Whose Voice Should Define Your Brand: Yours, Your CMO’s or Your Audience’s?

Behind every brand is a founder who fought tooth and nail to make it see the light of day. Someone whose every waking hour was spent bringing to life each element that you experience—product, service, website, and likely every word that is communicated to you.

Now imagine this founder so entangled with their creation that their every word becomes its gospel. Their voice—the very force that propelled the brand forward—now risks becoming its prison.?

From Elon Musk’s headline-grabbing tweets rocking Tesla’s stock to Adam Neumann’s unchecked antics dragging WeWork into chaos, we've borne witness; to just how a founder’s voice can propel a brand to unimaginable heights or plunge it into turmoil.

To explore this complex dynamic, I spoke with Shreyasi Singh , wordsmith extraordinaire and builder of brands.

Use your voice to set the brand’s foundation—but know when to step back

In its early days, a founder’s voice can be a powerful differentiator, shaping the brand’s ethos and giving it a distinctive personality. Customers often buy into the founder’s vision as much as the product itself.

“I’ve actually felt like my personal voice has benefited the brand and the business,” Shreyasi shares, reflecting on her time at Harappa. “It helped give it a distinctive feel and quality, which I think has been net positive.”

But as a business grows, so does the need for self-censorship. “As the business grew, I did curb myself a little and became a bit more proper corporate… because the business is bigger than you, and you don’t want to unnecessarily compromise that,” Shreyasi explains.

Let the CMO amplify and refine your voice

A founder’s passion and vision are unmatched, but a marketing leader is often the strategist who ensures that passion reaches the right audience in the most effective way. Let’s face it, no one trusts corporate speak.

Shreyasi points out:

“Nobody, in a way, wants the business to be more successful than the founder. And I think the marketing leader plays a very important role in terms of getting data analytics as well as skills, and, you know, the technical knowledge to enable the founder to speak. But, I have almost never seen an example of a marketing leader’s voice being more important than a founder.”

Think of the founder as the visionary and the marketing leader as the director. The founder crafts the story; the CMO ensures it’s told compellingly and strategically, using data and expertise to amplify its impact.

Balance authenticity with context

Authenticity is at the core of a founder’s voice, but context—whether audience expectations or market conditions—must shape its delivery.

“The real flair is in being able to converge all these elements—founder, audience, market context—and create an authentic voice for the business,” Shreyasi explains. “The founder can be a powerful ambassador of the business’s voice, but the business’s voice is not the same as the founder’s.”

A founder’s voice initiates the conversation, but it is the business’s voice, informed by the broader ecosystem, that sustains it.

Trust your foresight, even if it challenges conventional wisdom

Founders often have an uncanny ability to imagine a different future and lead others toward it. This foresight can shape not just their brand but an entire industry.

Shreyasi reflects on this quality in her journey with Harappa (acquired by Upgrad):

“We spoke so much of online learning as superior, sometimes completely in contrast to what many of our clients believed. And we were saying this before COVID… A core quality of a founder is their ability to imagine the future a little bit differently, not better, but differently from how others are yet seeing it.”

Foresight often requires courage to push against the grain, but it’s what sets visionary founders apart.

Don’t let your voice become a liability

A founder’s voice can be a double-edged sword. When unchecked, it risks overshadowing the brand or alienating its audience. A founder’s actions can become a liability for their business.

“When an individual’s view of the world overshadows the company’s view of the world, it’s not healthy,” Shreyasi warns.

Empower others to amplify the brand

As brands grow, their voices must evolve beyond the founder’s. The collective voices of employees, clients, and customers carry far more weight than a single individual, even the founder.

“A single voice is never trusted beyond a point,” she observes. “Employees and clients speaking about the brand is far more powerful than a founder’s voice alone.”

Companies like Patagonia and Microsoft demonstrate this beautifully, allowing their communities to champion their stories, creating an authenticity no founder could achieve alone.

Shreyasi’s stance is clear: “The founder’s role is to imagine the future and bring others into that vision. But at some point, the brand must stand on its own.”

In the end, the true measure of a founder’s success lies not in how loudly their voice resonates, but in how seamlessly their vision transcends them, becoming the voice of the brand itself.