Written by Lee Selsick, Director of Strategy & Design
Lee Selsick is a renowned expert in design driven business growth. He is the founder of Next Brand, a Melbourne-based design consultancy, and a thought-leader in leveraging design as a driver of profitability.
Great brands create great businesses, not the other way around. Brand is the driver, not the result. I have spent over 30 years helping businesses shape their futures, and one thing stands out: companies that approach us with a high level of ambition for their brand are typically more successful than those that don’t.
Why is ambition so important?
Simply put, branding is the source of success, not merely a reflection of it. This should not come as a surprise; it is clearly no coincidence that the one thing every great business in the world has in common is a great brand. Yet branding and the use of design still remain an afterthought to many. It is often seen as a "regrettable" expense they would rather not have.
This attitude is driven by a simple lack of understanding about how brands define the businesses that own them, underpin the entirety of an organization’s activities, and how valuable they can be. Indeed, I have seen even quite experienced marketing experts define branding as a subset of marketing rather than the other way around.
Three ways ambition will drive your growth
Brands influence organizations in a multitude of ways. However, we find that these can be simplified into three distinct areas.
1. Creating efficiencies
One of the roles corporate branding performs is creating coherence in an organization. It clearly defines the role each component part plays in the bigger picture and how these relate to one another.
An example of this is General Electric, which restructured its branding to focus on its core areas (e.g., energy, aviation, healthcare), shedding unrelated divisions. This clarified the company’s direction, strengthened its brand promise, and improved internal coherence across its global teams.
Similarly, IKEA’s branding extends to its organizational structure, with every component, from product design to supply chain, interlinked under its ethos of affordability and sustainability. This coherence optimizes logistics and creates significant efficiencies in production and transportation.
Human-centered design also improves organizational efficiency by enhancing information flow, focusing activity on what matters most, and streamlining communication between the business’s working parts.
2. Forging valuable relationships
Beyond efficiency, we see enormous benefits in the business’s human relationships. For example, strong brands recruit better talent, retain staff longer, are more likely to raise capital from investors, and generate greater loyalty from customers or clients. They are even more likely to attract higher-quality suppliers and negotiate better prices. Strong brands also align stakeholders behind common values and ambitions.
3. Generating more revenue
Strong brands drive revenue in numerous ways. They can innovate and stretch into new product categories more easily, cross geographic boundaries, command better margins, and grow market share.
Commitment to brand and design results in the financial equivalent of the "holy trinity": lowering costs, aligning stakeholders behind a vision, and generating more revenue. Surely, this is a recipe for success.
So, where does ambition come in?
When clients approach us with the ambition to build great brands, we immediately recognize that underlying this is the ambition to build a great business.
Businesses that aim to create great brands achieve more because they set goals that push them beyond immediate horizons. They don’t settle for mediocrity; they strive for greatness.
This ambition translates into future-oriented, resilient business models. These businesses are more likely to innovate, adapt to market changes, lead their industries, and see branding as a way to enable this forward-thinking approach.
Often, these businesses don’t just seek improvement; they aim to revolutionize their fields or redefine their categories. As a result, they use their brands to drive leadership and innovation, becoming synonymous with these qualities.
Ambition gives brands their purpose. Without it, companies risk getting lost. Ambitious brands stand for something larger, with a bold brand vision that drives them forward. This sense of purpose is crucial in achieving a brand’s business goals.
Innovation as a product of ambition
Ambitious brands inherently foster a mindset of innovation. This drive leads to groundbreaking products, services, and experiences that differentiate them from competitors. Ambition fuels the desire to find new solutions, explore untapped markets, and create offerings that resonate with evolving customer needs.
Resilience through collective ambition
Ambitious brands are more resilient because their vision is shared across the entire organization, not just confined to leadership. When teams embrace a shared sense of ambition, they work collaboratively toward common goals. This creates a culture of accountability, creativity, and innovation. Collective ambition enables businesses to overcome challenges, navigate difficult markets, and adapt quickly to change.
Ambition is the driver
At Next Brand, we’ve seen how ambitious thinking drives everything: innovation, resilience, collaboration, and long-term success. By embedding ambition into your brand’s DNA, you not only demonstrate your vision for success but also build a foundation for future growth and leadership.
We are positioned as a business that shares the ambition of our clients and helps make their vision tangible through design.
Let us help you discover the power of embedding ambition into your brand’s DNA to take your business to the next level.
Read more from Lee Selsick
Lee Selsick, Director of Strategy & Design
Lee Selsick is a renowned expert in brand strategy and design-driven business growth. He is the founder of Next Brand, a Melbourne-based design consultancy, and a thought leader in leveraging design as a critical driver of profit and sustainability. With over two decades of experience, Lee helps ambitious brands unlock their potential through innovative strategies and creative solutions.
