People, product, and brand work together to help your company take off. But one of these is chronically neglected in tech.

In the early days, brand can afford to be a byproduct. It is established through the personality of the founder and the excitement around the product. It grows naturally from your reputation.

But as your company grows your brand needs to grow with it.

As Dave Gerhardt, former Chief Brand Officer at Drift and Guest Lecturer at Harvard, points out:

• Brand will help you win deals
• Brand gets you out of the feature wars
• Brand means you’re not battling over a 4.6 vs. 4.7 rating on G2
• Brand gives your sales team clarity about what makes you different

But many tech companies don’t make the most of this. [source]

If you’re the first in your competitive set to build a meaningful brand, you’ll avoid the feature wars and start winning on brand.

Creating meaning

What makes a brand meaningful? It starts with identifying the shared beliefs between your customer and your company – then reflecting these back.

Without this, you’re just another option on their list. But with a clear, powerful brand, you can form a connection with your prospective customers. This gives them a shortcut to making a decision and choosing you.

Shifting the focus

When leading crypto firm GSR launched the GSR Foundation, they aimed to address a power imbalance in philanthropy. The core belief was that the people facing exclusion understand their problems best.

We worked closely with GSR to articulate a brand strategy based on co-creation, learning and shared responsibility for solving inequality. This led to the organising idea “unlocking inequality together”.

This was reflected in a brand identity that reflects both entrepreneurial energy and a balance of seasoned expertise and passionate, unpolished start-ups.

The brand connected deeply with GSR’s mission, aligning with its partners and positioning them as industry leaders telling impactful stories of change.

View the full case study here.

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