Business Guide - brought to you by APL Media • Wednesday 15 February 2023


Design, branding & marketing • 15 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE


Te business leadership tool of the future


What single tool has the greatest potential to transform the future of business? Some say artificial intelligence (AI). Tim Jones, head of strategy at venturethree, disagrees


Since emergence of platforms like ChatGPT, consumers are waking up to the real potential of AI. Others will point to Web3, where continued decentralisation will accelerate power shiſts away from corporations and towards communities and individuals. Consultants, meanwhile, will promote ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) because society is fundamentally redefining its relationship with institutions, employers and, indeed, the planet. AI. Web3. ESG. While each has a


significant part to play in modern society, the tool with the greatest scope to transform the future of business is already known — at least by name — to every business leader. It’s latent within every organisation on the planet today. Yet, for the vast majority of businesses, its true value is yet to be discovered. That tool is ‘brand’. Not brand as


a subgenre of marketing. Nor the design skillset known as branding.


For the vast majority of businesses, the true value of brand is yet to be discovered


This is brand with a capital B: a central life force, a catalyst for action and a beacon for innovation. Brand is the singular operating system through which any organisation can influence behaviour, realise collective potential and enhance stakeholder value. As a boardroom discipline, brand is one of the most powerful levers a business leader can wield to accelerate growth. Only a handful of businesses


recruit brand to its full effect. For a brand to do this they need to showcase an operating system that aligns head, heart and hand in service of a shared vision, driving extraordinary value. Conversely, there are innumerable


examples of organisations — some facing existential threats — that are not leveraging brand as an operating system. Take social networks, who oſten choose to optimise for product-driven metrics over brand mission, risking the loss of their relevance in today’s world. Even some organisations with strong brand equity don’t yet harness brand to its full potential. Challenges that brands face can’t always be tackled through a conventional lens of service design, digital transformation or supply chain management.


A BRAND-LED WAY OF OPERATING IS CRITICAL FOR THE BUSINESSES OF THE FUTURE. HERE ARE THREE REASONS WHY: • Firstly, it feels like a more challenging time than ever to lead a business. Every leader faces the added complexities, market sensitivities and interdependencies of modern ecosystems. Change is happening so quickly traditional corporations are struggling to react, and big decisions are being demanded too frequently. Brand gives businesses a shared compass, empowering everyone within the organisation to respond with consistency in real time.


• Secondly, as culture — our way of making sense of the world around us — struggles to keep pace with change, people everywhere are searching for meaning. Brands have the opportunity and the responsibility to fill the voids leſt by religion, government and community. Voids that, if leſt unmet, might be filled by other darker forces, from taxable toxins to conspiracy theories.


• Finally, if machine learning and AI do manifest as the future fundamentals of business management, brand can provide the human and creative inputs


Brand is the singular operating system through which any organisation can influence behaviour, realise collective potential and enhance stakeholder value


required to help businesses unleash — and ethically steer — their technological potential.


For decades, brand-as-marketing has fought for its place at the boardroom table. Now is the time for brand to climb on top of that table and scream for C-suite attention and action. Fortunately, at its core, this isn’t a difficult task, and for every leader, it starts with asking the fundamental questions — who are we, why are we here, what do we value and where are we going? Those who commit to their answers will discover brand’s unique capacity to solve any business problem, from inspiring and uniting teams to fuelling innovation and driving growth. Time is precious. Resources are


limited. The world needs a new way of operating and it is brand.


For more info


venturethree is an independent global brand company, whose work unlocks, maximises and accelerates what an organisation and its people are capable of. venturethree.com


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