A rebrand should be viewed as building the fundamental foundation of a business. Without it, growth attempts are superficial and temporary. With a solid brand, the company has a stable base that can support significant scaling and prevent the business from hitting a growth ceiling.

A successful rebrand doesn't create a new personality; it amplifies the company's true, existing identity. Just as money magnifies a person's character, a strong brand makes a company's core values—like community involvement—bigger, louder, and more public, forcing them to be more intentional.

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.

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.

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.

A "team brag session"—where each member publicly praises a colleague—is counterintuitively more beneficial for the giver. While the recipient feels respected, the act of recognizing others elevates the praiser's own morale and strengthens team bonds.

Ally reinforces its "brand is everyone's job" mantra by giving every employee 100 shares of company stock annually. This creates a powerful owner's mindset, directly linking the company's success to the brand experience delivered by every individual, from the call center to the C-suite.

Branding is not just about reflecting a company's past; it can be a forward-looking tool for change. By defining a new, aspirational identity, a rebrand provides a clear path and a public commitment, guiding the organization to evolve and actively become the company it wants to be.

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.