Can a brand truly thrive unless the CEO becomes its conductor?
Rohit Banka, brand and communication strategy director at Accenture Song, discusses the advantages of leaders shaping their company’s brand, and outlines examples of this in practice.
I recently wrote about Brand as the Business OS – the idea that brand is not a marketing tool but an organisation’s central operating system. The code that runs every decision.
Which naturally raises another question: if brand runs through everything, who should be leading it?
In most organisations, brand sits under Marketing, Corporate Communications or Customer Experience (CX). Each plays an important part but sees the world through its own lens – campaigns, reputation, customer journeys. Their priority is to deliver on their KPIs, and those KPIs are rarely built for organisation-wide impact.
That’s why brand influence often stays local, short-term and fragmented.
I’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.
An experience that reinforced my view
Quite recently, I worked with His Excellency Marwan Ahmad Lutfi, director general of Etihad Credit Bureau. One of those rare leaders who wasn’t a distant approver; he was in the room, shaping ideas, questioning assumptions and building the brand from the inside out.
What began as a rebrand of a credit-reporting company became something far bigger: a transformation into a data-technology brand and a growth story.
In our early sessions, asking the whys, the what-ifs, the what-thens opened a floodgate of ideas.
He began linking the brand behaviours to every part of the business – the service design, digital experience and even how people inside the company would think and act. He explored overlaying financial data with data from other sectors – retail, telecom, even food delivery – to reinvent new possibilities for consumers.
He wasn’t focused on a campaign. He was focused on how brand could move the business forward; how it could unite people behind one story.
The work went on to become one of the most awarded in the region, including Red Dot, iF Design and Transform Awards Grand Prix – recognition that followed from a brand built to align the whole enterprise.
At one point, he said quietly, “I’ve always wanted to have answers to these business questions.” Later, after we delivered, he told the team, “We’ve built a brand no other credit bureau has.”
That didn’t change my belief. It reinforced it. When the CEO steps up to conduct, brand stops being background music. It becomes the rhythm the entire organisation moves to.
A pattern that’s hard to ignore
When I look back at the brands that have truly disrupted their categories, one common thread runs through them all: leaders who treated brand as the business itself and led it from the front.
When Steve Jobs said, “Marketing is about values,” he wasn’t talking about advertising. He was defining Apple’s belief system: clarity, conviction and craft as the foundation of everything the company built.
When Brian Chesky spoke about Belong Anywhere, he wasn’t outlining a tagline. He was describing Airbnb’s reason to exist – a belief that shaped its product design, host culture and customer experience.
When Philip Krim said Casper wasn’t selling mattresses but better sleep, he wasn’t overselling it. The brand began re-imagining everything that could improve sleep – from the mattress to the lighting – and redefined what a “sleep company” could mean.
And when Robert Booth spoke about blending architecture, design and art at Ellington, he wasn’t just describing their design language. He was defining a differentiating ethos that informed every decision – from masterplans to projects and every detail of their spaces – one that built a remarkable reputation in a short span of time.
Different sectors. Different scales. Same story. Each time, the brand rose because the CEO believed in the power of brand and championed it as the organising force of the business.
Why it matters
When brand sits inside marketing, it drives marketing. When it sits with the CEO, it goes further – it shapes how teams collaborate, how products are imagined, how culture forms.
That shift changes how companies work. Brand stops being something you say and becomes something you live.
That’s what Jobs did at Apple. What Chesky did at Airbnb. What Booth did at Ellington. And what Lutfi did at Etihad Credit Bureau.
Each proved that brand isn’t a layer on business. It’s the operating idea that keeps the whole system in tune.
If you’re building brands…
If you’re a leader, step into the brand room, not just the boardroom. If you’re a marketer, explore the power of brand beyond marketing and campaigns. If you’re a consultant, frame brand as the operating system that informs every aspect of the business.
Which brings us back to the question. So perhaps the question isn’t rhetorical after all. Can brands truly thrive when the CEO isn’t conducting the orchestra?
Your thoughts?
