The brand and growth review checklist: the questions a CMO and a board should be able to answer

Eight areas where a marketing mandate is tested — by the CFO, by the board and by the bad week — stated as the questions a chief marketing officer and a board should be able to answer about growth sources, customer evidence, the treaty, brand value and risk, positioning, the operating model and the one-page report.

In short

Marketing mandates are rarely found wanting in one decisive way. They drift: growth sources go unstated, evidence gives way to opinion, the brand is never valued, and the board pack grows while the seat shrinks.
The eight areas below are where the mandate is most consistently tested. Each is stated as questions; a hesitation on any of them is the finding.
The treaty area is the most diagnostic, because every other area is argued from it: without signed measures, growth, brand and operating-model claims are opinions with a budget attached.
The bad-week area is the one most often blank, and it is the one a board will remember.
Run the checklist with the CFO in the room. A mandate the CFO has reviewed is a mandate the board will fund.

On this page

1. Where growth comes from
2. Customer evidence
3. The treaty with the CFO
4. Brand value and brand risk
5. Reputation in the bad week
6. Positioning as investment
7. The operating model — agencies, in-house, AI
8. The one-page report
How to use it

Marketing mandates are rarely found wanting in one decisive way. They drift. The sources of growth the function is accountable for go unstated, so nothing can be missed; customer evidence gives way to opinion because opinion is faster; the brand is never valued, so the bad week finds a blank; and the board pack grows every quarter while the seat’s standing shrinks. By the time the mandate is questioned, the question is not about any one of these but about whether the seat is necessary at all.

The eight areas below are where the mandate is most consistently tested — by the CFO at the budget round, by the board when it reads the pack, and by the bad week when it arrives. Each is stated as the questions a chief marketing officer and a board should be able to answer. A confident answer is not required to be a comfortable one. A hesitation is the finding.

1. Where growth comes from#

Can the CMO name the institution’s sources of growth in portfolio, pricing and channel terms, and does the plan name the same ones?
For each source, is there a stated expectation of what it will deliver, and over what horizon?
Which source is the institution actually relying on, and is that the one receiving the investment?
What would have to be true for the growth expectation to be wrong, and who is watching for it?
When a source stopped delivering, how quickly did the institution find out, and what changed?

2. Customer evidence#

For the current growth expectations, what customer evidence exists, and would the board trust it if it saw how it was gathered?
Where has opinion substituted for evidence because evidence was slower, and what decision rested on it?
Who owns the research the board relies on, and is that person independent of the decisions it supports?
When customer evidence contradicted a preferred decision, what happened?

3. The treaty with the CFO#

Is there a small set of metrics both the CMO and the CFO have signed, connecting marketing investment to outcomes the plan recognises?
Can the finance function reproduce each metric’s derivation without asking marketing?
Is the horizon for each metric written down, and is brand investment judged on a different horizon from promotion?
When was the treaty last revisited, and are its named sources still where the institution is looking for growth?
Has any metric ever been missed? If never, what does it constrain?

4. Brand value and brand risk#

Has the brand been valued, however roughly, and does the board know the figure and its basis?
Are the risks to the brand mapped, owned and reviewed in the same forum as the institution’s other material risks?
Does the officer responsible for the brand sit in the room where risk is discussed?
What decision in the last year was changed because of brand risk, and who raised it?

5. Reputation in the bad week#

If the institution’s worst week arrived tomorrow, is there a document that says what marketing does, in what order, and who decides?
Who speaks for the brand under pressure, and has that person rehearsed it?
What does the institution stop doing in the bad week — campaigns, launches, pricing moves — and who has the authority to stop it?
After the last difficult episode, what did the brand cost, and what changed as a result?

6. Positioning as investment#

Was the last positioning decision put to the executive committee as an investment decision, with a cost, an expected return and a horizon?
What alternative uses of that capital were considered, and why did positioning win?
Who owns the decision now, and how will the institution know whether it worked?
Can the CMO say what the institution has chosen not to be, and does the board agree?

7. The operating model — agencies, in-house, AI#

Is the split between agencies, in-house teams and AI a decision that was made, or a state that was inherited?
Can the cost of the function be argued from that decision — what each part costs, what it controls, what it is for?
Where AI has been given work, who owns the outcome, and what does the institution still insist a person does?
What would the function stop doing if the budget fell, and has that been decided in advance?

8. The one-page report#

Does the board receive one page from marketing, and does it show growth sources against the treaty, brand value and risk, and the decisions asked of the board?
Which measures in the current pack are activity measures that belong inside the function?
Has the pack grown over the last year, and if so, what did the board ask for that caused it?
Could a director explain, from the page alone, what marketing is for in this institution?

How to use it#

Run the checklist with the CFO in the room. A mandate the CFO has reviewed is a mandate the board will fund. Start with the treaty area, because every other area is argued from it, and do not skip the bad-week area because it is uncomfortable — it is the one the board will remember. Record the hesitations rather than the answers; they are the work. The CMO Agenda in The Helm works each of these areas with sitting chief marketing and growth officers, in a cross-industry cohort where the seat, not the subject, is the curriculum.

Run the checklist with the CFO in the room. A mandate the CFO has reviewed is a mandate the board will fund.

Frequently asked

What is a brand and growth review?

A structured examination of the marketing mandate against the questions the CFO, the board and a bad week will ask: where growth comes from and on what evidence, whether accountability is settled in signed metrics, what the brand is worth and what threatens it, whether positioning was decided as an investment, how the function is built, and what the board is told. Its output is a list of hesitations, which are the work.

Who should run the review — the CMO or the board?

The CMO should run it, with the CFO in the room, before the board asks. A board or a director can use the same questions to test the mandate from the other side, which is why the checklist is written so that both can answer it. The review is most useful when the two readings are compared.

Which area of the checklist matters most?

The treaty with the CFO, because every other area is argued from it. Without signed measures, claims about growth, brand and the operating model are opinions with a budget attached. The bad-week area is the second, not because it is argued most often but because it is the one most often blank and the one a board will remember.

How often should a CMO revisit the checklist?

At each planning cycle, and whenever the plan’s sources of growth change or a positioning decision is taken. The treaty and growth-source areas move with the plan; the brand, bad-week and operating-model areas move more slowly but should not be allowed to stand unexamined for longer than a planning cycle.

The programme behind this article

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