Ask twenty-five marketing leaders to define brand and you’ll get different answers. Reputation. Experience. Emotion. Growth lever. Personality. That isn’t a theoretical exercise, it’s what emerged when independent brand growth agency Chello spent over 1,200 minutes in honest conversations with senior brand and marketing leaders across 25 businesses for its inaugural Brand Leadership Benchmark Report: “Operation Brand: The Leaders Buying In To Stand Out”.
Brand is widely believed to be a commercial growth driver, yet many organisations are still navigating how to embed it beyond marketing, according to the report. It also maps out how brand is being defined, owned, measured and operationalised and where the gap between ambition and execution is widest.
The findings show strong belief in brand at leadership level, with 86% of respondents rating senior alignment on brand as a commercial driver at seven out of ten or higher. Yet the research also reveals a consistent structural challenge: while brand shows up across product, service, hiring and operations, it is still most often “owned” by marketing — and when treated as a single function’s responsibility, its impact can fragment.
Sydney-born agency Chello, which recently opened its London office, champions the belief that brand ambitions should turn into brand momentum. Tristan Velasco, Chief Creative Officer at Chello, said:
“Organisations don’t lack belief in brand. What they’re working through now is how to make it real: beyond marketing, beyond guidelines, and into the day-to-day decisions that shape the whole experience.”
The research also highlights growing pressure on marketing leaders to deliver immediate performance outcomes, driven by tighter budgets, AI-enabled optimisation and always-on data. Brand, by nature, operates on a longer horizon, giving rise to a challenge many organisations have yet to resolve.
“Operation Brand: The Leaders Buying In To Stand Out” is available to view on here.
