Who Owns Your Brand?

June 10th, 2014 | Tony Altilia, Partner, Maxim Partners Inc.

Do your customers own your brand?

Not really, but they are increasingly more empowered to influence its destiny.

Do your shareholders own your brand?

Not really, but they can surely influence its value and market capitalization.

Do your agency partners own your brand?

No. They never did, but they certainly influence its success.

As a marketer, you may not personally own your brand but you and you alone must assume sole responsibility for its stewardship and success.

More than ever, clients must take 100 percent ownership of their brands. Sure, once upon a time, they could partner with a major agency that would help steward the brand. I started my career as a client. Our agency was Ogilvy and Mather. They helped us with everything from consumer research, package design, sales promotion, media buying and planning and of course advertising.

It truly was a one-stop shop. But soon we began to use specialty shops. Our contests were run by sales promotion agencies, package design companies created our packaging and our consumer research was done directly with market research firms.

Over time another contact point was added as advertising agencies split off their media departments to create stand-alone media companies. I’ll never understand this one.

So rather than one agency partner helping champion their brand, clients now have a stable of agencies to contend with.

Growing fragmentation, media options and social media platforms continually adds more agency contacts to the mix.

What’s a client to do?

More than ever, you must take sole responsibility for the brand.
More than ever, you must champion the brand.
More than ever, you must act as the brand band leader, ensuring all their agency partners are playing from the same sheet music.
More than ever, you must recruit, train and retain brand passionate marketers.
More than ever, you must embrace the fact that big ideas can come from anywhere.
More than ever, you must hire best-of-class agencies. This does not preclude hiring an agency for doing more than one thing, but very few can do a great job at everything.

Look at what Mondelez is doing. According to a recent Advertising Age article they are testing a multi-agency approach called ‘Project Sprout”. Mondelez works with multiple agencies with very small teams and accelerated timelines, putting an emphasis on linking advertising to short term sales results. The process involves testing in small markets to determine success on a global scale, eliminating time-consuming processes like data-gathering and product positioning testing, allowing marketers to be more agile and responsive. This will potentially replace AOR relationships.

So if you’re a marketer, own the brand. Really own it. Don’t just pay lip service to it. Make sure you’re a professional brand band leader, choose the best musicians, pick up the baton and start playing.


Tony Altilia
Tony Altilia is a partner in Maxim Partners Inc. a Canadian Boutique Brand Consultancy and is a former President of DDB Canada. He is also authour of the book I Wish Someone Had Told Me That. Follow Tony on twitter @tony2altilia.