Why brand value belongs in the boardroom

To address the fundamental change in how modern value is generated, Red & Yellow Creative School of Business developed Brand as Capital, a new Executive Education programme designed for senior leaders. The programme is built on a critical premise. As brands increasingly dictate business outcomes, they can no longer be treated as something the marketing department communicates only after the business has made its operational decisions.

Brand needs to be considered while those decisions are being made.

This urgency is supported by Kantar’s 2026 BrandZ Top 30 Most Valuable South African Brands report, which puts the collective value of those top brands at R724.6 billion, 47% higher than in 2024. It also found that three-quarters of those brands are seen by consumers as highly “Meaningfully Different,” allowing them to grow twice as fast as the rest.

“Brand fundamentally belongs in the boardroom because that is where the numbers show up,” explains Nadia Ellis, Manager of Curricula and Research and Head of Programme Design at Red & Yellow. “It affects whether customers choose you in the first place, whether they stay with you, whether they recommend you, and whether they will pay a little bit more rather than switch to a competitor for a small saving. More importantly, when something goes wrong, your brand value dictates how much benefit of the doubt you’re going to get and how quickly your business can recover.”

Yet, despite this measurable financial impact, the decisions that most heavily influence brand value are often made far away from marketing. They sit in a pricing review, a customer-service policy, a procurement decision, or a product redesign.

Ellis points out that a major part of this disconnect is a structural one. “In many organisations, we often operate in rigid silos. Every department takes accountability for their own specific slice of the pie, and the holistic picture of the brand is not really taken into account. Small operational decisions aren’t always considered in light of the brand consequence they can have.”

Because of this siloed approach, the brand is frequently treated solely as a marketing issue. But by doing that, executives are essentially making the marketing department responsible for an outcome it does not holistically control.

“A company can spend millions on a glossy advertising campaign that says it puts the customer first,” Ellis illustrates. “But if you experience a problem, spend 40 minutes on hold, and get passed between three different departments having to re-explain your issue from the beginning each time, and that is actually the brand you remember. In that moment, the call centre staffing decision, the CRM systems investments, and the decision about who is actually allowed to fix your problem - those are the brand.”

When evaluating successful brands in the South African market, it becomes clear that value is built into the business model itself. For instance, a brand offering low-cost services to a highly specific target market can still build immense brand equity. Not through flashy messaging, but by ensuring their operational decisions (like keeping physical branches open on weekends for working individuals) clearly align with their target audience's needs and aspirations.

In a highly cost-conscious market and a very difficult economy, it is easy for directors to become laser-focused on short-term profit and shareholder demands. However, Ellis cautions against letting these immediate pressures derail long-term brand equity.

“It is a very difficult economy, but our most valuable brands still grew by nearly 50% in a two-year space,” she notes. “That long-term goal must remain a priority, and short-term obstacles shouldn't stand in the way of that. If you are playing the long game, that is where you are going to see your value and that is where you are going to see your growth.”

Leadership teams therefore need to look much further than their immediate, short-term departmental targets. Executives must ask themselves: Does a decision reinforce the core promise the business makes? What trade-offs will our stakeholders actually notice? Will this operational cut protect our preference and pricing power, or will it create hidden costs that are later paid through lost customer loyalty and prolonged reputational repair?

This is a compelling argument for brand consequence to have a permanent place alongside financial, legal, operational, and people risk in the boardroom. The businesses best placed to build lasting, profitable value are those that recognise that customers do not experience an organisational chart. They experience the cumulative effect of what the business does every single day.

Red & Yellow’s Brand as Capital programme gives C-suite executives, senior functional leaders, entrepreneurs, board members, and high-potential executives a structured way to step out of their silos. It trains leaders to have a holistic view at an executive level, examining the undeniable links between brand value, risk, competitive advantage, resilience, and governance within their own operations.

When brand is brought into the executive decision-making process early enough, it becomes far more than a communication output. It becomes a rigorous form of commercial discipline: one that helps leaders identify exactly where value is being created, where it is dangerously exposed, and what needs to change before the cost of repair becomes far greater than the cost of good, holistic judgement.

Nadia Ellis is the Manager of Curricula and Research and Head of Programme Design at Red & Yellow Creative School of Business. She leads the design of its Brand as Capital Executive Education programme. DM