Is Brand the Next Boardroom Priority for Smart CEOs?

What makes a brand? If your first thought was logo, mission statement or aesthetic, keep reading. In the age of instant access to information, over-zealous customers sharing stories – good and bad – on social media and a growing focus on society, sustainability and impact, the concept of brand has moved from the drawing board to the boardroom. 

Thom Newton is well versed in this evolution. As Global CEO of design powerhouse Conran Design Group, he has worked with globally recognised businesses and brands for more than quarter of a century including the likes of Aston Martin, Coca-Cola, Peugeot, McDonald’s, Nokia and more. 

Here, he tells Business Chief more about the importance of brand and why good brand management begins in the C-suite. 

What does brand mean to businesses in terms of being a strategic or operational lever? 

It’s changed hugely in the last five to 10 years. The understanding and leveraging of brand value was minimal even a decade ago, when the perception of brand focused on how you look, your logo or the way that you present yourself’. 

Now, CEO and C-suite-level understanding is more sophisticated. Our interactions with the C-suite show that the most useful lever for brand is actually as a framework to understand the current state of business health, or as a tool to surface challenges and to find common understanding and solutions to them. 

Brand has evolved from an executional standpoint, where it was very much seen as an aesthetic thing, to a boardroom priority – certainly for larger organisations – to insulate against fluctuations in markets, pricing elasticity and more. It is now a strategically mobilised tool.

Five or 10 years ago it would be uncommon to find board representation or ownership of brand. It was very much the purview of the Chief Marketing Officer and comms department before being flashed in front of the CEO for final signoff.

That has changed. Now, leaders can use their brand strategically, creating frameworks that allow an understanding of current position and key challenges. 

It is also a strong, unifying force. The beginning of any branding programme is about insight, understanding discontinuity across the business, gaps between current internal reality and how the business communicates externally, or how employees interpret brand and vision. It encourages leaders to put a ruler over business performance in a way that is often missing.

What has driven that change over the last decade? 

One reason is that businesses operate in an increasingly competitive environment and any company that lacks differentiation or clarity around its offering, whether that's product or service based, has a problem. 

The other factor is access to information for customers and audiences. When social media emerged, access to real-time information changed everything in terms of audience awareness. AI is the same thing again, but on another level. The fact that everyone has the history of businesses, products, services and comparative market information and data at their fingertips puts huge emphasis on organisations to get their house in order. 

Everyone uses AI now and it does fantastic things, but it still struggles to provide anything original. It means there is a role for brands as curators, evaluating and curating the information they are giving out. Originality is still a key currency for brands and AI cannot give you that.

What does effective board ownership of brand look like? 

It varies depending on the size and nature of the organisation. Generally, brand used to be viewed as a very static element, which is why there was reticence from leaders to even consider rebrands or ask whether their brand is fit for purpose or talks to the modern audience. 

Now, there is a greater understanding that a brand is organic and should be continuously worked on and optimised. 

Large organisations are not undertaking big rebrand programmes regularly, and certainly not when they're under pressure or if the market is difficult, because it's not the message they want to send to shareholders looking for a return. 

Rather, continual tweaking and optimisation is a way that organisations can leverage their brand opportunity without impacting short-term growth. 

The key question is whether a brand is operating as effectively as it might in the channels it uses to connect with audiences. Is it sending clear messages to consumers, employees and the market and showing up in a consistent way? There should be a real thread of DNA running through all communications to create a sense of value and trust for the audience. 

Often, good brand management and optimisation is the right course. Treat the brand as an organic thing because it lives in the minds of audiences who are also evolving, using different channels and buying into different reference points. The more you maintain your brand, the less chance there is of needing larger change because it has become so out of step. 

How can companies use brand to understand organisational health?

Typically, we can only build or evaluate the health of a brand if we understand the context in which it operates and the way it's been delivered. That usually requires a level of stakeholder engagement, looking at market comparators and examining the organisation to see if people are aligned on purpose and vision.

That evaluation is something CEOs and organisations use as a way to get everyone around the table and surface any challenges or disconnects they have in the organisation. 

There's no mystery to it. It is about having a strong brand delivered in a consistent way. And by consistent, I don't mean it becomes a straight jacket – there are great examples of brands with huge variety in how they're deployed, but with a coherence that means you always recognise their DNA.