How to Build a Brand

A long time ago, I started a document that I called, “How to do your job.” It’s a perpetually open tab of lessons that I’ve picked up along the way, compressed into the shortest thought I can manage. Most of them are just for me, but these I’m happy to share. In no particular order, here’s how I think great brands are built.

Marketing breakthroughs are driven by message. Experience breakthroughs are driven by design.

Deciding to approve brand work is either “strong yes” or “no.” You have to love it before the customer will.

Brand is about building from strength to strength. Worship your core differentiators and core customers.

Establish key narratives and align all brand work to support them. Discipline.

Brand marketing must underline a company belief or product value, not just a customer experience.

Avoid a rebrand without an offering breakthrough. Improve elements one at a time instead.

Generally, solve to get others to do your branding work vs entirely in-house creative.

Always the first problem to solve: How will we get and keep their attention?

There has to be a messy, ambiguous phase of most creative projects. Tolerate it.

Customer service is your friend. The core customer and next campaign insight is in their hands.

“The basics” are never enough to have a breakthrough, yet they must be done.

No prototype, no meeting.

Better to exceptionally grow with acceptable work than vice versa. Creatives won’t like this.

Get the agency earlier than you think you need it. Don’t need an agency desperately.

Attach internal creatives to agency partners. Everyone ends up happier.

Always have a maverick on the team, and one from another team to provoke yours. Do not hire multiple mavericks.

Partner with performance marketing. Make them a stakeholder. They are not anti-brand.

Find a freelance deck designer. Don’t keep tasking in-house design with decks for leadership.

If there’s no timeline and budget, it won’t happen. Align on both before projects begin.

Having the CEO/founder love the brand work is essential, even if they tell you otherwise.

Showing intentionality behind creative choices is as important as the choices themselves.

No one cares about the brand as much as you think they do, but it still has to be perfect.

The agency will not tell you your story. They will tell you if it will work or not, and make it great.

Define the goals at the start and make them measurable. Reject the “brand is not a science” myth.

Then make a model of how the plan will get you there — monthly, not quarterly.