Since we launched The Gap in April, we’ve been making a consistent argument: that brand is a governance question, not a marketing one, and that the boards treating it as the latter are taking a risk they can’t see on any balance sheet. We didn’t expect to find someone arriving at exactly the same conclusion from an entirely different direction. But that’s precisely what Iain Beresford has done.
Iain has spent a significant part of his career at the intersection of governance and professional services. His thinking comes not from brand strategy but from governance reform, and yet he lands in the same place: that governance frameworks, as currently designed, leave one of the most material drivers of long-term value effectively unowned at board level. We’ve published his piece as Chapter Six of The Gap. If you’ve been following this series, you’ll find it both validating and genuinely interesting. If this is your first chapter, it’s a fine place to start!
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In many organisations, particularly professional services firms, brand is discussed frequently but governed rarely. When it is governed, it is often treated as a reputational asset to be protected rather than as a core organisational capability to be overseen.
This creates a material blind spot.
Because when a brand fails, governance has already failed – it just hasn’t been labelled that way.
Two narrow definitions, one significant gap
Most boards still operate with two narrow and disconnected definitions. Brand is typically understood as purpose, positioning, messaging, visual identity, or reputation – something owned by marketing and communications, revisited periodically, or escalated when reputational risk becomes acute. They’re often seen as ‘soft’ concepts, even ethereal.
Governance, meanwhile, is often framed as regulation, controls, risk registers, policies and reporting lines. It becomes a box-ticking exercise designed to prove compliance, to protect against blame rather than drive the firm’s choices. Absolutely necessary, completley auditable and clearly defensible – but limited in strategic scope. It looks impressive on paper, but it rarely shapes real behaviour.
Individually, both definitions are incomplete. Together, they create a gap where boards believe they are overseeing risk and value, while the forces that actually determine trust, growth and long-term enterprise value remain largely unowned.
That gap is where advantage is either compounded quietly or eroded slowly, long before it becomes visible in financial performance.
Brand definition is foundational – but insufficient
Many firms invest significant time and money defining their brand and proposition – understanding their purpose. They articulate who they want to be, what they stand for, and how they wish to be perceived. This work matters. It is fundamental and foundational to any business. Clarity of purpose, positioning, and proposition sets the direction, builds credibility, and shapes how the firm is perceived – guiding decisions, signalling real value to clients, and ensuring the firm is remembered for something distinctive, not interchangeable
But definition is only the starting point.
Brand definition sets the promise, it does not determine whether the organisation is structurally capable of delivering that promise under real operating conditions.
And that distinction is critical.
Brands don’t usually fail for the reasons boards expect
Brand failure is often attributed to poor messaging, inconsistent communications or reputational incidents. In reality, these are symptoms rather than causes. Brands rarely fail because organisations say the wrong things; they fail because they cannot reliably do the right things. Words are easy. Trust is earned in the daily grind of delivering on promises.
When Ratners’ CEO dismissed his own products as “total crap,” the collapse of the brand was immediate – but it only exposed an underlying fragility in quality perception that had long existed. Or take Marks & Spencer in the early 2000s – the “M&S quality” promise was undermined by inconsistent product quality and poor customer experience, leading to years of declining sales.
In both cases, the gap between promise and delivery, not the narrative, was the root cause.
Clients do not experience brand narratives. They experience organisational behaviour: decisions, responsiveness, consistency, and how issues are handled when things go wrong. It is that lived experience, not stated positioning, that drives durable relationships, trust, loyalty and, importantly, revenue. Perception itself is not controllable, at least not sustainably – but it can be influenced by the systems that shape behaviour. They must reflect intent.
A brand promise only has value to the extent that the organisation is structurally capable of delivering it, repeatedly, at scale, and under pressure.
Brand as an outcome of organisational capability
In this sense, organisations do not ultimately control how they are perceived. Clients define the brand through accumulated experience over time. What firms do control is the promise they make, and whether the organisation is designed to keep it. Delivering on a brand promise requires alignment across a set of hard, tangible factors that sit squarely within the board’s remit:
- Leadership behaviour and decision-making
- Culture, incentives and performance management
- Proposition clarity and commercial realism
- Customer experience design
- Operational processes and scalability
- Technology, systems and data
- Partners and third parties
- Risk appetite and discipline
These are not “soft” brand concepts. They are operational realities. When they are aligned, the promise is delivered naturally. Growth becomes more efficient, client lifetime value increases, and trust compounds into enterprise value. When they are not aligned, value leaks quietly at first – through friction, inconsistency and erosion of confidence – before becoming visible through margin pressure, client attrition or reputational damage.
Client insight should be a governance signal, not simply a marketing metric
This is why continuous client insight matters far more than many boards assume. Metrics such as client feedback, NPS, CSAT and real-time experience signals are often relegated to marketing or service teams. In practice, they function as leading indicators of misalignment between promise and delivery. They tell boards whether the organisation is creating value in the way it intends – or whether trust, growth and client satisfaction are being eroded long before issues appear in financial reporting. Sooner or later, they always flow through to the bottom line.
Understanding how they do is fundamental. Unfortunately, marketing often struggles to translate these signals into clear financial impact. They remain as interesting ‘soft’ data, but not governance (or strategic) levers. Ultimately, they leave marketing little formal influence at the board table.
When brand failure is really governance failure
Marketing may help articulate the brand and proposition. But whether the brand is brought to life day after day depends on how the organisation is designed, led, incentivised and governed. When delivery breaks down, it is rarely a marketing problem. It is a governance failure.
The limits of compliance-led governance
Governance frameworks in professional services evolved defensively, largely in response to regulation. Their primary purpose was and remains, protecting clients, the firm, the licence to operate and the jurisdiction. Regulators understandably focus on what can be seen, documented and audited. Over time, “good governance” became synonymous with “no breaches”.
But breach-free does not mean value-protected. And it certainly does not mean trust is being built. Policies and controls do not tell boards whether the business can actually deliver what it claims to stand for. Oversight that stops at compliance but excludes delivery capability leaves one of the most material drivers of long-term value and risk effectively ungoverned.
This is not a criticism of compliance. It is a critique of incomplete governance.
Brand is not soft – and brand promise is not abstract
What is often misunderstood is what ‘brand’ actually represents.
Boards frequently treat brand as something ethereal, a layer of perception or reputatio, rather than as the external manifestation of how well leadership, incentives, proposition design, operations, technology, partners and risk appetite are aligned. The real question is whether the company is truly delivering against its purpose, are its actions consistently reflecting the reason it exists, or is the brand just a story being told.
It’s ironic, then, that “purpose” – the board’s responsibility and the organisation’s why, so often ends up with marketing. While purpose sits at the heart of brand, when it is treated as positioning rather than a governance constraint, it becomes a story to tell rather than a framework for decision-making.
Purpose, which should be sacrosanct – is approved in the boardroom, but if the hard choices and constraints it demands are deferred, it risks becoming just another marketing asset, a narrative that can be ignored, bent or sidelined without consequence. That is not governance. It is marketing masquerading as intent. And it is precisely why brand is a governance issue. Not because it needs protecting during a crisis, but because it reflects the organisation’s underlying capability to deliver sustainable growth, trust and resilience. It goes to the very heart of existence.
Governance does not need to absorb brand – it needs to expand
Brand and the promise it makes sits at the intersection of almost everything – strategy, culture, risk, and operations. Ignoring it does not make it non-governable, it simply leaves one of the most material drivers of long-term value unowned at board level. Brand does not need to be “brought into” governance. Governance needs to be reframed to encompass what brand truly represents. Boards already know that brand matters. The challenge is recognising that it is not a marketing asset, it is the sum of the organisational capabilities that make a promise real. Governing those capabilities with the same discipline applied to regulatory, financial, and operational risk is not optional.
Defining your brand is important. Delivering it consistently is critical. Overseeing that delivery is a board-level responsibility – because this is where governance, trust, and long-term value collide.
Fail at this, and no strategy, no KPI, no plan will save you.