To ensure their new brand strategy was practical, Ford required every department to articulate how they would activate it. This exercise revealed gaps and ensured the strategy would guide daily decisions on what to do and, crucially, what to stop doing.
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To truly change a brand's narrative, marketing's 'talking the talk' is insufficient. The product experience itself must embody the desired story. This 'walking the walk' through the product is the most powerful way to shape core brand perception and make the narrative shareable.
Don't expect your organization to adopt a new strategy uniformly. Apply the 'Crossing the Chasm' model internally: identify early adopters to champion the change, then methodically win over the early majority and laggards. This manages expectations and improves strategic alignment across the company.
Laura Kneebush's "Living Our Brands" initiative treats brand building as a company-wide responsibility. By training sales, R&D, and even manufacturing on brand strategy, the entire organization becomes accountable for the consumer experience, leading to deeper alignment and cultural change.
Ford's CMO credits their rebrand's success to a two-year process of embedding the new strategy across all departments, from HR to product development. This ensured it was more than a marketing campaign by influencing core business operations and decision-making.
To avoid an inconsistent, 'all over the place' approach, companies must establish a common brand-building philosophy or framework. This shared point of view, like Molson Coors's MUSCLE framework, ensures organizational alignment and helps build a cohesive marketing culture.
During Ford's two-year rebrand, moments where stakeholder alignment was lost were not failures. The CMO found these "regroups" were critical for strengthening the strategy, revealing where initial agreements were superficial or impractical and making the final plan more durable.
When presenting their rebrand strategy, Ford's CEO encouraged his team to transparently share challenges they hadn't yet solved. This demonstrated deep, critical thinking and built more confidence with the board than a perfectly polished presentation would have.
For Ford's CMO, the ultimate validation of their new brand strategy was an unsolicited call from the Head of Design. He announced he was restructuring his entire department around the brand's new "lifestyle audiences," proving the strategy was adopted at a core operational level.
In greenlighting its "Ready, Set, Ford" campaign, the marketing team used a powerful filter: could any other OEM credibly run this ad? The objective was to create an anthem so deeply rooted in Ford's unique identity that it would feel inauthentic for any competitor.
To ensure brand is a shared responsibility, Ally includes brand health KPIs on the scorecards of the CEO, CFO, and other business leaders. This elevates brand from a marketing concern to a core business objective, fostering cross-functional alignment and accountability.
