3 lessons from my latest rebrand project.
I made all the mistakes (so you don't have to).
Hi friends,
If you’ve followed my work at all over the last few weeks, you’ll have heard me talking about my latest rebrand project.
It’s a biggun’ — with one corporate brand, multiple sub-brands that came through acquisitions, two audiences (enterprise and small businesses), and literally millions of users. They also IPO’d this year — so brand suddenly matters big time.
In all, kind of a crazy opportunity. I’ve never done something this big, or with stakes this high.
I’m proud to say that I totally crushed it. In fact, the second the strategy clicked into place I knew I’d made my client millions of dollars (no joke).
Buuuuut…. getting to that point where everything clicked and we could execute on the brand wasn’t always easy.
In fact, it took 240+ hours to get there — and I learned a lot along the way.
So, today, I figured I’d step back and break down three huge lessons I learned from the biggest brand strategy project of my life.
Hopefully it helps you. ✌️
Lesson 1: If the CEO is a visionary, they need to be involved in the briefing process (no matter how busy they are).
I’ve learned over the years that branding only works if a CEO feels bought into it. I’ve historically worked with smaller companies that have just found product-market fit, so it hasn’t been an issue to get the CEO on the phone.
This client though was totally different. They’ve found PMF. They have literally millions of users. The industry is incredibly sophisticated and well-established.
All of which means getting time with the CEO is like trying to lasso the moon: it’s kind of impossible.
For a while, we tried operating without his high-level input… and it was a struggle. When trying to set the strategy, I kept defaulting back to what I knew about the company as a consultant. I was missing the big-picture vision.
Eventually, we decided to corral him for an hour and have him brain dump on us.
And you know what? It made a massive difference. Hearing his perspective — even in an unstructured way — helped me understand where the business/industry is heading.
It helped me write the strategy… but it also made the project feel way more inspiring, personally.
Lesson 2: At a certain point, you need to market to an identity, not a job title.
This ☝️ was, quite possibly, the biggest lesson I took away from this project. It’s completely changed how I approach branding projects.
I wrote about this more extensively a few weeks ago. But the big thing we struggled with on this project was creating a brand and messaging that appealed to both:
→ Creators (like Youtubers) who were just getting started
→ Established enterprise businesses
After a lot of fussing about, I realized the answer wasn’t in the technical details of a product or its features…
… it was in how we wanted to make people feel when they used our product.
Instead of marketing about the product or to a specific job title, we had to look at the bigger benefit — which that our solutions let innovative, ambitious, and entrepreneurial people test out new revenue ideas and scale what sticks.
Check out the other blog post here, which has more details. But suffice it to say, I’m becoming an even bigger fan of emotionally-driven branding.
Lesson 3: ChatGPT is an *amazing* tool during the research phase.
Okay okay, I know. You’re sick of hearing about AI. I’m sick of hearing about AI. I’m sick of talking about this stupid technology.
But this project?? It showed me just how powerful a research tool this shit is.
In particular, I was surprised by how the Design team used it during research:
Figuring out competitors
Evaluating different styles
Coming up with concepts
Testing out archetypes
The lead designer even used it to make this crazy matrix that showed how we were positioned compared to other competitors’ design styles… and what that meant in terms of the big promise we were selling to users.
It honestly blew my mind. It was a really cool way of showing how the visual brand was perceived. I want to write about it more (but want to get his permission, first).
Personally, I didn’t use AI that much.
I tried using it to help me write the strategy… but I don’t know. I’d go through and read the output, and it felt disingenuous. The language was bombastic. It didn’t hit quite the right tone.
It just wasn’t 100% — and with something as high-stakes as a strategy, I didn’t feel comfortable outsourcing the critical thought to the robot overlords.
That said, I did use it a bit for website copy. I also used it to help me pull a bunch of ideas together into a cohesive brand voice guide. (That was really helpful.)
And moving forward? That sucker is going to be a *major* research tool for me.
The big takeaway: Brand strategy is really fun.
This project had a lot of ups and downs. But, I loved almost every second of it.
It helped me understand how brand strategy works once you move out of the startup phase and into the more corporate sphere — and solidified that brand strategy is 10000000% my zone of genius.
It also showed me how valuable it is to work with a team that really cares about what the business is doing — even if they’re external (like myself and the lead designer).
In all: it’s shaping how I set up brand projects at our soon-to-be-launched agency (coming mid July! Ah!).
So if you feel like your brand strategy is stuck…
… or like you just need someone to bounce messaging ideas off of…
Hit reply and let me know. ✌️
I’ve had Fat Freddy’s Drops’ Wairunga concert video on repeat for the last week. I know it’s three years old. I don’t care.
I wrote about how forgetting the fundamentals reminds you about how important they really are.
I’ve spent the last few days at The Next Web conference getting jazzed about the current state of European deep tech. Sat in on a panel from the authors of this report and learned a TON form them.
