by your people in a storm, don’t expect them to stand by your customers in the sun. Customer experience collapses the moment employees feel abandoned. Two: In any crisis, honesty is the only strategy that works. This time, the communication wasn’t transparent. When leaders hide the full picture, years of goodwill can disappear overnight. A crisis can earn trust, but only if you tell the truth. Three: The belief that “we are too big to be ignored” has ended more companies than competition ever has. Customers always have a choice. And if they don’t, they will create one. We shouldn’t watch the Indigo crisis like spectators. This is a reminder for every leader to build their own crisis blueprint. Because crises will come, when they do, your response becomes your reputation. There is more to business than profits. There are people, trust, and how you show up when it matters most.

The financial case for brand strategy: Why CFOs should care. Branding isn’t just about looking good.* It drives real financial impact (* if done strategically) Yet, many companies still see it as a cost rather than an asset that increases enterprise value, reduces waste, and boosts profitability. Here’s what most businesses get wrong: - They see branding as expense, not an investment. - They focus on short-term lead generation over long-term equity. - They underestimate how much a strong brand lowers acquisition costs, improves pricing, reduces churn and attracts talent. Here’s how: 01 - Brand Strategy Increases Market Value: Brands are intangible, but they drive real financial value. Today, 80–85% of the S&P 500’s market value comes from intangibles like brand equity. Corporate reputation alone is worth $16 trillion globally. Companies with strong brands deliver 2× higher shareholder returns over 20 years than the MSCI World Index. Why? A strong brand builds trust, reduces risk, and increases pricing, partnerships, and M&A leverage. 02 - A Strong Brand Lowers Marketing Costs: Weak brands must pay to be noticed, they have to keep buying attention…spending millions on ads and lead gen. Strong brands generate attention. Tesla, for example, spends $0 on traditional ads, while competitors spend $495 per vehicle sold. Tesla’s brand, combined with a touch of Elon, drives WOM, earned media, and loyalty...saving hundreds of millions in marketing costs. (And yes, I know it works both ways, for better or worse) 03 - Branding Improves Profit Margins & Pricing Power: A strong brand lets you charge premium prices and avoid price wars. Apple sells iPhones at 40%+ gross margins, while competitors struggle, even with similar hardware. Why? Customers aren’t just buying a product, they’re buying into a brand. Data shows: - Consumers pay 11% more for trusted brands. - Brand-loyal customers pay 38% more, even price-sensitive ones pay 14% more. - Without strong branding, companies must compete on price alone. 04 - Strong Brands Retain Customers Longer: Retention is one of the biggest profitability drivers. It costs 5× more to acquire a new customer than to retain one. A 5% increase in retention boosts profits by 25–95%. Brand loyalty reduces churn, increases lifetime value, and creates repeat buyers without ads spend. 05 - Resilient Brands Outperform in Crises: In downturns, weak brands suffer revenue losses and resort to discounting. Strong brands hold their value & recover faster. During 2020, while most businesses struggled, the top 100 most valuable brands grew by +5.9%. A well-built brand acts as financial insulation, stabilising revenue. The Hard Truth: A strong brand isn’t a luxury, it’s a financial strategy. If your CFO still sees branding as a cost center, send them this. Sources: McKinsey, Interbrand, BrandZ, Bain & Company, Nielsen, Kantar, Invesp, Unilever, Tesla, industry reports on brand valuation, CAC, and shareholder returns.

Coca-Cola spend less than 3% of revenue (estimated) on advertising… While challenger brands burn 10–20%. Why? One word: brand equity. Recent estimates put Oatly at ~8% of revenue on ads, Liquid Death at ~6%, and The Coca-Cola Company closer to 2–3%. Not because Coke's marketing team is lazy, but because 138 years of brand building does the heavy lifting. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: • Challenger CPG brands: 10–20% of revenue • Established brands: 3–5% • Category leaders like Coke: Under 3% That gap? Pure profit margin. Think about it. When you're thirsty at a gas station, you don't need an ad to remember Coke exists. But that new kombucha brand? They might spend $8 in Facebook ads just to acquire a single customer. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂: • Retail real estate: Strong brands get eye-level shelf placement. Weak brands fight for bottom shelf at twice the slotting fee.    • Word-of-mouth multiplier: When someone says "grab me a Coke," they might mean any cola. That mental availability is worth billions.    • Pricing power. Private-label cola: $0.99. Coca-Cola: $2.49. Same sugar water, different trust levels. The real insight? Every dollar you invest in building genuine brand connection compounds. Ads get you today's sale. But consistent quality, memorable packaging, and keeping promises? That gets you the next decade of sales, at half the marketing cost. Liquid Death gets this. Sure, they're spending ~6% now. But every skull-covered can is building equity. In 10 years? They'll be spending 3% while new brands burn cash trying to break through. The strongest brands aren't built on the biggest budgets. They're built on the smallest details, delivered consistently, until trust becomes automatic. Because when trust becomes automatic, marketing becomes optional.

Unpopular Opinion: Heritage brands do not die of old age. They die of playing it safe and nobody tells you that. I keep meeting CEOs who whisper the same thing after the formal part ends. Our classic products still move, but the brand feels tired. The categories feel tight. The energy is somewhere else. Translation. Your story is still loved, but the format needs a rewrite. Here is the simple filter I use in those conversations. If a stranger cannot explain your brand in one clean sentence, you are not ready to expand. New category plans without a sharp core are just expensive wandering. The fun part starts once the core is sharp. Take what made you famous and re-stage it where culture actually lives. the LEGO Group did not become cool with adults by pretending to be a different company. They kept precision and play, then invited grown-ups to build Porsche dashboards at 1 a.m. That is not a pivot. That is a bigger stage. New Balance did not outrun the dad-shoe joke with hype alone. They made the craft visible. They let collaborators reinterpret an old soul. Suddenly the thing people teased became the thing people hunted. Heritage turned into status because the quality never blinked. Partnerships help when they deepen your story. E.L.F. on a Stanley is not just a gimmick. It says beauty belongs in your everyday ritual and it rides a product that lives on kitchen counters and gym floors. That is design as distribution. If your collab does not make your brand truth clearer, skip it. And talent is not a side note. If your team only knows how to protect last year’s playbook, you will protect your way into irrelevance. Borrow brains from fashion, media, gaming, community brands. Pair them with operators who know price, pack, promo, and partners. One group opens doors. The other keeps the lights on. You need both. Most of all, stop trying to be everywhere. Pick one room where your next customer actually hangs out and show up there with something specific. A build night. A drop that fixes a real annoyance. A creator who can translate your craft without turning it into beige content. Test it in public. Scale only what people would miss if you took it away. Heritage is not a museum. It is a passport. It gets you through doors others cannot open. Use it. If you lead a legacy brand, what is the one move this quarter that would make your biggest fan say, finally, they remembered who they are? #heritagebrands #fmcg #trends

When I started Gymshark, I didn’t have a roadmap; just a love of the fitness industry and the determination to make it work. Over the years, building a global brand has taught me five principles that consistently guide growth and leadership: 1. Start before you’re ready. Action creates momentum, waiting for perfection slows progress. 2. Obsess over your audience. Understanding your customers is the most reliable way to innovate. 3. Treat failure as feedback. Every mistake is a lesson that accelerates learning. 4. Build a team aligned with your vision. Culture amplifies impact and drives results. 5. Think long-term. Trends fade, but legacy endures. These lessons aren’t just about business, they’re about building something meaningful that lasts. Which of these principles do you see as most critical for long-term success?

🚨 This is a (another) meaningful signal from Disney. The company is creating a new centralized marketing and brand organization, with Asad stepping into the role of Chief Marketing and Brand Officer overseeing marketing teams from film, television and streaming to theme parks and ESPN This move matters beyond an org chart update. The Walt Disney Company is acknowledging something the industry has been circling for years. Brand is no longer downstream from content. It is the connective tissue between storytelling, platforms, franchises, parks, products, and cultural relevance. Asad’s track record reflects that reality. From Disney100 to global franchise campaigns, his work has consistently treated marketing as a storytelling discipline, not a promotional layer. Elevating that mindset to an enterprise level reshapes how decisions are made upstream. What stands out is the timing. Audience behavior is fragmented. Distribution is everywhere. Franchises live across film, streaming, games, parks, social, and retail. In that environment, brand coherence becomes a growth lever, not a safeguard. This structure positions marketing closer to creative, closer to strategy, and closer to leadership. That proximity changes outcomes. It creates alignment earlier. It sharpens focus. It reinforces long-term franchise equity. 💡 For anyone building in media, entertainment, or consumer experiences, the takeaway is clear. ⌙ Brand leadership is becoming a core business function. Disney is formalizing that reality. #Media #Disney #Leadership

The more senior you get, the less you own anything outright. That’s the part nobody tells you. Early in your marketing career, success is clean. You might be accountable to email open rates, or event execution, or ad conversion. Or any number of activities. You can point to something and say, “I did that. And here's the result I delivered." But leadership doesn’t work that way. At the top, the goals that matter most are revenue, pipeline, brand awareness, culture. And none of those sit neatly inside a single lane. They are shared, messy, and interdependent. Which means, as you grow in your career, your job shifts from owning outcomes, to influencing outcomes across people who don’t necessarily report to you. You don’t get to operate in clean lanes anymore. You have to lock arms with peers sitting adjacent to you, sometimes even outside of marketing, and you have to figure out how to move together in service of shared goals and results. That can be uncomfortable. Because as a leader, accountability is much broader, often harder to measure, and impossible to control alone. An IC can design a high converting landing page. A manager can run an enablement session. But a leader has to move a system. And systems don’t respond to authority. They respond to cross-functional alignment.

Much for brands to learn from Singapore. To manage brand legacy alongside technology and advancement, brands must strike a careful balance between preservation and progress. Singapore has become a model of modernity without losing its uniqueness. It blends futuristic architecture, smart infrastructure, and a global business environment with deep-rooted cultural heritage, local traditions, and multicultural harmony. Sleek skyscrapers rise beside historic shophouses; hawker centres thrive next to Michelin-starred restaurants. It’s a city where innovation meets identity—where cutting-edge urban planning coexists with festivals like Deepavali and Chinese New Year. Define Non-Negotiable Brand Values and Identify what must never change. These values form the emotional core of the brand that tech innovation must serve, not disrupt. Evolve the Expression, Not the Essence. Modernize without alienating loyal users. Retain symbolic or nostalgic cues that remind audiences of the brand’s roots. Integrate Innovation with Storytelling. Frame new technologies (AI, AR, VR etc.) as extensions of the brand’s purpose, not departures from it. Maintain Consistent Brand Voice Across Platforms. As tech enables channels, ensure tone, visuals, and personality stay coherent. Use Flagship Experiences to Reinforce Both. Design physical or digital spaces to reflect both legacy and future-forward thinking. And most crucially - Listen and Adapt. Leverage data and community feedback to innovate with empathy, not in isolation. In short, the brand legacy is the soul, and technology is the tool—they must evolve together, not at the cost of each other. By preserving green spaces, promoting multilingualism, and respecting its past while embracing the future, Singapore proves that progress doesn’t have to erase character—it can enhance it. #Singapore #culture #legacy #brand #innovation #essence #brandpositioning #transformation

Let's talk about it then: The rise of the Employee Ambassador. Most brands are *still* missing their biggest marketing opportunity - the people already sitting inside their business. For years, companies have invested millions into paid reach. But the most powerful form of reach is earned, and in 2025 it could (and should) come from your own employees. I call them Employee Ambassadors. Not to be confused with “people who post on Linkedin about work.” They’re the ones who bridge the brand’s purpose with their own credibility becoming megaphones for the shared mission. - They speak in human language, not corporate tone. - They share learnings, not press releases. - They build connections, not clients. And I'm speaking from first-hand experience. When I joined The Diary of a CEO, my job was to build the show’s audience. While our main brand accounts shared the episodes, I shared the lessons and learnings behind them to my own profiles. My content didn’t replace what we created on the brand channels, it amplified it. That combination built a powerful ecosystem, one that deepened trust, expanded reach, and reinforced credibility from every angle. And the impact went far beyond social media posts. Because of the visibility I built, I was invited onto podcasts, panels, and stages - all opportunities to tell our story to new audiences and add further authority to the brand. I wasn’t just leading the marketing team, I became part of the marketing mix. And as my personal reputation grew, so did the brand’s perceived expertise. When executed correctly, the mutual benefits for brand and employee are exponential. That’s the power of Employee Ambassadors: when you invest in your people’s visibility, you don’t lose control of your narrative - you multiply its impact. But like any marketing plan, it requires a brief, guidelines and strategy. So next week I’ll unpack what that needs to look like, so everyone can reap the rewards. Thoughts, opinions, hot takes, concerns? I wanna hear them in the comments below! I’ll shape future posts in this series around your reaction 👇🏼 — 👋 I’m Grace Andrews - brand & content educator, creator-entrepreneur and former Brand Director For Steven Bartlett & The Diary of a CEO. This is post 1/6 of my new series Inside Voices, exploring the rise of the Employee Ambassador and how they’re reshaping modern marketing. Follow along - I’ll be sharing a new post every Monday for the next 5 weeks unpacking how they’re changing the way brands grow, hire, and lead.

With the international fashion weeks now upon us, the luxury industry is entering its most important few months for decades. Growth has slowed sharply after years of expansion, economic pressures are reshaping consumer behaviour, and multiple heritage houses are crossing everything and relying on new creative directors to stop the rot. Amid this turbulence, the big question is how a brand remains relevant while safeguarding the equity that has been built over decades? If you look at the likes of GIVENCHY or Valentino, it’s hard for the consumer to really know what the house aesthetic is any longer, with too much emphasis on previous designer’s taste rather than the house codes. The same with Gucci - Sabato De Sarno wasn’t a bad designer, he just had a radically different perspective on Gucci than Alessandro Michele. Demna has the near impossible task of rebuilding sales whist not being so divisive that Gucci faces another slump when he eventually leaves. Early leaks suggest he’ll reference TOM FORD FASHION-era Gucci, which is how many people still picture the brand. The answer lies in preserving house codes and brand DNA. These elements are not aesthetic preferences but strategic assets. They are the intangible capital that differentiates one maison from another, ensures long-term client loyalty, and protects pricing power even in downturns. Frequent stylistic shifts tied too closely to individual creative director’s taste risks diluting this capital. CHANEL offers a case study in brand stewardship. As it welcomes Matthieu Blazy as their new creative lead, Bruno Pavlovsky has made continuity of heritage and craftsmanship non-negotiable. He’s been publicly forthright that the tweed, boucle, quilting etc all have to be incorporated – Blazy’s debut must be unmistakably CHANEL. Put succinctly, no designer is bigger than the brand. In an industry recalibrating after rapid expansion, it is an essential strategy to maintain the brand long term. The houses that will emerge stronger are those that treat heritage as an anchor, not a constraint, and channel creative energy into deepening, not disrupting, the essence of the house. Luxury thrives on creativity, but its longevity and relevance depends on consistency. The future belongs to the brands that understand this balance. DHR Global #courageousleadership