“You’ve made a really psychologically safe workspace,” is one of the highest compliments I have received in my nearly 20-year career.
And since the day I heard it, I’ve been rightfully crediting the success of my brands to a mix of originality but also safety. Marketers love to talk about brand assets: logos, taglines, colour palettes, campaigns, but the most overlooked brand asset is sitting inside your business right now.
It’s your people, and more specifically, the culture that shapes how they work, think, and create.
The uncomfortable truth is that you can’t build a bold, resonant brand externally if your internal culture is built on fear, micromanagement, or short-term thinking. A safe, creative, empowered team is what allows a brand to take risks, connect deeply with customers, and respond to change.
What do we mean by psychological safety?
Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished, ridiculed, or sidelined for speaking up, offering a new idea, or admitting a mistake. It’s a simple concept, but in practice, it’s rare.
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I’ve seen it in action in high-performing creative teams: the intern who pipes up with an offbeat idea that later becomes the campaign hero; the mid-level manager who’s able to raise a concern before it turns into a crisis; the founder who admits they got it wrong and invites the team to help them solve the problem.
And I’ve seen the opposite. Teams that are paralysed by the fear of being wrong or punished. Where everything is safe, sanitised, and predictable. Unsurprisingly, those brands tend to look the same as everyone else, because no one inside the building feels safe enough to say, “What if we did it differently?”.
Why culture is a brand lever, not fluff
Strong cultures aren’t built on beanbags, Friday drinks, or a list of values stuck to the wall. They’re built on trust, autonomy, and respect. And the commercial upside is undeniable.
Creativity flourishes: Teams that feel safe experiment more, and experimentation is the oxygen of breakthrough ideas.
Speed improves: When people aren’t tiptoeing around hierarchy or covering their mistakes, decisions get made faster.
Customer empathy deepens: Teams who feel seen and heard are better at listening to customers, too.
Resilience grows: A strong culture helps brands weather the inevitable storms of budget cuts, PR challenges, or competitive threats.
Google’s famous Project Aristotle study found psychological safety was the single biggest factor distinguishing its most effective teams. And Gallup research shows that organisations with highly engaged employees outperform their peers by 23% in profitability. The link between culture and performance isn’t abstract; it’s proven.
It’s no coincidence that many rising consumer brand companies lauded for their brand building are equally known for their strong cultures.
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The silent killers of culture in marketing teams
Despite the evidence, culture often gets sidelined in marketing and creative functions. Why? Because too often we’re measured against the short-term: this quarter’s CAC, last week’s ROAS, today’s click-through rate.
Add to that high turnover, shrinking budgets, siloed teams, and layers of approvals, and you’ve got a perfect storm. The result? Risk-averse work, burned-out staff, and an endless churn of “safe” campaigns that nobody remembers six months later.
Micromanagement is another silent killer. When leaders hover over every line of copy or pixel of design, they may think they’re protecting brand consistency. In reality, they’re stripping their team of ownership, confidence, and the ability to push boundaries.
So how do you actually fix it?
Culture doesn’t change overnight, but it also isn’t an accident. Leaders can, and must, design it deliberately. Some starting points:
Leadership behaviours: Model vulnerability. Give constructive feedback. Celebrate small wins and smart failures. Or as I like to say, don’t be the guy no one wants to speak to at drinks.
Hire for diversity of thought: Different backgrounds and perspectives make for richer ideas and stronger brand storytelling.
Restructure how you work: Create space for exploration, downtime, and creative play. If your team’s calendar is filled wall-to-wall with delivery deadlines, don’t expect innovation. My co-founder Bree is particularly good at making sure we do this.
Create a learning mindset: Expose marketing teams to product, ops, customer service. Empathy and insight come from seeing the whole picture. Upskilling shouldn’t be an afterthought; it should be built into how teams operate.
The moment you call culture “soft” is the moment you’ve misunderstood its value. Culture can be measured, and it should be. Engagement scores, retention rates, employee referrals, time to market, idea adoption rates, creative output. They’re all signals that show whether your culture is helping or hindering brand growth.
But it’s pretty easy to take a health check on the culture of your business by seeing if the hairs on the back of everyone’s neck stand up when you enter the room.
And just like brand health tracking, culture should be measured consistently, not just in annual surveys.
Culture as strategy
It’s tempting to treat culture as a “people problem” or something that HR will handle. But if you’re leading a brand, as a C-suite or founder, it’s 100% your problem. And more than that, it’s your greatest untapped advantage.
A bold brand needs bold ideas. Bold ideas need safe teams. Safe teams need intentional culture. It’s not a fluffy add-on; it’s the foundation.
Because the truth is, every external campaign your brand produces is just a reflection of what’s happening behind the scenes. Customers can feel it. Competitors can see it. And the market rewards it.
So if you want your brand to stand out, don’t start with the logo. Start with the culture.
