Brand Management
Brand management doesn't protect a logo from incorrect uses. It protects the consistency of a promise across dozens of teams that, every day, would interpret it differently if nobody coordinated them.
“A brand manager who spends time policing logo usage is managing the least important part of their job.”
Otto GTM ObservatoryThe cross-functional role, not just aesthetic
As a B2B company grows, every function (sales, customer success, product, marketing) naturally develops its own communication habits. Without active coordination work, the brand perceived by the customer fragments into slightly different versions depending on which team holds the relationship at a given moment.
Effective brand management works cross-functionally across these functions, not limiting itself to producing marketing materials: it means sitting with sales to align proposal language, with product to align in-app message tone, with customer success to align escalation handling.
Anti-patterns
Common mistake: limiting brand management's role to producing and supervising visual assets and marketing materials, without a mandate to work cross-functionally across sales, product, and customer success.
Second mistake: measuring brand management effectiveness by volume of materials produced or formal adherence to guidelines, instead of consistency actually perceived by customers across different touchpoints.
Practical Application
A company gives the brand manager a cross-functional mandate, with monthly sessions with sales, product, and customer success to align language and key messages. Within 9 months, customer-perceived consistency across touchpoints (measured via targeted survey) rises from 47% to 76%, and average response time to a sales request for positioning clarification drops from 3 days to a few hours.