How Smart CEOs Turn Brand into a Real Business Asset with David Aaker

Most CEOs are bleeding value because they still treat brand like decoration — something you refresh every few years instead of a core driver of strategy and growth.

That’s why I invited David Aaker, Vice Chairman at Prophet, Professor Emeritus at Berkeley Haas, and often called the father of modern branding, to The World-Class Leaders Show.

Across nine branding books and decades of work, he’s seen one big pattern:

And if you’re not careful, it quietly destroys both your profits and your brand.

From awareness to relevance: Aaker’s 5 Bs

When David updated Aaker on Branding, he realised leaders were still stuck in an old view of brand — logos, campaigns, awareness.

So he reframed it:

He talks about five lenses every CEO should use:

• Brand equity – treating brand as an asset you invest in, leverage, and protect.
• Brand relevance – being not just known, but chosen in the moments that matter.
• Brand image – going beyond features to emotional, social, and self-expressive benefits.
• Brand loyalty – earning the right for brand to influence the whole business, not just marketing.
• Brand portfolio – designing a team of brands: master brand, sub-brands, energizers, differentiators, proofs of credibility.

As David puts it:

Most CEOs still lead as if they have one logo and one message. The best now design a system of brands that supports strategy.

Branding vs marketing — and why CEOs should care

I asked David about the confusion between branding and marketing. His answer was clear:

That’s the CEO point:

• If you reduce marketing to short-term tactics, you strip out its strategic power.
• Brand is what turns scattered activities into a coherent, compounding asset.

Which is why David warns about leaving performance marketing unchecked:

If demand-gen is optimising for clicks while eroding trust, relevance, and differentiation, you’re trading tomorrow for today.

The missing link in disruptive innovation

We talk a lot about disruptive innovation — but almost none of the classic books seriously address brand. David sees that as a huge blind spot.

In practice, brand has four jobs in disruption:

1. Position the new game – explain the new category in clear, compelling terms (like Salesforce did for cloud software).
2. Be the exemplar – act as thought leader and passionate advocate for the application, not just the product.
3. Scale fast – use pricing, stories, and brand codes to build adoption before competitors catch up.
4. Build barriers – keep innovating, brand your “secret sauce,” and make your offer a moving target.

If you’re investing in innovation without an equally sharp brand strategy, you’re leaving growth and margins on the table.

Earning attention in a noisy, skeptical world

Your customers are overwhelmed and cynical. Shouting louder doesn’t work.

David suggests three smarter plays:

1. “You really need some sort of a cognitive anchor, and the brand provides a cognitive anchor. But it also helps to have a tagline and a visual symbol, a meaningful tagline.” That’s why “The Ultimate Driving Machine” still works — it encodes a whole emotional experience into a simple phrase.
2. Use intriguing content, not just claims​
   Think Dove’s “Real Beauty” work. They didn’t talk about soap — they attacked toxic beauty standards with bold, emotionally charged experiments that people wanted to share.
3. Engage, don’t just broadcast​
   David points to events, sponsorships, and communities — from Schneider Electric’s sustainability contests to Salesforce’s Trailblazers — as “the ultimate brand building experience,” far more powerful than another five-bullet-point ad.

What CEOs should do now

I asked David what a CEO should do if they realise their brand has been treated as “just marketing” so far. His advice was blunt and practical:

And then:

So if you’re a CEO, start here:

1. Name what truly sets you apart — then brand it. Don’t let your “secret sauce” sit as a slide in a deck. Give it a name, a story, and a place in your portfolio.
2. Build your team of brands. Turn key programs, innovations, and proof points into branded energizers and differentiators.
3. Protect the asset. Make someone explicitly accountable for ensuring short-term activity never erodes long-term brand equity.

Because in a world of disruption, noise, and pressure, your brand is no longer a decoration.

It’s one of the few assets that can still move markets.

🎧 If you’re a CEO — or plan to become one — don’t miss this episode.

👉 Watch the full episode here​

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