EY-Parthenon reposted this
Strategy Partner @ EY-Parthenon. Exp. McCann, Ogilvy, featured BBC 6 Music songwriter and musician, genome scientist, sports fan, former amateur footballer, now golfer
We’re launching our new report on brand this week, which brings together two years of research we've been presenting at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity / WARC. Along the way, some recurring patterns stood out: - Brand is often one of the most valuable corporate assets, yet one of the least understood - Most businesses prepare for reputational crises (which they must, given how brands are increasingly the focal point in our polarised societies), but far fewer recognise the silent killer of under-investment - Creativity is often treated as a risk to be minimised but arguably, withdrawing from it is the bigger risk - Brand behaves less like chemistry (predictable cause-and-effect) and more like biology...a living system that connects across the business In 2024, our work focused on the commercial case: how to translate brand into the language of CEOs and CFOs. We built a framework that showed how brand drives value across the major business levers — not just marketing levers, but organisational and shareholder ones too. It was about creating a strong strategic and commercial narrative to the C-suite on how brand drives corporate strategy and performance. In 2025, we shifted focus to risk. We surveyed executives and analysed 20 years of Fortune 500 filings. Almost every leader said they consider brand risk, but the reporting told another story: most only capture event-based risks such as crises or reputational fallout. What is rarely recognised is the slower, systemic threat: the “silent killer” of under-investment, where brand loses relevance and pricing power over time. Just like other business assets, it does not self-heal once neglected. Too often, creativity is seen as a risk to avoid. Something that might trigger an incident. But our research suggests there is another, equally important risk that receives far less attention: what happens when businesses hold back from creativity. When businesses play it too safe, brand value erodes, leaving them less resilient when real crises come. Taken together, it is why I mentioned at Cannes that I believe brand behaves less like chemistry (linear cause-and-effect) and more like biology — an interconnected, adaptive system that touches every part of the business. When it is siloed as “just marketing,” its real role as an organising idea gets lost. In the EY-Parthenon Brand Value & Strategy Practice, this is the kind of work we do every day with clients: helping them see brand as both a strategic asset to invest in and a risk to manage at the highest levels. And as the geopolitical and economic pressures facing businesses intensify, protecting and managing brand risk will only become more critical to resilience and long-term growth. Balancing the risk between protecting and growing a brand feels harder than ever. We have deep dives into each of these subjects. Let Henry Barker-Adam and me know if you would like to hear more. #EYParthenon #brandrisk #brandvalue #geopolitics