Full (and proud) disclosure alert: I am a branding guy.
I believe branding is neither an ornament, an option nor an expendable furbelow. It is systemically vital, as much of the telluric current of a company as the rest of its IP, including all the underlying code.
Branding is, in fact, a narrative code. It programs value and growth.
Like any critical business function, branding requires investment – both a financial and mindshare commitment. But that investment is under pressure, from the very people who should be advocating for it.
At this moment, venture-backed companies are being told to cut back all non-essential commitments, as CEOs and founders are being encouraged - if not bullied – into plug-pulling.
Unchecking the marketing box.
Sequoia, the course-setting venture firm, set the tone in May, with a now-famous 52-page presentation – as ominous as a Fukushima forecast – describing this as a “crucible” moment that requires a massive business re-set.
They urged founders to:
Preserve cash. Be agile. Confront reality. Affirm the vision. Align the team. Invest in the future.
That rises about the rank of Captain Obvious to Four-Star General Undeniable.
In parallel, they also say this is a time of “incredible opportunity.” I agree. But not from the defensive crouch that Sequoia advocates.
I see this as a fortuitously opportune moment to take a fresh and unblinking look at your branding and messaging. “Confront the reality” that it most likely is doing fragile justice to your business.
There’s an under-acknowledged reason for that.
During the easy money, growth-at-any-cost, helium-gulping, open-checkbook years, the need for sharp and tight branding wasn’t nearly as important as it is now.
During the boom, sloppy branding wasn’t always fatal. There were compensatory levers.
Unlimited coffers funded massive investments in search and in paid acquisition at the top of the funnel. These steroidal budgets built internal empires that over-funded sales teams, customer success squads, and yes, marketing and product organizations as well.
Now, with the massive layoffs, those business drivers can no longer be relied upon. It leaves bad branding naked.
The reality is that even before the current moment, CEOs under-invested in branding at alarming rates. To be clear, I am not talking about marketing costs – digital spending, offline advertising – but the fundamental development of a distinctive, memorable, impregnable brand story.
What’s happened over the last decade was that bad branding happened to good companies. Much of it was, bland, edgeless, committee-pleasing.
But can start-ups afford to re-brand? The math screams yes.
With seed rounds now at $10MM, an investment in branding should cost meaningfully less than half of one percent of that.
Second Disclosure Alert: Beware of “branding agencies” that have assembled expensive empires which cleverly repackage a rinse-and-repeat model, price out all but a handful of companies, and simultaneously dazzle and intimidate insecure founders. (They are not the shoemakers children; they know how to keep themselves well-shod.
In today’s environment where weak storytelling imperils your business outcomes – and shortens your runway - CEOs need to assess their inadequate branding with the same ruthless objectivity that venture views headcount.
And there isn’t a lot of time to fix it.
It doesn’t matter where you fit in the acronym frittata - b2b ,b2b2C, DTC, marketing to the enterprise or SMBs – the issues are the same.
Scurry on over to your website and ask yourself these brutally direct questions, beginning with the operating premise of your story. Is there a reason for someone to truly care about it, deep down in the sinew of their caring muscle, other than you and your team, and if you’re lucky, a devoted relative?
Or is it as memorable as elevator music that has the highs and lows surgically removed?
Are you stuck in the reverb - and actually the reverie - of the familiar? Did someone advise you to take the lazy way out with “Reinventing This” or “Disrupting That” or “The Future of “ some other thingy? That’s the branding equivalent of describing a dish as “scrumptious.” Doesn’t your company deserve better than Olive Garden menu copy?
Freshness of innovation demands and deserves a reciprocal freshness of communication. Branding is not borrowing, but it is difficult to get over the impulse of “blanky branding;” we seek comfort in the known
Digging deeper, does your key descriptor simply state what you do – with all the theater of Wikipedia or Webster’s? Just about every company sits on the precipice of mushification, given that start-ups, if the truth be told, often take only incremental steps versus froggy leaps. The right branding - bold, bracingly unfamiliar - can transform a baby stepper into a Twainian frog. (Remember: It requires less than one percent of your seed round.)
Branding is also a heat-seeking missile that identifies the weakness of your competitors; as Sun Tzu wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Unless your story calls out the weakness of whomever your Goliath may be – with a case-by-case nuance of explicitness and implicitness - you are likely to be a runway-challenged David.
So my advice for founders and CEOs is to blast the bloat, dissolve internal empires, and invest in your brand story, gripped b the same courage to build, as you’ve had the guts to cut.
Fabulous, piercing wisdom. Such refreshing intellect must be shared far and wide.
Spot. On.