During my career I have sat in local, regional and latterly in a Global team. The discussion on who owns the brand has been around for a long time and I see most businesses swing across the Global to Local pendulum regularly – in search of the sweetspot.

In search of efficiency companies have sought to drive scale with ‘Global’ brands with positioning, strategy, innovation pipeline and creative sat centrally.

A few thoughts on the sweetspot :- Always start by immersing yourselves in the consumer to understand the universe you operate in and what their needs/desires are (and where your brand could/should be the solution). I don’t believe this can be done at a Global,or even regional level but has to come from local market level up – they have to be obsessed with their consumers.

Brand positionings/diamonds/onions (whatever you call them) can be developed Globally but should come from bubbling up these local identified needs and make sure it is a meaningful universal human truth the brand can tap into and, importantly, that you have not watered it down in an effort to make it travel wider geographically. It has to really resonate in the key markets where you want the brand to be present and grow.

I believe brand strategy has to be developed at a local level to think holistically about all levers of growth. That’s not to say that there won’t be common jobs to be done which could/should be delivered centrally for efficiency and scale. There is a skill required in larger organisations to look for synergies but also ensure you recognise the important differences to win locally – in my experience this vital step is never done very well and leads to ongoing issues with who is delivering what/against what JTBD/for which markets/by when.

The agreed/prioritised jobs to be done must inform the development of a Regional/Global innovation pipeline but it should be built bottom up- not top down!

The same can be said for creative. Businesses should be recognising that we need to evolve in order to engage with consumers and be a part of culture. This should lead to more local creative development/amplification of the higher level agreed big brand idea. We need agility in communications more than ever and to make that work in large organisation it has to be local.

So – surprise, surprise – there is no ideal sweetspot on the pendulum. Setting up marketing teams in businesses assuming all areas of brand building should be managed/owned at the same level is not going to work – businesses need to flex the org design – still in search of synergies, scale and efficiencies but don’t sacrifice effectiveness and winning locally to do that.

And ultimately who owns the brand? Well we would be foolish if we think we do – we are babysitting/nurturing it and if we don’t understand our consumer and earn their decisions to purchase us it really doesn’t matter at which level in the business the strategy or creative is developed.