Is it a problem when a leader becomes as well-known as the company he or she represents? Is this the best thing that can happen to a brand, or is it a serious sign of weakness?

There is probably no single answer to this. It also depends on the personality of the leader and what timeframe we're looking at. If the leader is of the kind of calibre where he or she eventually happily passes on his lifeblood to someone he or she believes can run the company equally well and loudly recommends the new regime to the entire world, then it is possible for investors , customers and employees to continue on the journey. But if the founder is is the kind of person who likes to appear indispensable and would almost prefer to see his life work go to pot than entrust anything at all to anyone else then we have a problem. With a leader like this, we have a problem regardless, and in this case it is very likely that a new person would be a much better alternative, whether we like it or not.

Who will take the brand further?

It is important in any case that we feel that the order of succession in the company is safeguarded in a reassuring manner. It could easily have led to both financial and emotional problems when Steven Jobs could no longer lead Apple, and even worse once he died. If we did not have the feeling that Job's ambitions and visions were being upheld by others this could have had greater consequences. Is Apple perhaps now in the process of experiencing these consequences, as some users think, and as some competitors like to highlight?

For many enthusiastic Mac users, it is perhaps the constant creative power of Jonathan Ive that now represents continuity in the company while, for others, it is perhaps the new CEO, Tim Cook, who made the transition palatable. Cook worked closely with Steve Jobs for a long time, which gives him credibility in the good company. Millions of users had a very personal relationship with Apple, which Jobs was, to all appearances in any case, a semi-dictatorial advocate for. This is possibly the reason Apple's corps of fans was very concerned about which individuals would continue Jobs' heritage.

What came first? The leader or the company?

There are examples showing that the leader of a company and the company the person in question needs to lead should work almost like Siamese twins. You can hardly separate them from each other and you cannot think about one without thinking about the other. Richard Branson and Virgin are this kind of twins. If you think about one of them, the other automatically springs to mind. Because Branson = Virgin, and both brands have been in the glare of the media just as long.

A symbiotic relationship between a leader and a company can work if you like the same kind of things about the brand and the person, so that they strengthen each other. But if a leader like this were to fall down flat on his face from the pedestal we have put him on, there would be some risk that the brand would suffer the same fate.

A hybrid

When it comes to a person like Petter Stordalen , it is tempting to think of him as a stronger brand than Choice, because, while there is something a bit old-fashionedly American and annoyingly neutral about all the logos and ingredients he has inherited from the original and international Choice chain of hotels, there is something very colourful and flamboyant about him personally. When he gets an enormous Strawberry tattoo with photographers in tow, we realise that we are moving much closer to the heart of the company, to the core of something that really means something for Stordalen.

Windy at the top

The Adweek magazine has drawn up what it calls the Power List, where it elects the 100 most influential, innovative and effective leaders in the areas of marketing, media and technology. In 2015, Google's Larry Page towered at the top. He was then referred to as the main architect behind the success of Google and they praised him because of his ability to think in a long-term manner and utilise the technological explosion the world is currently experiencing for all it is worth. Page is also well known for his toothbrush analogy. He says that Google wants to build technology that everyone loves using and that affects everyone. "We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren't that many things people use twice a day."

The following year Page was in second place on the list and had been overtaken by Mark Zuckerberg. The author of the article aptly worded it like this: "The future belongs to Mark Zuckerberg. The rest of us are just living in it." Above all, it is the ambitious 10-year plan that Zuckerberg outlined at the 8th Facebook conference for developers that put him into first place. Among other things, the plan contains the building of satellites and planes, VR and bots, a drone that covers 360 degrees by means of 17 cameras etc. Just as ambitious is the role he believes Facebook and himself should play when it comes to "curing all diseases by the end of this century, upgrading our education system so it’s personalized for each student, and protecting our environment from climate change". Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla have even committed themselves to gradually giving away up to 99% of their shares in Facebook to obtain funds for their extensive ambitions.

The 2017 list has now emerged and this time it is Amazon's Jeff Bezos who takes first place. He has been thinking about sending equipment for experiments, various types of cargo and inhabitants to the moon round 2025. Here, on dry land, he will deliver food using drones, launch clothes collections and completely self-service shops and has probably decided to eventually sell absolutely everything possible online. Jeff Bezos will continue to deliver the goods. In many ways.

Here are the 10 leaders ADWEEK put at the top of its Power List in 2017:

Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Larry Page, Alphabet (incl. Google)
Brian Roberts, Comcast (incl. Universal Studios, MSNBC, Telemundo)
David Taylor ,, Procter & Gamble
Robert Iger, Disney (incl. ABC, ESPN, Disney theme parks)
Martin Sorrell, WPP Group (incl. Gray, JWT and Ogilvy & Mather)
Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo
Tim Cook, Apple
Rupert Murdoch, 21st Century Fox (incl. Fox Film, Star TV, Sky) + various newspapers

Being at the top of the biggest companies can be a tough and draughty place, so it is perhaps not so strange that some potentially talented leaders say, "don't tempt me into management". But those tempted into it need to dare to think big. Some of them need to even be able to put up with being compared to their own brand.