You might think your brand belongs to your business – Ashgrove Marketing’s Terry van Rhyn has some news for you…

There’s a ritual I started back in the 1980s that still shapes the way I think about brand strategy today.

At the time, I was a partner at Smith, Knox & van Rhyn, a full-service advertising agency based in Cape Town. We were a classic, above-the-line agency, working with some of the most iconic liquor brands in the world: Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Baileys Irish Cream, Cinzano, to name just a few.

My role didn’t end at boardroom briefings and creative reviews. I spent countless hours out in the trade, walking the aisles with regional sales managers, standing behind bars with staff, talking to customers in bottle stores, and seeing first-hand how consumers chose, interacted with, and consumed these brands.

It was invaluable. And it taught me a truth that many marketers – even today -still forget: the brand doesn’t belong to the marketing director. It doesn’t belong to the sales team. It certainly doesn’t belong to the ad agency. It belongs to the consumer. Always.

To drive this point home, I’d stage a bit of theatre whenever our clients had a new brand manager join. We’d sit down in the boardroom and I’d place a bottle of their brand right in the middle of the table. With a dramatic pause I’d say “That’s the boss. Right there. The brand. Not you. Not me. Not the owner of the company. We all work for that. And more importantly, we work for the person (consumer) on the other side of the counter deciding whether to choose it… or not.”

This bit of theatre also helped to make the point that we are all on the same side of the table – there to support the brand and make it successful. This helped to avoid a “client vs agency” situation and show both our goals were in alignment.

That bottle became a symbol. A constant reminder that no matter how many strategy documents we wrote or creative campaigns we launched, the real power always sat with the consumer.

Decades later, working with clients across multiple industries, the principle remains the same. Whether it’s a bottle of vodka in a London cocktail bar, a new craft beer launch, a new fintech app, or a fast-moving consumer product, the brand still sits in the middle of the table. We are simply the guardians of it.

That means we have a responsibility to:

• – Listen to the audience (not just boardroom opinions).
• – Ground every campaign in business reality (not wishful thinking).
• – Push back on clients when necessary (because challenging thinking is part of the job).
• – Craft creative communications that connect, resonate, and move people to act (not just win design awards).

Brand strategy without audience insight is just expensive guesswork. Over the years I’ve seen campaigns that looked stunning but achieved nothing. Why? Because they were built on internal assumptions and vanity metrics, rather than on actual audience insight or commercial objectives.

That’s why an agency should not start sketching creative concepts until we understand your business plan, your sales strategy, business development objectives and, most importantly, what your audience cares about and how they buy. Without that foundation, your marketing is just noise.

So, here’s my challenge to every business leader reading this: next time you sit down with your team to discuss your brand, put something tangible – a bottle, a box, a mock-up of your app – in the middle of the table. Look at it and ask yourselves three things:

1. 1. “What does the customer want from this?”
2. 2. “Why should they choose us?”
3. 3. “What’s stopping them from buying?”

Because until you answer those questions, no marketing agency – no matter how creative – can deliver the results you’re hoping for.