The role of CEO in branding

I cite the Edelman Trust Barometer often because trust is a fundamental component to effective communications, branding and marketing being no exceptions.

Their latest report shows an intriguing trend. As Axios reports:81% of the public — and 60% of job seekers — want executives to speak publicly about big issues.

Not only is this further validation of that we are in the era of brand activism, it also sparks an interesting thought for the work we, as brand strategists, do.

You can't divorce founders and senior leaders from the brand itself. They are intrinsically linked to the brand story.

This might seem obvious, especially with giant polarizing figures like Bezos or Zuckerberg or the charismatic con artists like Adam Neumann who is already back at it. But in my experience, we just don't talk about this enough when having brand-level conversations.

It's easy to focus on things like logos, websites and other visual choices when talking about a brand, but the people inside an organization are the most vital element to the story and should not be taken for granted.Great brands are built from the inside out. Want to chat about this further? Book time with me here.

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