Product branding: An octopus?!
There are a lot of difficult aspects to starting a company or launching a product. But one that’s kind of interesting, and I dealt with recently, is branding.
One of the things that’s really difficult to nail when you launch a startup is branding. You’re still discovering your place in the world and so you don’t want to lock yourself into a path or direction that might not ultimately fit with where you’re going. And you kind of want it to reflect your personality and drive the culture.
When we launched the Internet of Insurance, we had to come up with a logo in about an hour for a presentation. So we added this logo to a deck, and it ended up sticking around for over a year and a half:
Not bad for a 60-minute turnaround, and it reflects me to some extent: technical and analytical. I’ve got some GREAT swag sporting this logo too.
But we realized this was coloring our interactions with people. We would get introduced to the IT people at a company, not the business users who need to use it. And users looked at us as a scary, complicated piece of software. It was part of the identity.
So we engaged some superstars from the marketing and branding world who quickly pointed out that it was:
- Unoriginal / unmemorable
- Techy & complicated
- Intimidating
Which was the opposite of our product, which is supposed to be all about:
- Friendly
- Simple
- Fresh and original
And so we set out to replace it. A couple of other ideas we wanted to incorporate into the brand were:
- Connectivity
- Originality (we didn’t want to use anything anyone else was using)
We started with a sketch of connecting agents and carriers:
There were a few great ideas that everyone liked, but ultimately didn’t feel right. Mostly, too derivative of other people:
This one was great, but looks a lot like Palantir.
This one almost won, butt we just didn’t feel it was friendly enough.
Here’s the concept for the winner:
And here’s what resulted:
I won’t sugarcoat it: this was divisive. The winner felt a little shocking internally at first, but at the end of the day it felt the truest to what we were trying to convey. And it’s very, very original (and trademarked! ;) — you can’t get much more unique than an octopus
We made this switch around the beginning of the year and haven’t looked back. And everyone (well, most everyone lol) loves it. The brand was able to turn around the perception of the product with users, which is the thing that matters the most.
Our users, the people who ultimately need to use our system in order for it to add value, are the people who matter most. Our north star for this process was, and still is, what will drive the value when companies use our technology. Ultimately, that’s all that matters.
Lessons learned:
- Be original. Don’t try to copy what worked for someone else.
- Your brand should reflect your product and company. Are you scary and complicated? Or friendly and simple?
P.S. We also get to use this blinking gal in presentations, how fun is that?
And we get to have all kinds of fun with it, check this out!
