Brand vs. Product? How to rethink your approach to growth.
Brand Experience & User Experience aren’t separate entities in opposition—more so like the human brain, with a left and right side.
Focus on brand or focus on product.
I’ve struggled with this tug of war often.
The real issue is that it’s a made-up dichotomy.
These two strategies aren’t separate entities. They’re more like the human brain, with a left and right side. Like sun and water for a budding seed.
In fact, when you focus on product in the right ways: putting users first, you end up building a beautiful trellis for your brand to grow on and produce from.
Yet as product designers, we have a tendency to over-obsess over systems, components, and pixel spacing.
It’s what makes us valuable to our teams, but we need balance.
This product-first mindset comes up short when it fails to reflect brand values and mission in the product.
Hello, brand strategy, my old friend. (sung to the melody of ‘The Sound of Silence’)
At Brave People, we describe brand strategy as how you show up and to whom, not just what you show.
By aligning your product design roadmap with your brand strategy, you create product experiences that not only meet your customers’ needs but reflect your brand’s visual and verbal identity to the world.
In the same breath, brand building activities without the anchor of a thoughtful, well-designed product can lead to a bait and switch experience for your audience.
Anyone been there?
Really slick website, compelling messaging, logo-envy — but when you schedule that first product demo it’s like a completely different company showed up.
The interface looks like an Excel spreadsheet with buttons on it.
No intention behind the architecture, no investment in user delight.
The bottom line:
Brand and Product are an inseparable pair to healthy company function.
If done with intention, focusing on product *is* focusing on brand, and vise versa.
Forget choosing sides.
It’s the balanced whole that separates the great from the good.
About Brave People
We help our client partners look ahead to what doesn’t yet exist by bringing their digital products to life and driving shared value for everyone involved. Through our tailored engagement models, growing organizations have the power to scale their design and technology support up or down based on short and long-term business needs.
