Brand Leadership in 2021 and Beyond

What do brands need to achieve brand leadership in 2021 and beyond? Accelerated agility, enriched engagement, and definitive differentiation. These are the top priorities I gleaned from Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2020 report, issued right before the end of the year.

The analysis by Interbrand (which was provided alongside the list of the 100 Best Global Brands and is, in my opinion, always the most valuable aspect of the firm’s annual report) explains that the speed and degree of disruption the world has experienced in the last year clearly points to “the end of continuity as the default assumption.” The roles that brands play and the expectations people have of them today requires new mindsets and skillsets to build and manage them. So, although agility, engagement, and differentiation are not new brand leadership principles, the way these priorities must be executed now has changed dramatically. 

The following is a summary and synthesis of these three top brand leadership priorities. The full report, “A New Decade of Possibility,” can be accessed here.

Accelerated Agility

Brand leadership, Interbrand observes, is no longer only dependent upon what a brand stands for – it also must indicate and mobilize it to where it’s going next. This requires accelerated agility, now that the speed, scale, and stakes of the decisions that must be made have surged exponentially.

Accelerated agility depends on greater organizational alignment, which Interbrand defines as “the degree to which the whole organisation is pulling in the same direction, committed to the brand strategy and empowered by systems to execute it across the business.” As such, brand-culture fusion – the integration and alignment of external brand identity and internal organizational culture -- is critical. 

A clear, strong brand may be an organization’s “most powerful connective tissue,” Interbrand says, but brand leaders can no longer rely on a command-and-control approach to enforce alignment with the brand. Instead, brand leaders must cultivate a cohesive brand-led culture that ensures the clarity, belief, and commitment necessary for accelerated agility.

Empathy also fosters agility. Empathy involves truly understanding and actually anticipating the fast-changing priorities and emotions of customers, as well as employees, partners, investors, and other stakeholders. Brand leaders must create ongoing dialogues with all these groups – it’s the only way they can make bold moves with confidence. 

Interbrand profiles Microsoft as an example of an organization that has undergone a dramatic transformation through empathy. The report credits the company’s rise (an increase in brand value by 53% in just the last year) to the “extraordinary cultural shift” led by CEO Satya Nadella, who regards empathy “as a leadership trait as much as a business priority and an innovation ethos.” 

Underpinned by alignment and empathy, the strongest brands execute with accelerated ability, building new engines of growth and revenue opportunities.

Enriched Engagement

In today’s environment, brand leadership requires a wholesale change in brand engagement. Engagement must be enriched to create partnerships with brand stakeholders in the right place and time, and on the right topic(s). (While the Interbrand report focuses on external engagement with customers, the new engagement principles also apply to employees as well as all stakeholders.) 

Customers – and all stakeholders – are starting to “demand meaning in their choices,” Interbrand observes. This means that companies must engage with people on relevant topics and in worthwhile roles. A brand’s goal can no longer be appeal – sparking a sense of desire; it must be affinity – cultivating a sense of belonging and identification. By definition, this requires brands to “draw clear lines” – i.e., engage selectively with certain people and not others. 

The report concludes that, “the deepest form of affinity is and will be increasingly driven by a brand’s lack of compromise on fundamental issues.” It points to Nike’s campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick as example of the type of commitment now required by brands. “Divisive, controversial and unequivocally Nike, the campaign makes it clear what stance the brand took, sharing in the values of its core customer group, knowingly and willingly at odds with others.” 

Furthermore, to move towards its ambition, brands must engage people not as targets or data points, but as partners. “People and organisations,” the report says, “expect to engage with brands not as unconditionally faithful customers, but as active constituents – and collaborators.” Brands must engage in conversation and co-creation, drawing upon people for inspiration and influence.

Ultimately enriched engagement involves delivering on a new expectation of trust. A brand must not only satisfy needs and deliver on its promises, it must also stay true to its purpose and be accountable for its actions. People expect companies to do the right thing and they use their choices as votes of confidence.

Definitive Differentiation

While differentiation has always been a key pillar of brand strength, the need for it has only grown in this time of constant and massive change. But, as Interbrand points out, differentiation has shifted away from communication and messages and towards delivery and moves. Definitive differentiation is “less of a ‘say’ play, and more of a ‘do’ game.”

Brand leadership has evolved beyond touchpoints coordination. These days, the customer experience involves increasingly interconnected ecosystems and platforms, and brands now extend into new and in some cases vastly varied arenas. As such, brand leaders must not simply manage single points of execution. They must rise to the role of to an orchestrator of innovation, experiences, collaborations, new business models, and more. In doing so, they differentiate through “Iconic Moves,” a term Interbrand has coined to denote the big bets that shift customer expectations, create windows of monopoly, drive internal change, and deliver extraordinary business results.

Definitive differentiation is also achieved by “taking a clear, unequivocal stance on the fundamental issues of our times,” the report says. Consider, for example, Patagonia which has firmly established its uniqueness and leadership through its environmental commitment.

Interbrand actually uses the term “distinctiveness” to characterize the level and nature of differentiation that typifies brand leadership in 2021 and beyond. It’s not enough to simply be unlike others – brands must be perceived clearly and be distinguished from all others.

Constant Change

One of the most telling conclusions of the Interbrand report about brand leadership today reads, “The traditional paradigm of research, brand positioning and communications is outdated – replaced by a clear ambition driving fast-paced, highly targeted moves borne of experimentation.” Indeed, brand leadership must not only respond to constant change, it must create it.

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For more resources like this, subscribe to the Brand+Culture Series (click on the button in the upper righthand corner of the page) and check out:

• What 2021 Requires of Leaders
• How to Cultivate Brand-Culture Fusion
• Brand Authenticity, Employee Experience, and Corporate Citizenship Priorities in The COVID-19 Era and Beyond