Six habits of great Brand Leaders

THE BRAND LEADER
Six Habits of Great Brand Leaders
Having spent 20 years in the CPG world of marketing, I have seen almost a thousand Brand
Leaders over the years. On the way up, I tried to emulate what I thought were the best traits
and avoid what I saw as the biggest weaknesses. At the senior level of marketing, I hired
tons of Brand Leaders, promoted many and even had to ﬁre a few along the way. As a
Brand Coach over the past ﬁve years, working closely with Brand Leaders, I consistently
see these six habits at any level. They separate those that are the GREAT Brand Leaders
from those that I would consider as just GOOD Brand Leaders.

Beloved Brands We make brand leaders smarter

Everyone says they are good decision makers, but very few are. If you present an either-or
situation to many brand leaders, they struggle with the decision, so they try to find a way to
say, “Let’s do a little of both”. But in reality, what separates out a great brand leader from
the pack, is that great brand leaders know that decision-making starts with the choices
where you have to pick one, not both. At the core of business, brands only exist to drive
more profit than if we just sold the product without a name on it. Marketing has to be all
about ROI (Return on Investment). For the best Brand Leaders, ROI should come naturally,
as it simply means you get more back, than what you put into it. Marketers always have
limited resources
(financial, time,
people,
partnerships) to
apply against an
unlimited number
of possible choices
(target market,
brand positioning,
strategic choices
or tactical
activities). The only
way the equation
works is when you
limit the number of
possible choices to
match the limited
resources. You
can’t do everything so you have to do the most important things.

Don’t tell yourself that you are good at making decisions if you come to a decision point
and you always choose BOTH. Strategic thinkers never DIVIDE and conquer. They make
choices to FOCUS and conquer

Habit #1
GREAT Brand Leaders push for focused choices, using the word “or” and
rarely using the word “and”.

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS!!!
To be GREAT, you need to focus on a tight consumer target to make sure you can get them
to do what your brand needs and get them to love you more. A new way to think is to find
those consumers that are already highly motivated to buy what you have to sell and get
them to love you, rather than targeting everyone and get them to like you. The reality is that
leading brands within each category are more loved than the pack of brands struggling to
figure themselves out. I would argue that it is better to be loved by a few than tolerated by
everyone. I once talked to a bank whose target was 18-65, current customers, new
customers and employees. That’s not a target. How can you have an adequate ROI if you
are spreading your limited resources against EVERYONE? As a brand, we always try to
matter. Well, if you matter to anyone, then you have to matter to those who care the most.

To be GREAT you need to focus on creating a tightly defined reputation that sets your
brand up to own an area.

A brand has four choices: better, different, cheaper or not around for very long. Giving the
consumer too many messages about your brand will confuse them as to what makes your
brand unique. Trying to be everything to everyone is the recipe for being nothing to anyone.
Today, consumers receive
7,000 brand messages a
day. Wow. As a consumer,
how many of those 7,000
do you engage with and
digest each day? Maybe
5. Then why as a
Marketer, are you trying to
shout 3 or 4 messages? It
is really odd for you to
think that the way to enter
an overwhelmed crowded
brain is to give more
messages and not less.
Slow down and keep it
simple. Great Brand
Leaders find a way focus on one message. When I ask a room full of Marketers, tell me one
word that defines the Volvo brand: half the room yells out, “SAFETY”. Volvo has been

singularly focused on the safety positioning since the 1950s not just externally but internally
the safety positioning guides every decision. That is focus. If I asked your team for one
word that describes your brand, would I get the same word from everyone on the team?
Why not?

I see too many brand plans have both penetration (getting new users to use) and
frequency (getting current users to use more) in their plan. Do you want to get more
people to eat your brand or those
that already do to eat more? A
Penetration Strategy gets
someone with very little experience
with your brand to likely consider
dropping their current brand to try
you once and see if they like it. A
Usage Frequency Strategy gets
someone who knows and uses your
brand in the way they choose, to
change their current behavior in
relationship to your brand, either
changing their current life routine or
substituting your brand into a higher
share of the occasions. These are very different strategies. And it is a choice you must
make. I see so many Brand Plans and Creative Briefs with both penetration and usage
frequency strategies. Go look at your plan and see if you are really making choices.
Because if you’re not, then you are not making decisions, you’re just making a very long to-
do list that will exhaust your resources.

When you focus, four things happen for your brand:
1. Better return on investment (ROI)

2. Better return on eﬀort (ROE)

3. Stronger reputation

4. More competitive

5. More investment behind the brand


Next time you are faced with a decision, make the choice. Don’t pick both, just in case you
are wrong. All you are doing is dividing your limited resources by spreading them across
both choices—which turns limited resources into sparse resources. Without the right
support, you won’t see the expected movement on your brand and instead of putting more
resources behind the right ideas you then put even less. I always say that a strategic person
would never get the “steak and eggs” but rather would choose twice the steak. When
faced with choices, a GREAT brand leader picks one, never both.
Everything starts and ends with the consumer in mind. I always ask Brand Leaders: “Do
you represent your brand to your consumer or do you represent your consumer to the
brand?” It is an important question as to your mindset of how you do your job. Start
thinking like your consumer and be their representative to your brand. There is only one
source of revenue on your financial statements. It is not your brand, it is the consumer who
buys your brand.

When you think like your consumer, you will notice the work gets better, you will see clearer
paths to growth and you will start to create a brand that the consumer loves rather than just
likes. Marketing is about creating a tight connection with your consumer. The more love you
generate for your brand, the more powerful position it occupies in the marketplace and the
more profit it can generate from that source of power.

You have to get in the consumer’s shoes, observe, listen and understand their favorite
parts of the day. You have to know their fears, motivations, frustrations and desires. Learn
their secrets, that only they know, even if they can’t explain. Learn to use their voice. Build
that little secret into your message, using their language, so they’ll know you are talking to
them. We call this little secret the consumer insight. When portrayed with the brand’s
message, whether on packaging, an advertisement or at the purchase moment, the
consumer insight is the first thing that consumers connect with. When consumers see the
insight portrayed, we make them think: “That’s exactly how I feel. I thought I was the only
one who felt like that.” This is what engages consumers and triggers their motivation and
desire to purchase. The consumers think we must be talking to them, even if it looks like we
are talking to millions.

Habit #2:
GREAT Brand Leaders represent the consumer to the Brand.

Consumer Insights are secrets that we discover
and use to our brand’s advantage.
It is not easy to explain a secret to a person who doesn’t even know how to explain their
own secret. Try it with a friend and you will fail miserably. Imagine how hard it is to find that
secret and portray it back to an entire group of consumers. Safe to say, consumer insights
are hard to find. The dictionary definition of the word Insight is “seeing below the
surface”. To get deeper, when you come across a data point, you have to keep looking,
listening asking yourself “so what does that mean for the consumer” until you have an
“AHA moment”. You can start with the observations, trends, market facts and research
data, but only when you start asking the right questions do you get closer to where you can
summarize the insight. Look and listen for the consumer’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors
that help explain how they think, feel or act in relationship to your brand or category.
Because the facts are
merely on the surface,
you have to dig, or you
will miss out on the
depth of the
explanation of the
underlying feelings
within the consumers
that caused the data.
Think beyond the
specific category
insights and think
about life insights or
even societal trends
that could impact
changing behavior.

Good insights get in the SHOES of your consumer and use their VOICE. We force every
insight to be written starting with the word “I” to get the Marketer into the shoes of the
consumer and force them to put the insight in quotes to use their voice.  

I am a huge believer that marketing fundamentals matter. In fact, we train Brand Leaders on
all the fundamentals of marketing including strategic thinking to writing brand plans and
creative briefs. But that’s a starting point to which you grow from. If you don’t use
fundamentals in how you do your job, you will and should be fired.

Great Brand Leaders know when to be a strategic thinker and when to be an action thinker.
Strategic thinkers see “what if” questions before seeing solutions, mapping out a range of
decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out. They take
time to reflect and plan before acting, helping you move in a focused efficient fashion. They
think slowly, logically, always needing options, but if go too slow, you will miss the
opportunity window. Action thinkers see answers before even knowing the right questions,
using instincts and impulse. Any delays will frustrate them, believing that doing something
is better than nothing at all. This “make it happen” mode gets things done, but if you go too
fast, your great actions will be solving the
wrong problem. Always find the right
balance by thinking slowly with strategy
and thinking quickly with your instincts.
A good Brand Leader does a good job of
bringing fundamentals into how they do
their job. They know how to back up the fundamentals by gathering the right facts to
support their arguments. But GREAT Brand Leaders are able to take it to the next level and
bring those same fundamentals and match them against their instincts. They have a gut feel
for decisions they can reach into and bring out at the boardroom table based on the core
fundamentals, the experience they bring from past successes and failures as well as this
instinctual judgement.

It’s not that great marketers have better instincts. It is that great marketers are able to
believe in their instincts and bring instincts into their decision making. They use their head,
their gut and their heart to decide the pathway on finding greatness in Marketing.

Habit #3:
GREAT Brand Leaders are fundamentally sound, even when using their
instincts.

I think what made me really good at my job is that I did nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Over my 20 years of Brand Management, whenever I walked into a meeting, I used to
whisper to myself: “You are the least knowledgeable person in the room. Use that to your
advantage.” The power was in the ability to ask clarification questions. When I was in with
the scientists, following my C+ in 10th grade Chemistry, I was about as smart as my
consumer that I represent. I needed to make sure all the science was easy to explain. With
my ad agencies, I finally figured out that I never had to solve problems. I just gave them my
problems to solve. It became like therapy. Plus, with six years of business school without
one art class, what do I know about art. I was smart enough to know that I needed to make
the most out of the experts I was paying.

While we don't make the product, we don’t sell the product or create the Ads, we do touch
everything that goes into the marketplace and we make every decision. All of our work is
done through other people. Our greatness as a Brand Leader has to come from the experts
we engage, so they will be inspired to reach for their own greatness and apply it on our
brand. Brand Management has been built on a hub-and-spoke system, with a team of
experts surrounding the generalist Brand Leader. When I see Brand Managers of today
doing stuff, I feel sorry for them. They are lost. I just saw the Uber CEO designed his own
logo. Doesn’t he have better things to do? Brand Leaders are not designed to be experts in
marketing communications, experts in product innovation and experts in selling the
product. You are trained to be a generalist, knowing enough to make decisions, but not
enough to actually do the work.

Fifteen years ago, Ad Agencies broke apart the creative and the media departments into
separate agencies, forcing the Brand Leader to step in and be the referee on key decisions.
Right after that, the explosion of new digital media options that mainstream agencies were
not ready to handle forced the Brand Leader to take another step in. With the increasing
speed of social media, Brand Leaders have taken one more step in. Three steps in and
Brand Leaders can’t find a way to step back again. Some Brand Leaders love stepping in
too far so they can control the outcome of the creative process. However, if you are now
Habit #4:
GREAT Brand Leaders don’t do anything by themselves but they inspire
others and find their greatness in the greatness of others.

doing all the work, then who is critiquing the work to make sure it fits the strategy? Pretty
hard to think and do at the same time.

Brand Leaders need to take a step back and let the creativity of execution to unfold. I
always say that is okay to know exactly what you want, but you should never know until the
moment you see it. As the client, I like to think of marketing execution like the perfect gift
that you never thought to buy yourself. How we engage our experts can either inspire
greatness or crush the spirit of creativity. From my experience, experts would prefer to be
pushed than held back. The last thing experts want is to be asked for their expertise and
then told exactly what to do. There is a fine line between rolling up the sleeves to work
alongside the experts and pushing the experts out of the way.

It is time to step back and assume your true role as the Brand Leader. Trust me, it is a
unique skill to be able to inspire, challenge, question, direct and decide, without any
expertise at all. After all, I am an expert in doing nothing.

Great Brand Leaders focus on their people first, believing that is the best way to drive
results. The formula is simple: the smarter the people, the better the work they will produce
and in turn the stronger the results will be. Invest in training and development. Marketing
Training is not just on the job, but also in
the classroom to find ways to challenge
their thinking and give them added skills
to be better in their jobs.

Great Brand Leaders know that marketing
fundamentals still matter. There is a lot of
evidence in the market that the classic
fundamentals are falling, whether it is
strategic thinking, writing a brand plan,
writing a creative brief or judging great
advertising. As things move faster,
Habit #5:
GREAT Brand Leaders create other GREAT Brand Leaders on their team.

Marketers seem more willing to let go of the fundamentals. However, as the speed
increases that should be even more of a reason o reach for your fundamentals. People are
NOT getting the same learning and development they did in prior generations of Marketing.
Investing in training, not only makes your people smarter, but it is motivating for them to
know that you are investing in them.

Great Brand Leaders find ways put the spotlight on their people. It is time to let them own it
and let them Shine. Make it about them, not you. Great Brand Leaders find ways to
challenge your team and yet recognize when the work.

I am always asked so what does it take to be great at marketing, and I’ll always jokingly
say, “Well, they aren’t all good qualities”. The best marketers I have seen have an ego that
fuels them. The best Marketers are like thorough-bred race horse. Use your ego in the right
way, so that it shows up as confidence and a belief in yourself. I can tell you that out of the
ten great projects I worked on throughout my career, each met major resistance at some
point. It was my confidence that helped me over-come roadblocks whether they cam from
peers or bosses.

I always challenge Brand Leaders to think of the next person who will be in their chair, and
what you want to leave them. When you create a Brand Vision, you should think 10 years
from now, advertising campaigns should last at least 5 years and the strategic choices you
make should gain share and drive the brand to a new level. Yet, the reality is you will be in
the job for 2-4 years. When you write a Brand Plan, you should think of the many audiences
like senior leaders, ad agencies and those that work on your brand, but you also should
think about the next Brand Leader. What will you do, to leave the brand in a better position
than when you took it on? What will be your legacy on your brand?

Great Brand Leaders always push for
greatness and never settle for OK 
Habit #6:
GREAT Brand Leaders have a desire to Leave a Legacy.

Beloved Brands: Who are we?
At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders
smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand
Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and
helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that
uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand
management. We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional
work that drives stronger brand results. We oﬀer brand training on every subject in marketing,
related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer
marketing and marketing execution.

Beloved Brands Training program
At Beloved Brands, we promise to make your team of BRAND LEADERS smarter, so they produce
smarter work that drives stronger brand results.
1. How to think strategically: Strategic thinkers see “what if” questions before seeing solutions,
mapping out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will
play out.

2. Write smarter Brand Plans: A good Brand Plan provides a road map for everyone in the
organization to follow: sales, R&D, agencies, senior leaders, even the Brand Leader who writes
the plan.

3. Create winning Brand Positioning Statements: The brand positioning statement sets up the
brand’s promise to the consumer, impacting both external communication (advertising, PR or in-
store) as well as internally with employees who deliver that promise.

4. Write smarter Creative Briefs: The brief helps focus the strategy so that all agencies can take
key elements of the brand plan positioning to and express the brand promise through
communication.

5. Be smarter at Brand Analytics: Before you dive into strategy, you have to dive into the brand’s
performance metrics and look at every part of the business—category, consumers, competitors,
channels and brand.

6. Get better Marketing Execution: Brand Leaders rely on agencies to execute. They need to
know to judge the work eﬀectively to ensure they are making the best decisions on how to tell
the story of the brand and express the brand’s promise.

7. How to build Media Plans: Workshop for brand leaders to help them make strategic decisions
on media. We look at media as an investment, media as a strategy and the various media
options—both traditional and on-line.

8. Winning the Purchase Moment: Brand Leaders need to know how to move consumers on the
path to purchase, by gaining entry into their consumers mind, help them test and decide and
then experience so they buy again and become a brand fan.


Graham Robertson at Beloved Brands
A NEW WAY to look at Brand Management.

Graham is one of the voices of the modern Brand Leader. He started Beloved
Brands knowing he could make brands stronger and brand leaders smarter.
Beloved Brands will challenge you to think strategically so you can create a
Brand Positioning, a Brand Concept and a Big Idea for your brand. Graham
will help write Brand Plans that focus everyone who work on the brand and
make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce better
work that drives stronger brand results.

Graham spent 20 years in Brand Management leading some of
the world’s most beloved brands at Johnson and Johnson,
Pﬁzer, General Mills and Coke, rising up to VP Marketing.
Graham played a major role in helping Pﬁzer win Marketing
Magazine’s Marketer of the Year.

His public speaking appearances inspire brand leaders to
love what they do. Over 4 million marketers have visited his
website,beloved-brands.com with the desire to become smarter.
Graham has served as a contributing author to Advertising Age in
the US and Marketing Magazine in Canada.

To contact Beloved Brands, email graham@beloved-brands.com
or call 416-885-3911. You can also follow us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

Six habits of great Brand Leaders

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Six habits of great Brand Leaders