* Great Takes Guts *
Brand Strategy For Early Stage Businesses
One size never fits all, never mind fitting anyone. So depending on where you are in the company building journey, brand as output and investment should depend on what adds real value.
So we've structured our approach to meet those common moments. And match the thing Nutter Road does best — branding for times of transition. When bravery is most valuable.
Beyond these stages, aka when you're so established that change is incremental rather than fundamental, you've moved on from Nutter Road.
Brand Inception
Very early stage businesses need an investable, opportunity-driven story. Founders need to prove acceptance and viability of a vision for a business that doesn't exist yet. So while it's critical to look the part, you're mostly selling opportunity — and yourself — at this stage.
Strategically, expect an interrogation of the opportunity and vision. And then a clear narrative about why you are an unmissable bet. A change agent that can scale. A hypothesis to 'return the whole fund'.
Brand Establishment
Once the business has form and fit, it has to compete with the status quo and convince people that different is better. So it's here that you need to exaggerate what separates you from everyone and everything else.
Brand is powerful because it identifies and projects what makes new (ie. you) an irresistible choice, obvious in hindsight. Strategically, expect a rigorous analysis of the status quo, including what matters to potential customers and where the market fails. And then a leap into a new territory.
Rebrand
Brands need to give businesses room to grow. Frame the present but also what and who they're becoming. It's natural that companies outgrow their brand as technology, product, competitors and customers evolve.
Expect to have to make hard decisions about the kind of future you want for yourself. Because unless you choose your future, it will choose for you. Strategically, it starts with deep investigation into where you are and where your offer will go.
Great V Good
There are exactly two types of strategy in this world.
The kind that earns polite nods in boardrooms, and the kind that makes them squirm.
One of these is good, the other is great.
Good is the beige wallpaper of the branding world: responsible, reasonable, repeatable. Good is the strategy that gets approval on the first pass, the one that feels safe, sensible, smart even. Good is what most businesses — and strategy — accept.
Good isn't bad, but it's not Great.
Great is different.
Great gets rejected before it gets revered. It is the strategy that gets laughed out of Monday's meeting and framed on Wednesday's wall. It's the idea that starts as an outrageous proposal and ends up being company policy.
Great doesn't slide into inboxes, it kicks down doors.
Great makes people nervous. It sounds impractical, impossible, even irresponsible — until, suddenly, it's the industry standard. It's the insight competitors try to reverse-engineer, but never quite have the bravery to replicate.
Great isn't easy. It isn't obvious. It isn't even always all that comfortable.
Great takes guts.