Can a CEO Brand Eclipse Business and Product Brands?

Can a CEO build a brand that is bigger than their company’s? A brand that is truly iconic? Can a CEO brand have the power to transfer from one business to bring power and credibility to succeed in totally different businesses? Can a strong CEO brand result in the creation of significantly more financial value than the brand of the business they run?

You may automatically think of Elon Musk. But Elon Musk is far from being the first famous CEO brand. There have long been CEO brands that have eclipsed the power of the brands of their businesses and products.

The original robber barons

The predecessors of the CEOs were the powerful landowners. These were the original ‘Robber Barons’. They owned and ran huge swathes of territory, with their own armies and administrations.

The first industrialist CEO brands

The modern type of robber baron has been around as long as industry. The first of the true CEO brands were industrialists. They built railways, canals, steel mills and the US oil industry. Think of Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, James J Hill, James Duke, Henry Flagler. Many used their brands and money to start many different types of ventures. Astor had railroads and fur, James J Hill fuel, coal, steamboats and railroads, James Duke tobacco and electric power, Henry Flagler oil and railroads.

The financier CEO brands

Overlapping and succeeding them, the next generations of CEO brands were the financiers— J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, and James Fisk.

J.P. Morgan stood head and shoulders above the others. He dominated not only finance but industry. During his long Wall Street career, he was responsible for the formation of U.S. Steel, International Harvester, and General Electric and held controlling interests Aetna, Western Union, and 21 railroads. His power was so great that when the US government ran into a financial crisis, it was J.P. Morgan it called in to rescue it.

The 20th Century CEO brands

Since late 20th century, the industrialists and financiers have been displaced by technology and service brands, Asian empires, and oligarchs, robbers of state assets. Once again, these leaders built CEO brands that became more powerful and created more value than the brands of the companies they started.

Tech CEO brands

Some of the most valuable of the new technology CEO brands are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and in China, Jack Ma. All of them built brands they successfully used to create more value in other businesses. Steve Jobs used the reputation he’d built at Apple to start Pixar. Jack Ma expanded his Alibaba empire to nine major subsidiaries: Alibaba.com, Taobao Marketplace,?Tmall, eTao, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Juhuasuan,?1688.com,?AliExpress.com, and?Alipay. Bill Gates successfully transformed his brand from tech baron to the world’s leading philanthropist, creating multiples of value, not only for himself and shareholders, but for society.

Service CEO brands

?The leading CEO brand in the service sector has been Richard Branson in the UK. At Virgin Records, he built a reputation he used to create businesses in a dizzying variety of other sectors – airlines, cruises, media, money, fitness, bridal and spaceships, are just a few of them.

Asian CEO brand dynasties

One of the strongest CEO brands in Asia is Tata, a CEO brand that unlike most others has been successfully transferred from the original Tata, who died in 1904 has been to succeeding generations of the family. The Tata brand now encompasses a conglomerate of everything from cars to chemicals, steel, power, consulting, finance, communications and leisure retail. It includes 26 publicly listed companies with a combined value approaching $400 billion.

The Toyoda dynasty of Japan is another example. Kiichiro Toyoda founded the Toyota Motor Corporation, changing the focus of his father’s Toyoda Loom works. His grandson, Akio Toyoda is the current chairman of the company. The next generation is represented by Daisuke Toyoda, who heads the “woven city” project, a testing ground for a “collaborative community” that explores the “societal challenges around the movement of people, goods, information and energy.”

Jack Ma is the Alibaba CEO who achieved international fame from turning an online store he ran from his apartment to a company service 800 million users with services in online shopping, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. His latest move is launching Ant Group’s Alipay, a digital payment service China.

Russian Oligarch CEO brands

The robbers of state assets are epitomized by the Russian ‘oligarchs’ who used their relationships with members of the government to steal state assets, buying them at preposterously low prices in secret, rigged auctions. Berezovsky took over state auto manufacturer Avtovaz, the Russian airline Aeroflot, the oil company Sibneft, much of Russia's aluminum industry, and ORT, the state's largest and most influential television network. Roman Abramovich has taken his brand into steel, gold, and aluminum giants, as well as Chelsea football club. Michael Khodorkovsky’s empire has included cafes, import export, banks, and Russia’s second largest oil company.

?The American Oligarchs

The term ‘oligarch’ is now being applied to a new set of incredibly powerful CEOs, whose value is many times greater than the brands of any single one of their businesses. These include CEOs who head up powerful brands: Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and Jeff Bezos and of course, Elon Musk.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the supreme example of a CEO who has built a personal brand that transcends and has greater value than his businesses.?Put aside for the moment the question of how much value he has destroyed at Twitter/X and the value he adds or destroys for the federal government. There is no question about the value he has built at Tesla, whose market cap at the end of 2024 was almost half of the global auto industry, more than the combined value of the next 29 automakers. Despite recent inroads by Chinese EVs, Tesla is valued at around $10.3 trillion vs. less than $3 billion for Toyota. More than 4x as much. This is despite the fact that in 2024 Toyota sold more than 10 million cars, Tesla less than 2 million.?Elon Musk has been able to transfer the power of his own CEO brand into different businesses – from space rockets and mobile satellite networks to artificial intelligence, brain/computer interfaces and tunnel construction. All this has made him the richest man in the world, as well as allowing him to gain political power.

?Jeff Bezos—an exception

There are a few exceptions to CEOs building multiple companies. Jeff Bezos is a founder who has amassed great personal wealth and power. But he has chosen to build an empire under the Amazon brand. The value of the Amazon brand is far greater than that of the Bezos brand. It’s a great move. He created the Amazon name as a metaphor for a river so wide it can sweep everything into it. It’s allowed him to expand from e-commerce to cloud services, and AI, to hardware, healthcare, and, it goes without saying, space. It’s a brand that will last way beyond Bezos.

?What makes a powerful CEO brand?

?The CEOs who have built brands that travel across businesses share a common set of characteristics.

1, They are founders

This seems counterintuitive. One might think that it is more difficult to separate your brand from your business if you created it. But the reverse is true. Non-founder CEO’s brands are almost always linked to the brands of their businesses. They are overshadowed by their company and product brands. The brands of Jack Welch, Satya Nadella and Howard Schulz are inextricably linked to and have less value than those of GE, Microsoft and Starbucks. Why? Are non-founder CEOs inherently less creative, less entrepreneurial? I don’t know. I’d love your thoughts on this.

2. They are supremely confident

They have unbounded belief in themselves, their abilities. They have a sweeping vision. They believe they can achieve whatever they set out to do, even the impossible. Because of this belief, they often achieve many things that do seem impossible. Musk may not succeed in settling Mars, but he is exploring space.

3. They leverage their CEO brands to enter politics

They use the power of their fame and money to gain political influence and use this influence to benefit their businesses. Elon Musk is following in the footsteps of J.P. Morgan, Roosevelt and the robber barons, and the Russian oligarchs.

4. They can overstep

This leads them to fall foul of the ruling authorities. The political leaders become jealous. They see the CEOs as rivals whose power threatening theirs and take steps to cut them down. As President, Roosevelt took anti-trust action to break up the kingdoms of the robber barons, most famously cutting up Standard Oil. The Russian Oligarchs are in exile, in jail or, in some cases, dead. Jack Ma criticized the Chinese financial system and disappeared for years. There is immense speculation as to how long Trump will allow Musk’s political power to last.

5. They become philanthropists

CEOs are not always only focused on building businesses; they often turn their talents to doing good. They cherish their images and want to go down to posterity as benefactors. This is the explanation for the huge show of philanthropy made by Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, and even the Sacklers.

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While CEOs can become celebrities, celebrities can create strong CEO brands. The fame and value of CEO brands is generated by sales of the products and services their companies offer. Celebrity CEO brands work the other way round. They start with fame and then use the power of their brands to move into products and services. They build their global fame and value in acting, music or sports.? Pharell Williams transferred his fame from music to fashion, now designing clothes for Louis Vuitton. Jennifer Lopez chose skincare and developed her incredibly successful JLo Beauty brand. Taylor Swift is now branching out into products and services. Their brand value derives from their artistic talent.

How can any CEO create a transcendent CEO brand? How can they drive unprecedented success for their companies? And build the brand and value of their own reputation, along with that of the businesses they run? I have ideas. What are yours?

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