Do you have an identity? Or just a color palette?
How to give your business a lil oomph.
First off — lots of new faces!
Y’all.
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Something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week:
Some brands have great identities. You feel pulled into their universe when you see one of their posts. There's that ✨ je ne sais quoi ✨ aspect to them.
Others... have color palettes.
As I lean more into brand work (I’ve done four rebrands this year and am working on my 5th), I’m realizing that the difference comes down to three key things:
→ Values.
→ Alignment.
→ Intentionality.
Today, I wanted to break it down for you and explain what I mean.
Values make your brand feel authentic.
I increasingly think that authenticity is going to be one of the biggest competitive advantages a business can have.
In the age of AI, when people are sick of the Internet, and when it’s getting harder to determine what’s real and what’s fake… authenticity in everything you do matters.
So… how do you do it? How do you feel something that “feels real" and “authentic” but which still serves a business purpose?
Honestly: it’s start with your values.
Authenticity is a buzzword. I like Chris Orlob’s definition of it when he said, "Being authentic means you are willing to say things and stick to your guns, no matter what reaction you’re getting,” on Devin Reed’s podcast last year.
And the only way to know if you’re sticking to your guns is to figure out what you care about in the first place. That’s why values matter (and are becoming the first thing I define for my clients):
Plus, values give you the foundation for your business personality (which is really what brand is all about).
Banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions all value stability. They communicate waaay differently than more risk-tolerant brands like MarTech.
Alignment is how you define the brand strategy.
Traditional wisdom in B2B is to separate “strategy” into three separate steps:
→ First you do your positioning.
→ Then you do messaging.
→ Then you do brand.
That sounds nice, and I understand the utility… but as someone who, for the last 10 years, has stepped in to do the brand/execution, I think this three-step process kind of misses the whole point.
My opinion (and let’s be clear, this is just my opinion) is that brand is your positioning and messaging. It’s the strategy incarnate. You want it involved at every step in the process — otherwise your internal team is reading documents that say one thing, but your communications say something entirely different.
I won’t belabor this point too much. If you’re interested in my full thoughts on it, check out this interview I did with Product Marketing Pulse.
But the TL;DR:
→ Your strategy documents should be something you feel comfortable showing the outside world.
→ Your board, leadership, employees, and customers should all be reading the same manifesto.
→ Get writers and designers involved in the process.
^This alignment is how you turn brand into a tool for deliberate, authentic, noteworthy growth — not something you slap on top of a whatever you happen to be doing in the moment.
Intentionality is how you keep things consistent at scale.
My dirty little secret right now is that I’m starting to build a branding agency.
As part of that, I did a ton of work this week on the messaging for the business. What I came up with is this:
Brand isn’t a vanity project. It’s infrastructure.
We believe a strong brand should be the easiest thing to use in your business—not the most confusing.
We’re tired of bloated strategy decks no one reads and expensive design work that looks good in a Figma file but falls apart in the real world. Branding should be a tool for alignment, momentum, and clarity across your company—not a set of rules taped to the wall.
We don’t think in terms of “make it pretty.” We think in systems, levers, and downstream effects. Brand should support sales. It should attract talent. It should scale.
Our job is to help B2B companies get clear, show up sharp, and move faster—not just look the part, but act it too.
(Remember what I said in the alignment section about your internal strategy being something you feel comfortable showing the outside world? This is our strategy. It’s written in an outward-facing way.)
The truth is that brand should feel really easy for everyone in your business to use. I genuinely envision a world where everyone in a company knows how to make an on-brand decision.
I know it’s possible because I’ve lived it. I worked for one of the strongest brands in Amsterdam for a while — and it made a massive difference in employee happiness and effectiveness.
The key? Brand was treated as gospel. It was something that the leadership team truly bought into — and were incredibly intentional about.
Sometimes a color palette is all you need — but a strong identity will help you go further.
Personally, I see brand as a way to Marie Kondo the shit out of your business. When done right, it’s a project that will help you clear out the clutter, find what sparks joy, and move forward with intention.
If you’re looking for help with it, let me know. We’ve got space for a brand project starting in June.
Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
One of the best things Sugarman ever taught? Sell the sizzle, not the steak. In other words: stop selling the product. Start selling the idea.
The product is the steak. The concept—that’s the sizzle. That’s the thing people get excited about. Call it positioning, call it a USP, call it Barry. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re not just pushing features. You’re giving people a reason to care.
Sugarman didn’t sell chess computers. He sold the Soviet Challenge. He turned a pile of plastic and wires into a Cold War face-off. And it worked—20,000 units kind of worked.
Point is: products are boring. Concepts are sticky. Your job is to find the drama. THAT’S what captures attention.
Did you know platypuses don’t have nipples? They basically sweat out their milk — which means the milk has loads of antibacterial properties that could unlock understanding about antibiotic resistance. Just one of the many things I’ve learned reading Platypus Matters by Jack Ashby.
Slo Mo has been on repeat in my house for the last few weeks. I even got a notification yesterday that I’m a top Fat Freddy’s Drop listener.
Interviews Are Dead. Influencers Killed Them. ← this was one of the best video essays I have listened to in a long time.
This was a fantastic read Grace! I'm working through my brand identity right now, and this has given me a lot to think!