Can you reset a brand in 100 days? >

See us in Campaign

Today, John Healey stands up to deliver his first Budget. In a perhaps meaningful coincidence, it will also mark 100 days since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister.

It's a milestone every new arrival into a demanding organisation recognises. The point where people stop asking who you are, and start asking what you've actually changed or achieved.

Burnham didn't arrive in Downing Street as an unknown quantity. He arrived with a brand already built, and built a long way from Westminster. In Manchester. On the streets and in the pub, talking to real people like a human being. Unlike his predecessor: less courtroom, more human.

Whatever your politics, it's fair to say Labour didn't choose him for his command of the fiscal rules or his foreign policy experience. They chose him because he felt different, and communicated in a very different way.

His first 100 days have played to that brand. Pints with the Chancellor. Strumming a guitar in Ukraine. A listening tour, and a steady stream of well-crafted social content. By mid-August, YouGov had 46% of Britons viewing him favourably, 12 points up on his first day.

And whatever you think of his policies, his conference speech in Liverpool was a masterclass in communication. A tribute to his late father, woven into a case for the country. Reportedly, a quarter of it was ad-libbed. Ministers were in tears.

But dig a little deeper and the picture gets more complicated. YouGov has also been asking a more awkward question. Why is the government so much less popular than the man running it?

So, is the bounce built on communication alone? And can it survive what's coming: hard policy trade-offs, a struggling economy and a Budget expected to bring tough choices? Has Burnham laid strong brand foundations, identified a new direction, and unified his people behind it? Or has he simply created short-term momentum?

These are the ultimate questions many new leaders face, when tasked with a brand reset.

When Jürgen Klopp arrived at Liverpool Football Club in 2015, he used his first press conference to say he wanted to turn doubters into believers. One sentence. Before he'd even picked a team, the club felt different. It was the start of one of football's great brand resets, and years of success on and off the pitch.

Ange Postecoglou had a similar start at Tottenham in 2023. Spurs went unbeaten in his first ten league games and sat top of the table. A manager who talked straight. With a style named after him. A club that suddenly felt like itself again.

But it didn't end well for Ange.

He changed the initial mood, but not the fundamentals of how the club worked. Brand resilience and wasn’t build and two tough years later, weeks after winning the Europa League, he was gone, with the club still going backwards.

There are great instant-impact reset stories right across the business world. When Satya Nadella took over at Microsoft in 2014, he put Office on the iPad within two months. A rival's device. A tough product decision that told everyone, inside and outside the company, that Microsoft would no longer be defined by Windows. The financial turnaround took years. But the new brand direction took weeks to identify and action.

Clearly, the category and the size of the organisation matter too. Some brands can turn like speedboats. Alessandro Michele reset Gucci's entire look within weeks of taking over in 2015. And in fashion, the product and the brand are so closely aligned that the wider impact was instant.

Others can turn like oil tankers. However good the brand captain is, a huge global bank or a supermarket giant can take years to reset.

And then there's luck. Burnham arrived into No 10 with Parliament in summer recess and his biggest tests months ahead of him. Not all brand leaders get that kind of runway.

For anyone in a new role, looking after a brand, the real question isn't how much you did in your first 100 days. It's what kind of work it was.

Are foundations being laid? Is a clear direction being formed? Is this direction clearly understood by everyone? And will it bring people together to unite behind a brand?

Or another way of putting it, are you painting over the cracks, and calling short-term momentum a reset?

Momentum can be the easy part. Strong brand foundations take much longer.

This will be Andy Burnham's test. Has he started a meaningful brand reset? Or just added some excitement and a feel-good factor? Is there any clarity on what the new Labour government's brand stands for?

Perhaps Klopp would recognise the challenge. There are still plenty of doubters. The job now is turning them into believers.

So, in truth, yes, a brand can be reset in 100 days. But only if it's done properly and thoroughly, and if those in charge are prepared to make difficult decisions. And invest in bringing people along on the journey.

For Burnham, the hard part starts this week. We're about to find out whether his first 100 days helped to built a brand, or just a bounce.