// Creative Leadership

A brand’s true value doesn’t come from spreadsheets or boardrooms. It’s shaped by creative forces – the people who give it form, meaning, and cultural weight. Without that, even the biggest companies end up hollow.

Too often, “brand” is owned by marketing or comms. Design, if it has a seat, is usually locked in its own bubble, obsessed with products. Rarely does anyone take responsibility for the whole picture – the idea, the expression, the culture, the experience. In most industries, the role of Creative Director simply doesn’t exist in any real sense.

Take the car industry. Despite its size, budgets, and global ambition, it has fallen badly behind on creativity. It’s an engineering-driven business. Obsessed with specs and performance. Billions get poured into launches and campaigns, but when it comes to brand-building there are only a handful of people across the entire industry who can actually pull it off.

Car designers? They live and breathe cars. Many are brilliant. But carrying a whole brand? Forget it. Most barely care about logos, typography, or cultural relevance. Marketers and agencies? Just as narrow, only in the opposite direction. None of them hold the entire picture. And yet, if you want a brand that reaches the symbolic or even intimate level, this role – real creative leadership – is as critical as the CEO.

Creative leadership isn’t decoration. It’s not about picking colors or polishing taglines. It’s about vision. It’s about someone who understands the core of the business idea and can translate it into expressions that work across every touchpoint – product, design, communication, culture.

Without that, the brand drifts. It becomes a collection of campaigns and decks. A patchwork that doesn’t add up to anything. And when companies are run only by men in suits with nice titles, the result is predictable: brands that function, but never inspire.

And in today’s world, inspiration is not optional, it’s survival.