What Makes a Brand Last
The Actual Intelligence series surfaces themes emerging from The Wisory’s exclusive Wise in Five Advisor conversations. Across our conversations with Advisors, common threads appear— patterns that only emerge when you have access to a collective of high-level, highly experienced executives speaking candidly in one place. Three Advisors. One theme. Here is what they shared.
Go Back Before You Go Forward
Few marketers have sat on both sides of the brand table the way Fred Ehle has. He spent the first half of his career leading CPG businesses at legendary agencies including FCB, Leo Burnett, and DDB, before working on the client side as the first Chief Customer Officer for McDonald’s U.S., head of brand management at Pulte Group, and most recently head of purchase marketing at Rocket Mortgage.
In his Wise in Five conversation, Fred was direct about the pattern he keeps seeing when brands lose their footing. It rarely starts with a bad product. It starts with a loss of focus.
According to Fred: “Where brands oftentimes go off the rails or where the business starts to fall apart is when the brand f loses its original premise and promise. What did it come into being for and why? And are they delivering on that sort of core original premise and promise?”
From Fred’s experience, the distraction is almost always a shiny object. A new category, a new audience, a new format — something that seems like growth but pulls the brand away from the reason it earned trust in the first place. As Fred states: “If you’re not delivering on your core business promise, you’re not going to get licensed to do anything else for the marketplace.”
His example is McDonald’s. The turnaround wasn’t very complicated. It was a return: go back to what you do well, re-engage with your core customers and brand promise, and find a contemporary expression of who you already are. “It really is a contemporization of who and what they are and their essence.” The brand didn’t need to become something new. It just needed to become itself again, more clearly.
Watch Fred’s full Wise in Five conversation here
Know What Business You’re Actually In
Larry Weber has spent more than four decades helping the world’s most consequential technology companies tell their stories. As founder of Weber Shandwick, the largest PR firm in the world, and founder of RacePoint Global, Larry has worked alongside Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Tim Berners-Lee — and spent his career translating complex innovation into narratives that move markets.
In his Wise in Five conversation, Larry described one of the most persistent mistakes he sees brands make: believing they know what business they’re in when they don’t. One example of this that Larry shared is John Deere.
For years, Larry continued to question and challenge the business they were truly in. According to Larry, John Deere wasn’t in the tractor business. They were in the business of helping farmers achieve better yields in a sustainable way. A much higher level purpose. And those insights changed how they could tell their story, how they could compete and how they would win.
The broader pattern Larry identifies is that the brands built to last are the ones that understand what they contribute on an emotional level–not just what they manufacture. As Larry states: “The best marketing is just pulling back the curtain and telling that story.” Not creating a false narrative. But showing the higher level truth that the company actually contributes to its customers and to the world.
He is equally clear about what kills brands: leading with the invention rather than the impact. “Every innovator thinks that they have come up with a brand new revolutionary idea. And that’s usually 99% not true.” The brands that endure are the ones who understand they are building on what came before — and can articulate clearly what they have added and why it matters.
Watch Larry’s full Wise in Five conversation here
Act Like a Challenger, No Matter Who You Are
Melanie Batchelor is a seasoned brand and general management executive who has built and scaled some of the most recognizable names in the global beverage industry. With twelve years at PepsiCo across Australia, Southeast Asia, and New York, followed by fourteen years at Campari Group — where she rose to President and CEO of the Americas — Melanie has led brands through market entries, portfolio decisions, and the kind of category-defining bets that define careers.
In her Wise in Five conversation, Melanie described the mindset she instilled in every marketing team she has led, regardless of the size of their budget or the scale of their brand.
According to Melanie: “No matter how big or small you are, you need to act like a challenger because even if you’re big within a category, you’re small within the context of brands that consumers are exposed to every day.”
The challenger mindset, as she defines it, is a practice she built deliberately across her marketing teams. She brought in an agency known for their work on challenger brand strategy, specifically to instill that mindset across her organization. The exercises were hands-on: walking in the consumer’s shoes, spending time observing where consumers actually were, and refusing to treat a smaller budget as an excuse for a smaller brand. As Melanie states: “Acting like a challenger, no matter how big you get, is something that I think is absolutely critical as a marketer.”
Watch Melanie’s full Wise in Five conversation here
The Bottom Line
Fred, Larry, and Melanie have built and grown brands across industries that couldn’t look more different from each other. But the same thread runs through all three perspectives. The brands that last are the ones that know their original promise and keep delivering on it. They understand and promote the business they are actually in — and what is core to their customer. And they fight for consumer attention with the urgency of a challenger, regardless of how established they are
None of those capabilities are truly innate. But all of them are learnable. And the leaders who develop them — with the right frameworks, the right discipline, and the right advisors alongside them — are the ones that are building brands that will endure for decades.
Wisory members get 1:1 access to executives like Fred, Larry and Melanie — at the moment a decision matters most, not after it’s already been made. Explore membership at thewisory.com
Fred Ehle is a Wisory Advisor and the former Chief Customer Officer for McDonald’s U.S. business, with additional marketing leadership roles at Rocket Mortgage, Pulte Group, and Redbox, and deep agency experience at FCB, Leo Burnett, and DDB. Fred advises companies on brand strategy, go-to-market alignment, and brand turnarounds.
Larry Weber is a Wisory Advisor, Global Chairman of Racepoint Global and the founder of Weber Shandwick, the world’s largest PR firm. Larry is the author of seven books including A New Age of Reason and has worked with some of the most recognized technology innovators of the last four decades. He advises companies on brand narrative, earned media strategy, and technology storytelling.
Melanie Batchelor is a Wisory Advisor and President & Managing Director at William Grant & Sons USA. She also served as former President and CEO of Campari Group Americas, where she led the U.S. and Canadian businesses and oversaw the growth of Aperol Spritz in North America. With twelve years at PepsiCo and fourteen at Campari across global markets, Melanie advises companies on brand strategy, international expansion, and the transition from marketing leadership into general management.
Fred, Larry, and Melanie are available for 1:1 advisory sessions through The Wisory. Members get direct access to executives like these, on the specific challenge, at the moment it matters. Learn more and book time at thewisory.com
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