By Ayomide Otitoju
Ememobong Udofot has highlighted the growing challenge companies face in aligning product development, growth strategies, and brand positioning, warning that disconnects between the three functions often create long-term credibility issues for businesses.
According to Udofot, while product, growth, and brand teams typically share common business goals, they often operate with different incentives that place them in conflict rather than collaboration.
He explained that product teams are primarily focused on building functionality and meeting delivery timelines, while growth teams prioritize customer acquisition and conversion metrics. Brand teams, on the other hand, are tasked with maintaining consistency in messaging and perception, often after major strategic decisions have already been made.
Udofot argued that this structural disconnect creates subtle but compounding misalignment over time, leading to situations where products promise one experience, growth campaigns communicate another, and brand teams struggle to reconcile the differences for users.
“The result is not simply a communication problem, but a systems failure,” he noted.
He further explained that alignment should not be viewed as a messaging exercise, but as a decision-making framework rooted in a shared understanding of what a product can reliably deliver.
According to him, product teams define the actual user experience and operational reality, growth teams scale expectations through campaigns and incentives, while brand teams ensure consistency between what is promised, built, and ultimately experienced by customers.
Udofot identified a common scenario in which growth teams promote attractive propositions such as instant payouts, fast transactions, or seamless experiences that products may not consistently support due to operational or infrastructure limitations. As user expectations rise, delays and service inconsistencies emerge, forcing brand teams into reactive crisis management aimed at preserving trust.
He warned that such patterns gradually erode credibility, even when companies do not intentionally mislead customers.
To address the challenge, Udofot advocated for a more disciplined approach anchored on what he described as a “shared definition of truth” within organisations. He said companies must communicate only the realities that products can consistently deliver across real-world use cases, rather than promoting ideal or best-case scenarios.
Under this model, growth strategies would focus on scaling dependable realities, while brand positioning would reinforce messages users can validate through actual experience.
He added that as products improve, companies can gradually expand their messaging and positioning without damaging continuity or trust.
Udofot cautioned that many organisations instead follow a less sustainable pattern where growth leads with aspiration, products struggle to catch up, and brand teams are left managing the gap. While such an approach may generate short-term results, he said it often creates fragmented decision-making and weakens long-term customer confidence.
He stressed that true alignment is not achieved through meetings or shared documentation alone, but through disciplined sequencing.
“Product defines reality, Growth scales reality, and Brand ensures reality is understood the same way everywhere,” he stated.
Udofot concluded that companies that sustain trust over time are those where promises, product capabilities, and customer experiences remain tightly connected, noting that users ultimately judge outcomes rather than internal organisational structures.
