Branding is about trajectory

Our best corporate branding engagements start with the CEO. If we are in the same room with the CEO, you can bet that branding strategy is being understood as business strategy.

That said, more often we see branding engagements being led by marketing or communications. While this is understandable, in some cases it concerns me that senior leadership may be failing to grasp what’s at stake.

Branding is about having agency over your organisation’s trajectory in the market. This agency comes from meaningful market differentiation. Without it, your brand is a commodity, subject to the currents of the market.

What’s more, any power that advertising or marketing can offer to substitute real differentiation, eventually falls flat.

The value of branding is the strategic clarity it brings, by identifying where an organisation has the greatest potential for meaningful differentiation in the market.

In the hands of a brand-oriented leader, this clarity can be transformational.