Building a strong brand isn’t just about a sharp logo or a clever tagline. It’s about people. The right people—working together across strategy, creative, product, and customer experience—can turn a good business into a brand customers remember and rally around.
While freelancers and agencies can help fill gaps or scale efforts, true brand equity is built by an internal team that lives the brand daily. These are the folks who shape your tone, protect your identity, and make sure every touchpoint feels aligned—from the homepage to the packaging to how your customer service signs off an email.
If you’re a founder, CMO, or brand lead thinking about how to grow or structure your in-house marketing team, here are the key roles worth prioritizing.
Brand Director or Head of Brand
What they do:
Own the brand’s identity from the inside out—tone, visuals, values, positioning, and how those show up across all channels. They align leadership, marketing, and product teams around a shared brand vision.
Why it matters:
This role acts as the steward of consistency. Without one, your brand risks becoming a patchwork of competing messages and aesthetics. A strong Brand Director ensures the brand doesn’t just look good—it makes sense, stays focused, and evolves intentionally.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Collaborates with leadership on business priorities, creative on messaging and visuals, and marketing on go-to-market plans.
When to hire:
As soon as your brand starts growing beyond a single voice or function. Usually once you’ve hit product-market fit and are expanding your channel mix.
Creative Director or Content Lead
What they do:
Lead the creative vision for how the brand is expressed visually and through content—think campaigns, photo direction, packaging, web, and social content.
Why it matters:
Creative without strategy is noise. This role makes sure your brand looks and feels cohesive. They also inspire new ideas and evolve the creative direction as your brand grows.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Works with the Brand Director to interpret strategy, supports social and digital teams with content, and often manages designers, writers, and contractors.
When to hire:
Once content and creative output becomes a bottleneck. If you’re regularly briefing external creatives or launching multiple campaigns, it’s time.
Marketing Strategist or Growth Marketer
What they do:
Owns the marketing plan. Focused on driving awareness, acquisition, and retention through paid, owned, and earned channels. Think less “posting to Instagram,” more “engineering revenue.”
Why it matters:
You can’t build a strong brand if no one knows it exists. A skilled growth marketer ties brand awareness to performance—turning messaging into measurable results.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Partners with creative for campaigns, analytics for tracking, and product for aligning messaging with features or launches.
When to hire:
Early—especially for DTC or ecommerce brands. A great growth marketer is often your first or second marketing hire.
Customer Experience Manager
What they do:
Shapes how customers interact with your brand post-purchase—through support, returns, feedback, and more. Often the voice customers hear most.
Why it matters:
Brands aren’t just built on what you say—they’re built on how you behave. A thoughtful CX manager ensures your support channels reflect the brand’s tone, values, and priorities.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Works with operations and support teams, feeds insights back to product and brand teams, and often manages FAQs, reviews, and help content.
When to hire:
Once you’re fielding regular customer inquiries. If support feels disconnected from the rest of the brand, you’re overdue.
Social Media or Community Manager
What they do:
Engages with your audience where they spend their time—on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Discord, wherever your niche lives. They’re part publisher, part relationship-builder.Why it matters:
Social isn’t just a broadcast channel—it’s where brands are experienced in real time. This role keeps your brand human, responsive, and consistent across platforms.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Collaborates with content, creative, and customer service. Also feeds real-time audience insights back to the team.
When to hire:
Once engagement matters more than just impressions. Especially important for outdoor, lifestyle, or community-driven brands.
Product or Packaging Designer
What they do:
Designs the physical expression of your brand—from packaging to product labels to unboxing experiences. This is the bridge between digital identity and tangible brand presence.
Why it matters:
In DTC and lifestyle categories, the product is the brand. How something feels in-hand can make or break perceived value, repeat purchase, or word of mouth.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Works with creative and operations. Often liaises with manufacturers and logistics teams to ensure execution matches vision.
When to hire:
When product presentation becomes a core part of the customer experience. Or when your packaging no longer reflects your brand’s value.
Copywriter or Brand Storyteller
What they do:
Crafts the language of the brand—from headlines to product descriptions to video scripts. This person gives your brand a voice that customers recognize.
Why it matters:
Words create meaning. A consistent voice builds trust, drives emotion, and differentiates your offer from the next tab in the browser.
Cross-functional touchpoints:
Partners with creative and marketing to shape campaigns. Supports web, social, and product teams with messaging.
When to hire:
When messaging becomes inconsistent—or falls flat. This hire helps move beyond functional language to storytelling that sells.
Conclusion
Building a strong brand takes more than vision. It takes a team. One that understands the brand inside and out—because they live it, speak it, and grow it every day. These roles don’t all need to be filled at once, but they do need to be accounted for.
Brand isn’t a department. It’s a cross-functional effort—woven into every touchpoint, every product decision, every support conversation.
Next step? Audit your current team. Identify the gaps. If you’re building a brand worth remembering, make sure you’ve got the people to carry it forward.
Need a second set of eyes or help structuring your in-house brand team? Let’s talk.
