The new rules of brand building, with Wieden+Kennedy CEO

Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neil Arthur argues that brand building has become a CEO's job rather than just a CMO's job because CEOs control the vast majority of consumer touch points, including in-store experience, customer service calls, and hold music, while advertising now represents only a small portion of how a brand manifests itself across digital media, influencers, and social platforms.

Arthur traces this shift to the rise of social media, which placed brand content directly alongside posts from close personal contacts, raising consumer expectations of brands to match those of family members or friends. Companies did not choose this shift and it happened without their awareness or consent, but the implications for how brands must behave are now unavoidable.

The prevailing mood Arthur observes among CEOs and leadership teams is pragmatism focused on solving immediate problems quickly. Many clients are trying to figure out how to show up in a way that feels value-forward and aware of consumers' financial situations given high prices in consumer goods. Conversations have shifted away from brand ideology and politics toward the practical nature of brands, and there is significant fear around standing for certain value sets because of well-publicized missteps, though Arthur is not saying brands should not stand for something.

Arthur draws a firm distinction between brand, marketing, and advertising. He calls brand the most important thing and describes marketing and advertising as smaller subsets that execute against a brand idea. Attention without connection to what a brand stands for and what makes it distinctive means nothing, and making more content in the absence of real intention can make brand problems worse rather than better. He also says a marketing calendar no longer has meaningful value in the current environment. Bob Safian adds that a brand story is not derivative of business strategy but instead helps define that strategy, and that businesses without a clear brand story rarely have a cohesive and lasting strategic direction.

Arthur points to Nike's Knicks campaign, directed by Josh Safdie and set to Billy Joel's New York State of Mind, as an example of the authenticity principle Nike applies. Safdie was chosen because he is a lifelong Knicks fan. Arthur also notes that Nike never focuses on what competitors like Adidas are doing when preparing campaigns, because allowing competitor activity to drive decisions lets other people position your brand. For a World Cup campaign, Arthur describes a strategic shift away from making one thing and hoping for broad reach toward starting small fires in multiple communities and feeding them continually throughout the event, with specific communities including Holland fans, Mbappe fans, and soccer moms.

W+K is deliberately repositioning itself away from the identity of a traditional ad agency toward a broader creative and strategic partner role. Arthur says the firm has evolved from making 30-second ads to working across the entire business, and that clients often arrive wanting to be someone they are not, with W+K redirecting them toward who they actually are.

On AI, Arthur says W+K fully embraces it and uses it to scale creativity by producing more iterations more quickly and more cheaply. He draws a firm distinction, however, stating that AI gravitates toward the norm because it is a large language model while W+K's creative work is always about exceptions and going against the grain. The firm has committed to never using AI to replace something a human could do and has never cited AI adoption as a reason to cut a specific number of jobs. Arthur acknowledges his current confidence about AI not threatening human creativity could look wrong in five years.