The Importance of Brand
Build first, brand once you have traction. Branding and design is often an afterthought when building new products and services. Product is king, especially in challenging economic environments. Media products still lean on sans serif fonts for a wordmark and every fintech/finserv product is still somewhere on the blue spectrum. Recently UX & UI have received more focus, but that’s mostly due to AI upending the industry. Every startup (and even most legacy players) are boasting AI generated UX as if the term has grown past “User” Experience. Branding seems to have escaped the brunt of this particular change, having been largely turned into a commodity by “yournewlogo.com” websites. But a brand is more than a logo. A brand is the voice your product, marketing and sales materials uses. It’s the thread that ties together what was, what is and what can be.
I started my career in digital branding, so the importance of a company’s brand has been baked into everything I’ve done since then. What originally started as a quick visual way to identify belongings (the actual, physical brand) is today much more. Your brand should encompass the visual, the physical, the audible, the emotional and the digital. At the center of it all is the heart of the brand. Defined via a brand manifesto or a traditional positioning statement, the heart of the brand is what is used to answer every question about how the brand is reflected. This is the real brand, stripped of all the design and psychology. This is how your brand feels.
The visual is easy, it’s what most people think of when they think of branding. The logo, the color choices, the typography that’s used (and when it’s used) all sets the stage. This visual part of the brand is often what the public will encounter first, so it needs to reflect the heart of the brand.
In the digital world the brand is how it feels to use your product. Beyond making certain that everything is where it should be. What rewards are you giving users when they click that CTA? What confirmations are given that you’ve received their input? What makes your product easier, better, stickier?
In a recent project with Workweek’s Professional Network Platform we took a look at the data and saw direct correlations between specific actions and retention. That was used to inform changes in the post-signup onboarding flow to encourage users to follow others and probably most importantly the creation of an entirely novel way of engaging with user-generated content - the context relevant quick reply and the Private Reply (a DM for the creator of a post). Those changes alone not only worked, but they reinforced the Workweek brand - that it was people helping people in their professional journey. If we’d tried a different tactic, say the introduction of a subject matter expert’s walkthrough, it would have been less effective at encouraging retention, simply because it would have been seriously off-brand.
So take the time to define your product’s brand. See what it sounds like and what it feels like. And let that inform not only your marketing and outreach, but your product strategy and UX/UI. There are a thousand options out there right now for every product - but if your brand is strong you’ll come out on top.
I’ve been running branding sessions for nearly 20 years and I’d be happy to help your brand get to a truly cohesive, brand-focused strategy. Shoot me an email or schedule some time at https://www.danscholz.com.