I was trained in America in the modern methods of brand management. Central to the approach was empirical data: identify a brand’s target market, engage qualitative and quantitative research to understand the brand, then plot its future. History is simply what happened in the past.

But working with European brands for fifteen years, I learned a different approach: Understanding a brand’s history is crucial to plotting its successful future. This creates total respect for a brand’s founder and their intrinsic ability to know what’s right, and wrong, for the brand.

When companies don’t appreciate the founders of the brands they control, there’s usually trouble ahead. 

The annals of brand management are filled with stories of alienated founders: Steve Jobs and his exit from Apple, Coco Chanel and her struggles with the Wertheimer brothers, Donna Karan’s battles with LVMH, Burt Schavitz and his exit from Burt’s Bees. And now, Jerry.

The story is always the same. The brand makes a wrong turn. The founder sees the error and pushes back. Management arrogantly ignores both the founder and the issue and, unless the founder returns, there’s usually a price to pay before an ultimate reconciliation.

Yes, founders are incredibly difficult and emotional to deal with. They rarely respect corporate hierarchy or management processes. And they’re quick to turn to the media when they sense disrespect.

But these small challenges must be weighed against the enormous advantages of founders working with the brands they created and later sold. They have intrinsic, organic insight into brand strategy. Their presence is a constant source of validation and publicity. Their internal impact on employees and even the most jaded distribution partners is spectacular. And frankly, having them pissing inside the brand tent is infinitely more attractive than the implications of making them step outside.

Magnum Ice Cream Company is mistaken if it thinks Ben or Jerry will quiet down, that their impact will be irrelevant to future performance, or that the founders are wrong about the link between social causes and Ben & Jerry’s long-term commercial appeal.

Time for Magnum to reconsider.

Very few marketers realize the word “brand” comes from the old Norse word for burning a name into a product. It’s not the name of the consumer or the current management team we heat in the coals. Founders remain, literally, the origin of good brand management.

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