Brand is important

Apple, Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz. Huge names, huge brands, and a lot of effort into making it so. Most companies started today don’t put enough effort into creating a significant brand from day one, because there is basically no return on that investment in many, many years, and so it goes into the forgotten drawer, and sadly, never comes out of it. A mistake if you ask me. Brand is not just your logo, your fonts and your colors, it is what people say about you when you are not in the room. And so entrepreneurs should go about it the same way as they do with themselves. Generally, you, as a person, will try to “impress” or “stand out” in some way when you first meet someone, and, the second, third and fourth time you interact with someone. Because you want people to like you, to remember you, to talk highly of you. The same should be true for companies. You should make a great first impression: your logo, colors, fonts, ads, landing page and communication. But you should also make a great second impression, generally that is post purchase. If it is a product you sold this is after they have bought from you, but before they receive the product. Great email communication, interesting email sequencing etc. And then, the third impression is the arrival of the product. This is super important as well. Great shipping times, a cool box, the product look, and of course the functionality of the product. This is generally where the repeat purchase will happen. If you did good here you probably will see the customer returning to buy again. And then you have to provide the same experience over again. In the inter, there should be a lot of communication with the customer to make sure that they remember you, that they remember you fondly. The fourth impression if you will. This is a great brand. Because if you do all of the above correctly, not only will they become a regular customer, they will recommend you to their friends, or anyone that asks. And those friends are basically free for you. No ad cost, nothing. And that is great, and good business.

Generally I think brands are created with two important things. Experience and consistency. Consistency in the product and consistency in the overall experience. McDonalds is a stellar example here. You always get the same. It might not be the best burger around, but if you go to a McDonalds in New York or in Mexico City you will get the same tasting BigMac.

A brand should also stand for something. It can’t be generic. No one remembers generic. You need to take a stand, something you will fight for. By doing so, followers who believe in your mission will also be much more powerful and help you along the way. In a more personal example, at Crema, creating a brand that stood out was always important. Always thinking about how design, product, communication and details and how they played their own parts in our brand alongside our mission to be a truly freelancer focused platform that stood up for freelancers, fighting for them. We saw an opportunity in being such a brand because most other platforms didn’t really care. They cared more about the businesses and making sure they were happy and taken care of and leaving freelancers to their own. By being “their” brand, we created a much more powerful brand, which in turn created loyalty.

Right now, I am creating a supplements brand that will be unique. Unique in the way we think about positioning, unique in our customers, and unique in the way we present our brand. The experience has to be flawless. A beautifully designed eCommerce store, a beautifully designed logo, packaging and experience. And then, fast shipping times, cool unboxing experience, and cool communication. The distribution also is something we think about in terms of brand, and it is an integral part of our branding. What channels, messaging and uniqueness is all part of it. With the imminent entry of TikTok Shop to Mexico, we know that this channel will be our entrance point and we are preparing for it intensely. Finding creators, providing brand guidelines, scripts, everything we need. Everything will be part of the brand, and that is how we are thinking about this creation.

Thinking about brand on day 0 should then be super important. I’m not talking about creating the most incredible logo ever. I am talking about the Brand. The experience of what it is like to interact with your product. In todays day and age, where you can create technology products in a matter of hours, the brand becomes much more important that it maybe has been in the minds of most. It becomes a differentiator that you can leverage. It becomes important to not fall in the trap of putting it in the forgotten drawer, because if you do, some other brand will come and take your lunch.

Anyways, as we are creating this new brand, I wanted to share my thoughts on why it is important to think about on day 0. Hope you like it.

Cheers,