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.

Nestle avoids a rigid top-down approach by fostering a "hive mind" mentality. While a global strategy exists, local markets like Brazil and Mexico have autonomy to adapt to their unique cultures. The key is constant cross-market communication, where teams share successes and failures to ensure everyone evolves together.

Before scaling paid acquisition, invest in a robust brand system. A well-defined brand DNA (art direction, voice, tone) is not a vanity project; it's the necessary infrastructure to efficiently generate the thousands of cohesive creative assets required to test and scale performance marketing campaigns successfully.

One-off creative hits are easy, but replicating them requires structure. Truly creative marketing integrates storytelling into a disciplined process involving data analysis (washups, SWAT), strategic planning, and commercial goals. This framework provides the guardrails needed to turn creative ideas into repeatable, impactful campaigns.

Instead of debating whether Product Management or Product Marketing "owns" positioning, teams should treat it as a critical point of shared alignment. It's a collaborative space where the entire team agrees on the product's value and market strategy.

Reacting to a regression towards tactical performance marketing, branding expert David Aaker introduced his "Five Bs" framework (Relevance, Image, Loyalty, Portfolio, Equity). It reminds leaders that brand is a long-term asset and notably includes "Brand Portfolio" to emphasize that a strong brand rarely stands alone, requiring co-brands and endorsers.

The traditional divide between B2B and B2C marketing is obsolete. Effective brands must speak to business and consumer audiences with the same authentic voice, bridging efforts to create a cohesive identity, much like how the NFL mothership brand supports individual team brands.

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.

In a noisy market where brand recall requires 15-20 touches, the key to creating demand is not just a multi-channel presence (ads, outbound, PLG). The real superpower is ensuring the core brand promise and messaging are identical and consistent across all of them.