Brand Strategy Function: Why Most Companies Get the “Brand Person” Role Wrong

I speak from experience.

I was on the sales side. Product development. I did a good share of brand agency life, a decent share of in-house brand leadership. And now running my own shop. 20 years in the making.

And one pattern keeps showing up:

More and more companies are waking up to the fact that brand drives business value.

So they hire a brand person.

A brand strategy function is responsible for defining positioning, targeting, and long-term brand growth within an organization.

The reality is often very different.

What Is a “Brand Person” (And Why the Role Is So Confusing)

Where should this person sit?

  • In performance marketing?

  • With research?

  • Under communications? Design? Licensing? Brand partnerships?

What are they responsible for?

  • Creating brand guidelines?

  • Reviewing/approving creative?

  • Driving brand strategy?

  • Or being the internal brand therapist across departments? (read: policeman)

Sometimes the expectation becomes: do a bit of everything.

And when things go off-brand?

The brand person gets to be the responsible one.

When things go right?

Credit usually goes somewhere else. Often to whatever drove the last click. (read: performance marketing)

Two Broken Brand Role Models Most Companies Use

Model 1 – The Wandering Brand Oracle

  • Builds brand positioning and oversees visual identity

  • Creates brand guidelines and decks

  • Gets pulled into projects to “just make sure it’s on-brand”

This role looks strategic on paper. It can even make you feel very important. However, there is no real project ownership. Just endless context-switching, and accountability when things go sideways. You aren't involved from the beginning, and you may not see the results. Most often than not, you're pulled in somewhere mid-flight.

In reality, it’s exhausting and very little rewarding. Plus it gives no ground to justify the amount of effort that goes into a mountain of “justs”. I've sat in those meetings firsthand.

Model 2 – The Mini Marketing Director

  • Owns execution.

  • Runs campaigns, briefs creatives, manages research.

But without a clear strategic foundation, this quickly turns into: performance marketing… dressed up as brand building.

You're busy, productive, always moving. You're on top of dashboards. You want to be more strategic, but you can't afford it as you're drowning in operational work.

It can feel very rewarding, however, not actually building anything that compounds over time.

Why Most Brand Strategy Roles Fail

Both models fail for the same reason:

They don’t work on building long-term brand equity.

The issue isn’t the person.

It’s the absence of a properly defined brand strategy function.

What companies create instead is something half-built. Missing limbs.

The result:

  • Constant alignment meetings (If I had a drink every time I heard, “Let’s meet next week to align on what we agreed today,” I’d be institutionalized by now.)

  • Reactive decision-making

  • Burnout

  • Weak commercial impact

What a Real Brand Strategy Function Should Do?

A proper brand function doesn’t manage assets in silos.

It manages business growth over time.

That responsibility breaks down into three core areas:

1. Define Where to Play (Segmentation & Targeting)

Real segmentation. Not personas .

  • Who drives volume?

  • Where does future growth come from?

  • Which buyers matter, and which don’t?

This is about penetration, and building future demand.

If you get this wrong, everything downstream is a mess.

2. Define How to Win (Positioning & Brand Assets)

Positioning that actually creates an advantage.

A clear, meaningfully different stance that makes you easier to choose in-market.

Building distinctive assets that make that choice faster.

Communicating what matters to the customer.

This is where brands start to create mental availability.

3. Make Brand Strategy Work Commercially

This is where most companies fall short.

A real brand function is included in and partly fully accountable for:

  • Growing mental availability

  • Reducing price sensitivity

  • Supporting margin, not just volume

  • Driving long-term effectiveness. Not focusing only on short-term spikes.

That means tracking metrics like:

  • Salience

  • Share of search

  • Pricing power

  • Brand equity over time

Not just awareness, clicks, or campaign performance.

Brand person is there to set the direction early. Be part of the work process.

NOT being pulled into the project midway with a question like: “Can we use this yellow in this creative?”

What Happens When Brand Strategy Role Is Set Up Right?

The role stops floating, and the person stops being the main firefighter.

It starts doing what it’s supposed to do:

  • Giving the business a clear direction

  • Making marketing more efficient

  • Reducing reliance on constant activation

  • Building something that compounds over time

Because that’s the real job. Managing the brand as a business asset.

If your “brand person” doesn’t own, or at least is sitting at the table where all those things are being discussed …

You don’t have a brand strategy function.

You have support who happens to work in that department ...

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Ready to Take Your Brand to the Next Level?

If you’re serious about growth, you need more than a new logo. You need a Brand Strategy Plan - your roadmap that shows you step by step what to do, when to do it, who to involve, and what outcomes to expect.

Because brands don’t evolve by accident. They grow because you know what you are doing.

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