Leaders Inspiring Leaders: Paul Bailey, Founder of Brand in Process

With over 25 years experience working with global businesses to fast-growth startups, across various industries and territories, with diverse target audiences and business objectives, Paul helps better connect your business to your people, through your brand.

What is one timeless leadership lesson modern brands can learn from legacy brands that have stayed relevant across decades?

A brand is a work in process that we mistakenly think is finished.

A brand is always in evolution. But the strongest legacy brands have always known this. Look at brands like Nike, and I mean really look at them, and you will see two things. On one hand there is a thread through them that remains relatively stable – for Nike this is their connection to sport. But on the other hand, there is a constant evolution of what the brand means to people. From its early days as a brand for serious runners, to its move into other sports (such as basketball with Air Jordan, football, etc). From its early days as a brand for athletes, to its move to embrace everyone that wants to get more active. 

Brands are shaped by two things – their own history and the context within which it currently exists. As the landscape around a brand changes, whether that is changing audience preferences and behaviors, changing competitors’ activities and offerings, or changing market forces. In order to stay ahead of your context, you need to keep on moving the brand forwards.

Nike has always acknowledged the need to evolve, whilst having a thread that connects its own past. Because this is evolution – the gradual development of something. 

How those brands that have stayed relevant across decades is through constant evolution.

What philosophy or mindset has shaped you most as a leader, and how does it influence your brand-building decisions?

Servant leadership is how I strive to work.

I have a belief when I either hire or manage anybody, that people should leave my leadership a better professional than when they started. It really is that simple.

I have worked in the creative industries for over 26 years. Both founding my own agency as well as working in other agencies and being involved with the wider industry. I have seen instances and agencies in which people are treated like a cog in a machine. People are fed into the machine, worked until they are burnt out, and then ejected and replaced by newer, younger, cheaper replacements. This is just plain wrong and is actually a race to the bottom.

Servant leadership is a philosophy where the leader prioritizes serving the needs of their team and community first, focusing on empowering individuals and fostering their growth. It seeks to replace the traditional hierarchy to support people from the bottom up. 

But don’t think I’m completely selfless. I don’t just do this for other people's benefit, but also for my own. I believe that if I am helping people be healthier, wiser, and more autonomous, then this will lead to an increase in commitment and performance. Servant leadership should lead to everybody winning.

And ultimately, isn’t this the point of brand – to help a business or organization to win better?

In your experience, what role does internal culture play in building a resilient brand, and how do you cultivate it at the executive level?

If you believe a brand is shaped by people’s experience, then shaping an authentic internal culture is key.

Brand used to be what the associated business said it was. Now a brand is what people will agree it is. And in order to create the best opportunity of creating a shared meaning around a brand, then people's experiences of a brand have to be at its core. And at the center of the experience is the internal people. 

This is true in both B2C (customer service agents, retail sales associates, guest services, social media executives, etc) and B2B (account managers, customer success managers, client service representatives, business development representatives, etc). 

The experience of a brand is via an internal person. And by setting out what the brand means, in a way that these people can understand and then ‘bring to life’, is amazingly important for shaping brands today.'s very different from wandering.