According to the What Clients Think Report 2024 by Up To The Light, the top challenges brands face in 2024 are:

1. Cybersecurity threats
2. Slow decision making within their organisation
3. The pace of legislative change

It’s no wonder brands are finding it difficult to keep up, let alone get ahead, when the business landscape is evolving at such an alarming pace. How are brands supposed to position themselves strongly against competition when their environment is changing on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis?

Tackling these three challenges is essential for long-term brand success. In this article, I explore how you can build tactics into your business strategy to not only protect against future issues but also shift from a position of your brand merely surviving to anticipating what’s ahead.

1. Cybersecurity for brands: strengthening defences against evolving threats

Cybersecurity is a pressing issue for businesses today, with 85% of brands expressing concern that they’re not doing enough to safeguard their operations. The scale of the threat is significant: Forbes reported 2,365 cyberattacks globally in 2023, impacting 343 million victims, while data breaches have surged by 72% since 2021, the previous highest year on record.

When left unaddressed, these cybersecurity threats can cost brands hundreds of thousands of pounds, not to mention the potential reputational damage. The operational impact is equally severe, often leading to immediate halts in day-to-day activities, loss of critical data, and compromise of essential systems. It’s no wonder clients put this at the top of their list of worries.

Cybersecurity software

The first step in tackling cybersecurity issues is to invest in advanced security solutions. Tools like Darktrace, Sophos and IBM Security QRadar enable businesses to monitor and respond to cybersecurity threats in real time, offering essential protection.

A proactive approach ensures that your security evolves alongside emerging threats, keeping your data, reputation, and operations intact. So you’re not just responding to threats as they happen, but preventing them from happening in the first place. It’s about being one step ahead at all times!

Cybersecurity training

However, technology alone isn’t enough. Training your staff to be more vigilant against phishing attempts and social engineering tactics is one of the most effective means of protecting your brand against cybersecurity threats. By instilling best practices and empowering employees with the knowledge to act swiftly, you equip them to identify and address threats before they escalate.

These training materials can take many forms, but it’s best to keep it engaging and fun whilst also being educational:

• Basic awareness training: Create videos, quizzes and interactive e-learning modules to help with initial onboarding and annual refresher training.
• Simulation tools: Send out imitation phishing emails, capturing immediate feedback on how your team respond. You’re then able to develop tailored training from the results.
• In-depth workshops: With practical exercises and leave-behind workbooks, these are a great method to provide advanced cybersecurity training.
• Webinars and case studies: Offers a deeper delve to complement workshop training.
• Role-playing exercises: Great for instilling appropriate responses to manipulation tactics.
• Video-based training: Achieve similar results to in-person roleplay, with the benefit of being remote.
• Gamifying cybersecurity challenges: Entertain while educating, with scenario-based challenges and competitive learning.
• Leadership training: Making sure your leadership team are regularly trained and informed of developments in the cybersecurity space, will help trickle down learnings and bolster your company’s response to any threats.

Your brand agency can help coordinate a solid training strategy that can holistically strengthen your business from within, by better equipping your team to defend against cybersecurity attacks.

Cybersecurity protocols

The threat of cybersecurity is ever-evolving, so regularly updating your protocols delivers many benefits:

• Protecting any sensitive data
• Maintaining customer trust
• Guaranteeing regulatory compliance

Keeping your team regularly updated on your business practices and any changes is critical for remaining compliant and consistent in your security response. Here are a few ways you could keep your team engaged:

• Monthly or quarterly comms: Regular communication channels like newsletters or an intranet portal can be an effective yet simple way of keeping your employees in the know.
• Posters and signage: Perfect for physical office-spaces, in high footfall areas like break rooms or printers.
• Team meetings: Regular catch ups allow for real-time discussion, sharing of any real-life examples and clarifying and information.
• Digital handbooks and guides: Detail all your business protocols in one handy place. Digitising your comms is a cost-effective way to manage any updates, especially as cybersecurity changes regularly.
• Quick reference sheets: One-pagers for quick-to-digest information. Cybersecurity can seem very overwhelming for the uninformed, so this is a great way to get bite-sized but important information across.
• Videos and animations: Short videos can be more engaging that text-based comms and get a lot of information across in a short space of time.
• Feedback loops: Surveys are great for gauging your team’s understanding of cybersecurity, gather insight for improving communications and tailoring any training or materials required. Set up dedicated forums and channels, such as on Slack or Teams, for discussing protocol updates and posing any questions.
• Dedicated cybersecurity day: Produce campaign communications, organise workshops, leaflets and leave-behinds, and invite expert speakers for focused awareness.
• Rewards and recognition: Encourage learning and compliance for team members who complete training or actively participate in your company’s cybersecurity initiatives. Leaderboards and badges for gamified training are fun methods to engage your team.

Once again, your brand agency can create a unified communication strategy for cybersecurity, so it runs cohesively throughout your whole business and brand.

2. Improving organisational decision-making

Next on clients’ growing concerns is the rate of organisational decision-making. 69% of clients are frustrated by their organisation’s inability to make quick decisions and adapt to market changes.

According to a McKinsey survey, respondents spent on average 37% of their time making decisions, with more than half of this time considered ineffective. The impact of slow or wasted decision-making has obvious negative impacts on time and cost to a business, in the extreme resulting in loss of market share and business opportunities. The kind that put Blockbuster out of business.

What’s more, slow decision-making disrupts innovation and the implementation of new ideas, damaging a brand’s ability to keep up with the competition, and stay ahead of customer expectations.

When businesses take a long time to make decisions, this can also be detrimental to employee morale, organisational culture and overall productivity.

Your brand agency can offer a fresh perspective on your business decision-making processes, developing a robust communications strategy that streamlines processes, improves internal communication and promotes a culture of quick, informed decision-making.

This will in turn support employee engagement, ease team frustration and ultimately deliver a more positive brand experience for your external customers.

Areas an agency can support you with improving organisational response time are:

• Processes audit: Reviewing existing processes to identify bottlenecks and any inefficiencies. This could include interviewing key stakeholders and analysing data.
• Mapping workflow: Clearly visualising your decision-making pathways will help see the entire process, and consequently make necessary changes.
• Define metrics and KPIs: Set SMART goals for faster decision-making, such as reduce approval times by 30%, eliminate redundant steps. Then start to track important metrics, for example: time to decision, employee satisfaction with decision-making.
• Empowering and training employees: Providing literature and communications that guide your team on how to make decisions within their remit quickly and effectively. It’s important to build a culture where your team take ownership of their decisions and are held accountable for the outcomes, reducing micro-management and time spent.
• Improve communication and collaboration: Establishing channels that encourage better communication between teams or departments. Sharing knowledge in a timely manner, and promoting a culture where decision-making is a team effort and not something only ‘management’ do.
• Continuous improvement: When implementing new processes or programs, your agency can survey, run feedback sessions and review findings to adjust strategies as needed. Regularly reviewing these systems will encourage ongoing feedback from your team and keep things agile and efficient.
• Change management: Get buy in from the leadership team and clearly communicate reasons for any changes and the benefits to both the individual and the business as a whole.

It’s important when implementing any changes to internal processes that they’re communicated in the right way to all of your audiences, both internal and (where applicable) external. Getting it wrong can lead to more setbacks rather than driving the positive change you’re aiming for.

An agency can help manage this delicate process. They’ll coordinate the planning and communication, step-by-step, ensuring that every detail is covered, and everyone is kept in the loop throughout the change management journey.

Legislative change management

Finally, 55% of clients feel they’re struggling to keep up with rapidly changing regulations – such as the forthcoming 2025 Data Act, coming into effect in September 2025, seeking to democratise data and posing increased compliance requirements on businesses.

Clients are busier than ever – in a recent Mental Health UK survey, 54% of employees reported that increased workload is causing stress and contributing to burnout. So add keeping up to speed with new regulatory compliance to that list and overwhelm is sure to happen.

If a business is found to be non-compliant, the result can be hefty fines, breaches of contract, compensation claims, legal disputes and loss of business relationships. Even if these don’t ensue, the risk of reputational damage alone can set a business back significantly. Operationally non-compliance can lead to a halt in day-to-day activity, having huge financial repercussions.

Investing in compliance management tools is the best way to stay informed and up to date on upcoming regulations. Depending on your industry, there is different software delivering key benefits including, centralised record-keeping, real-time alerts, policy management and collaboration tool.

It can be difficult to get every employee on board and appropriately educated on new legislation, but a brand agency can work with you to develop a proactive strategy and communicate legislative change in an effective way across your whole team.

Just a few ways a brand agency can help with the impact of legislative change are:

• Strategy guidance: By reviewing your existing brand strategy, an agency can make sure any communications you send out about legislative change are consistent, or may recommend shifting your strategy to accommodate any adjustments.
• Market knowledge: Agencies invest heavily in understanding the markets their clients operate in and provide insight into how legislation may impact their branding and marketing strategies.
• Future-proofing brands: A good brand agency doesn’t react to changes, it anticipates them. By taking a proactive approach, businesses can stay one step ahead, to comply with existing legislation but also prepare for any future developments.
• Timely communication: With a good strategy in place, brands can send out communications in a timely manner, improving team knowledge and customer confidence and strengthening their offering, therefore making them more competitive. 

Agencies can effectively bridge the gap between legal requirements and brand strategy, ensuring all communications remain complaint, whether that be a new privacy law affecting digital marketing or changes to product labelling requirements.

What lies ahead?

As we approach 2025, brands face a complex landscape that calls for strength and foresight. The challenges of 2024 are not fleeting issues but signals of a more interconnected, digitally intensive future where brands need to anticipate, rather than simply react.

Navigating these issues requires more than just strategy—it demands an integrated approach where technology, training, and communication work in harmony. This ensures that every member of the team is equipped and empowered to contribute to a brand’s success. With the right support, be it from internal leadership or external agencies, your brand can turn these challenges into a competitive edge, driving long-term growth and stability. 

Are you facing these challenges in your business? Get in touch – we’d love to help. Alternatively, for the latest insights on navigating today’s brand challenges, take a look at our other Articles.