

Ask HN: Lean methodologies and Brand frameworks? - decentrality

In the HN startup &quot;scene&quot; it seems like a lot of entrepreneurs use &quot;Lean&quot; methodologies, but stumble on Brand development, or have a million ways to skin that cat semi-arbitrarily.<p>Does anyone know of a standardized framework and language for Brand that aligns with and expands on Lean methodology?
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laurabusche
Thanks for opening this fascinating discussion @decentrality. Sean's structure
(which has clearly emerged from practice) coincides with the Lean Branding
book's perspective on brand building, measurement and learning.

I wanted to share how my perspective weighs in on the "semantics debate", and
it is a product of both my academic and consulting experiences. I studied
business (undergraduate), design management (graduate) and psychology
(doctoral) to arrive at an integral definition of brand that would incorporate
both business objectives (which in the startup world often translate to
traction and conversion) and consumer psychology. After looking at these
definitions theoretically, I began doing consulting work for politicians,
government institutions, and companies of all sizes in South America. In
particular, I led a Lean Branding program for 303 entrepreneurs (97 tech
startups) over the last 3 years to arrive at a framework that would
effectively help practitioners "that need this muddy water cleared to be able
to aggregate their values"(like you pointed out). After all, it is a matter of
pragmatism: we need to understand this in order to capitalize on it. That's
exactly why I wrote this book.

These experiences shaped my definition of brand, which is described in the
book as "the unique story that consumers recall when they think of you. This
story associates your product with their personal stories, a particular
personality, what you promise to solve, and with your position in relation to
competitors. Your brand is represented by your visual symbols, and feeds from
multiple conversations where you must participate strategically."

There are four key aspects to the definition that the Lean Branding book
proposes:

\- It embraces consumer co-creation: your brand does not exist in isolation.
It is shaped by consumer perception. \- It is story-centered: consumers recall
your brand as an holistic story- the sum of both experiences AND symbols.
(Coinciding with Sean here) \- It highlights empathy: consumers look for your
brand because of what it can do for them (how your value story connects with
THEIR personal stories). \- It allows for iteration (a dynamic brand): the
brand feeds from multiple, ongoing conversations (about its value).

The most commonly known definition of brand comes from the American Marketing
Association: "A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature
that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other
sellers." As you've probably noticed, it is focused on identity and assets.

The Lean Branding book's definition is closest to Seth Godin's, which is: "A
brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that,
taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or
service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a
voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word,
then no brand value exists for that consumer."

I'd be happy to answer any questions via Twitter (@laurabusche, @leanbranding)
or email laura@laurabusche.com

Lean Branding is out now (Amazon, Barnes and Noble & O'Reilly) and I'd love to
hear your thoughts.

Thanks for opening this thread.

My very best,

LB

~~~
decentrality
Thanks a lot for your very detailed reply, especially digging into the
semantics debate of you and Beard vs. Gardner.

Since I began this thread, after I invited Ries to weigh in, I wrote this on
Medium to expand further on where Beard's ideals lead me, as I think through
The Lean Brand. I'd really appreciate it if you could weigh in on that also (
here or there is fine ) when you have another moment:

[https://medium.com/@DonovanKeme/brand-as-relationship-vs-
inf...](https://medium.com/@DonovanKeme/brand-as-relationship-vs-
influence-376e8b6dce95)

In the meantime, since you and Gardner both obviously spent a small eternity
each on thinking through a definition or contemporary usage of the word Brand,
it seems like that comes through most of all in your reply. As someone who
appreciates etymology deeply, which I always keep in mind -- I'll continue
searching for a framework and language for Brand, thinking out loud about your
definition, for you to respond on also. I feel very fortunate to have an
author of one of the two books who seem to be vying for the term itself here!

[http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=brand](http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=brand)

Circa 1400, the word, used as a verb, included the meaning of 'to stigmatize'
and by 1600 included the meaning of 'mark property' and 'mark criminals' both
as verbs; then as a noun, before the 1550's its meaning included being a piece
of burning word, then 'mark made by hot iron' which expanded to 'a particular
make of goods' ( which coincides to what I read in The Lean Brand, taking
about the Golden Spike in 1869, where Gardner claimed the current use of the
word Brand is still at that point, which you seem to sustain? ). Only in 1992
did it include the meaning "brand name" which is itself a sustainer of the
1869 usage also.

My point is, words change dramatically in meaning, especially considering
circa 1400 the verb usage was the exact opposite of what we mean now, like
many other English words have done over time. So in searching for a language
and framework as a standard, the existing definition, or the loudest shouted
definition doesn't necessarily answer what I need. If this were 1868 and we
had never seen a train traveling across the continent, we wouldn't even need
the existing definitions you listed -- so as we stand at 2014 at the threshold
of Alibaba vs. Amazon, and The United States Digital Services, plenty of
totally free services such as this one, Hacker News and Twitter where you
joined from, there is quite possibly an entirely different context for the
word now.

I didn't anticipate so much depth coming to my question so fast, otherwise I'd
have mentioned that my personal situation as an innovator is the development
of transmedia technologies, meaning that ( for perspective ) I come from a
world where hackers in high school at the same time with me, are now 10 years
later creating global organizations whose brands involve literal billions of
individuals, and are valued at literal billions, whether created in their
garage or in a skyscraper or bunker underground. There is another context for
the word brand now, and if one or a few people began from the premise of
influence as Beard seems to say, and as you seem to sustain, there would be a
problem I feel, in my approach to the question: why would I need to persuade
the entire world of something? Why would I want to? Wouldn't I want to work
within a sub-set of that world, and invite that sub-set into my offering? I
cannot and would not want to scale to the size of accommodating the planet,
unless my brand itself is to provide something intangible or automatic. Even
then, the relationship rather than the influence would be my focus, because as
we see over and over with the Google complaints and a litany of others
regarding privacy, influence is the exact thing being purged from the
groundswell definition and usage of Brand. For me, until I read The Lean
Brand, the word Brand was heading back to 'to stigmatize' in my feelings about
it.

So with all that said, I am very curious to hear your reply to my musing on
Medium linked above.

And from what I gather, Gardner is out of the country, and from what I've
heard, his book is being released October 8th, so he probably will be hard to
get, but Brant Cooper seems to be in the United States and might be available.
I hope one or both of them can come address your thoughts and mine. Like Beard
and Wilkins said, this is an extremely important topic, and I am so glad for
your time.

------
seanrrwilkins
It's true, defining what "branding" is can be all over the place. But the
simple way to look at brand is it's the mix of identity(logo) and
story(content). Your #1 job is to make the story clear and actively promote
it. Over time you'll be able to train your audience to use this story to share
with their network.

From a Lean POV(not sure that this aligns 100%) I have a couple notes for you
on the structures I've used with previous clients. It's the simple path of
hypothesis, test, iterate, optimize.

The end goal here is to gather real "data" in the form of your users'/target
audience's own words to help clearly define a core brand story/positioning
statement they can internalize and share with their networks.

Hypothesis: Company X is a (what/label) that (why/benefits) by (how/features).

I use this as a general guide to get the core keywords of the brand story.

Audience Testing: the goal is to test the hypothesis and answer two basic
questions. 1) Is this compelling? Do people give a shit about this and would
they buy it? 2) Is this clear? Do they quickly understand the statement and
internalize it? Or do they have follow-up questions?

Data Sources: This is the footwork. Gather feedback on that statement to from
random samples of your target demo on the street. Ask them to repeat it back?
What words do they use? Do email surveys to your network and contacts, always
include an opt-in at the end to note if they're okay with a follow-up call for
more direct input. Phone calls/interviews, some paid FB ad testing. I say FB
b/c it's generally been cheaper and quicker for feedback for me than AdWords.

Note: I try to record as much of this as possible, and have a partner to take
notes if I'm on a call or interview. The unfiltered verbatim comments are what
to use in your revisions.

Iterate: based on the data gathered, make revisions to the core statement and
retest. I typically go 3-4 rounds before getting solid on something. Expect
about 30-60 days to execute depending on your resources.

Core Brand Statement: once you've tested and finalized, you'll have a
compelling and clear brand statement that effectively uses your audience's own
words. It's time to actively work this into the balance of your marketing
across your site content and other channels.

Don't just sit back now. Actively tell that story. Use it to share al your
marketing, PR, brand-aligned partnerships, etc. And keep testing. New data
sources will be A/B LP testing, content metrics, social engagement metrics,
etc.

If you've got other questions, I'm happy to chat. Email is in my profile.

~~~
decentrality
Thanks for your in-depth insights Sean! Followed you on Twitter, only to
discover you are stalked by @FAKEGRIMLOCK, illustrator of The Lean Brand. No
matter where I go, Jeremiah or The Lean Brand seems entrenched.

Your structure/formula is really valuable, I appreciate you sharing your
personal way: Hypothesis, Audience Testing, Data Sources, Iteration /
Perpetually Refined Core Statement. That seems to share a lot with The Lean
Brand. Where that book goes further though, is into an Ecosystem of integrated
aspects of organizations: Culture, Product, and Brand. Culture keeps together
the Product and Brand inside the Organization, Product keeps the Culture and
Brand ( externalized Organization ) relevant to the Audience, and Brand is the
Organization and Audience relationship itself ( interestingly, including
Vendors, Competitors, Employees, etc ). I'd be interested in your comments on
The Lean Brand once it comes out, so I'd extend to you the same offer I made
Bill -- if you'll do a write-up for HN, I'll gladly buy you the book to hear
your opinions and learn from your experience.

Your formula/structure sounds very tried and true, but so far the only
"standard" of any kind I've found has been The Lean Brand, including all
aspects of internal and external thought, action, feelings, etc -- Let me know
on Twitter, and I'll follow up with you on this.

By the way, impressive track record!

------
jeremiahgardner
I love that this discussion is happening. I think there are certainly more
points we agree than disagree on. The entire concept of “lean branding” is
such new territory, we should first think of ourselves as allies more than
protecting our own dogmatic definitions, ideas or positions.

With that said…

IMO, customers absolutely think about brand as relationship. “I love
Lululemon…I hate Toyota…I am an ‘Apple guy.’” As Laura said, “your brand does
not exist in isolation.” This is very true.

We relate to organizations in the same way we do with people (which is where
the whole ‘corporate personhood' argument was generated). We have deep
expectations, emotional connection, and preference about which organizations
we choose to be in a relationship with, and which we choose to ignore or treat
with ill-will (to Bill’s point).

Branding shouldn’t be about trying to influence that relationship through
clever wordplay, coercion, or beautiful “symbols." These things are lie on the
surface of a much bigger and more meaningful depth - the relationship. More to
the point, it’s not YOUR brand…it’s shared.

The best copywriting, logo design, brand positioning statement, and so on are
completely meaningless without a connection to an audience – which is the
relationship.

Instead, branding should be about trying to build a relationship based on co-
creation, co-participation, and co-value. Which is to say, that the point of
“branding” is to discover the shared value (emotional impact, shared
aspirations, shared journey).

Which is to Brant’s point, "How do you discover and create a lean value stream
that purposefully creates "satisfaction" from the product utility and
"passion" from the emotional impact the entire organization delivers.”

That’s the key question. That’s what any discussion about lean branding should
address.

Shameless community plug: the community around The Lean Brand (which has been
out for a while) is tackling these questions together with innovation,
intelligence, and an incredible amount of enthusiasm.

------
brantcooper
Regardless of how you define brand, most of us appear to agree that the world
has changed and so branding itself needs re-branding. I think all the
responses here address that with viable viewpoints. The mistake would be --
just as with implementing lean startup on the product side -- is to believe
that there's a silver bullet or "one right way."

The key is to digest the principles and eventually 'make them your own', so
that you develop products, services and yes, brand, that are true to your
values and authentic.

There are a lot of variables at play here, not the least of which is, how
"disruptive" is your startup endeavor? If you are truly disrupting a market or
turning an existing market on its head, your methods around brand development
differ versus re-segmenting [Steve Blank] an existing market, or merely re-
branding an existing market, or creating new markets within the innovation
efforts of existing large enterprises.

IMO, to think that a brand definition is owned by the consumer is as foolhardy
as to think it's owned by the business. This is why it's a relationship: it's
two sided; it encompasses both the promise of the product plus the emotional
impact the customer hopes to achieve with her relationship to the
organization.

This is pretty straightforward, actually. And, by the way, measurable.
Customers don't share, endorse, show-off, or refer products they are satisfied
with. And yet, products themselves most often can't achieve an emotional
impact beyond 'satisfaction.' So what's the difference between brands that
satisfy and those that generate passion?

This is what The Lean Brand tackles. How do you _discover_ and create a lean
value stream that purposefully creates "satisfaction" from the product utility
and "passion" from the emotional impact the entire organization delivers.

------
writebeard
Thanks for including me on this. Thanks Adrian for the kind words. I think
Adrian and I are in broad agreement as well.

I've spoken to Gardner, he's a good guy. But he and I have some fundamental
differences in opinion. Admittedly, some of it is semantics, but when you're
talking about branding, I think semantics are critical.

-To me, a brand is the emotional associations a customer has with a product/organization. Branding is our attempt to influence the customer into that desired emotional state. Hence, not really a relationship. (Adrian's point about a brand not being a logo, etc., is critical and something many people don't understand.)

-I hesitate to call a brand a relationship, because that's not how a customer thinks, or ever will think. It's our job to build that emotional association. Also, ultimately, the customer gets to decide what the brand is (if we drop the ball).

-To your point that started this thread, traditional branding processes don't work for lean orgs. Take too much time, too much money, don't provide any strategy or flexibility when encountering change (!), contain too many rules, limit your teams' ability to creatively solve problems in real-time. Loved adrian's point about the golf course.

Happy to chat offline (or a hangout, or whatever) about this. Also, I'm
working on a short summary of my interpretation of Lean Branding, will share
when it's done.

~~~
decentrality
WOW: Thanks for creating an account on HN to even reply to this thread :)

I'm excited to hear your opinions, probably even have a video conversation
once you've read The Lean Brand, because to me it seems like semantic gaps are
extremely unfortunate for not only businesses, but non-profit organizations
that need this muddy water cleared to be able to aggregate their values.

On your points so far, having my copy of the book already, Jeremiah
differentiates between Brand and Branding. Yes, there is the influence piece,
but I wonder if there isn't a deeper priority difference and not only
semantic. If you're in a relationship, don't you want the best for the other?
And if your product is the best, don't you want your relationships to benefit
from that? Seems more natural than "sales" or getting a customer to a desired
state. In my view of influence, versus manipulation, there is a leadership
aspect which is interested in the best of another, versus merely having an
agenda.

So depending on your idea of relationship, or your priorities, I see the
semantic gap not existing. Does that make sense for you? If your idea is
creating value, emotional and functional, and you are passionate about sharing
the best you know with everyone you know, influence falls away and branding
remains. The Lean Brand as a framework has ways of diagnosing passion and
amplifying it, which is what I was looking for. As an entrepreneur I want
organic connections that deepen, and to create awareness, but not create
connections per se. If people share my values, we're connected. And if I
listen, like we do in relationships, I will know the values of my audience and
might need to learn to value the same thing or just exile myself from that
audience. If I don't meet the need naturally, I should axe my product and
choose another problem to solve, not work harder to get my customer into a
certain emotion about me.

I am excited to think more about this with you. Brand seems to be where so
much is decided in the success of organizations. Seeing even the possibility
of a FRAMEWORK for this nightmarish world of Brand changed my life as a
visionary beyond any other change I've experienced literally in decades.

------
writebeard
Something to consider: I don't know much about about Laura, but I anticipate
my perspective on the subject to be slightly different from those two books in
that I worked as an ACD/Copywriter on LeanUX and Agile Dev teams in a startup,
and was in charge of maintaing the brand. (We noticed early that the brand was
going to suffer using Lean if we weren't careful.)

That's where we developed my version of Lean Branding, so I assume it's a
little more in the trenches and focuses more on the day-to-day building and
curation side, and (total assumption) may be more actionable. I think they
both approach it from more of a strategy perspective.

(These are assumptions based on observations, and I'm not saying either
perspective has more value, just that they're likely going to be different.)

~~~
decentrality
[http://zesty.io](http://zesty.io) and
[http://bufferapp.com](http://bufferapp.com) both faced that too, in the book
( case studies ), and that is my biggest problem with Lean myself, as a
developer/entrepreneur.

Your experience sounds relevant to my situation, so again, thanks for going
down this road on HN for the good of Brand and us visionary types who need to
really understand this.

------
adrianhoward
I don't think there's a "standard" however you might want to poke at some or
all of.

* The upcoming book on branding in the O'Reilly "Lean" series [http://www.leanbranding.com/](http://www.leanbranding.com/)

* Bill Beard has been doing some thinking / workshops about the topic. There are some links to his talks on [http://www.writebeard.com/](http://www.writebeard.com/)

* My session from Lean UX NYC last year [http://www.slideshare.net/adrianh/leanuxnyc-leanbranding](http://www.slideshare.net/adrianh/leanuxnyc-leanbranding) (probably doesn't make any sense without me rambling in front of it ;-)

~~~
decentrality
Excellent links, thank you! I haven't heard of any of those. I will look into
each.

The only one I've found myself so far is:
[http://leanbrandbook.com/](http://leanbrandbook.com/)

That is also in the pre-order stage right now, so I ordered that since it does
claim to have a framework and language.

Since you've spoken on Lean UX, I'm curious to know your impression of what
Lean Branding could have over The Lean Brand.

Have you read an advanced reading copy of either book?

[ updated: ]

I wish your talk was available by video, yeah. I've gone through it though.
Well done!

It seems like Lean Branding ( the book ) and your talk on Lean Branding seem
to have a different definition of Brand than The Lean Brand and Bill Beard do
( only lightly reading through Beard so far ) ... the difference being Brand
as Relationship and Brand as Identity.

But as I go through your talk, you seem to use a lot of the same terminology
as The Lean Brand, and have the same core focus, compared to Lean Branding.

~~~
adrianhoward
I've not had the time to poke at either of the books — so not competent to
explain/judge differences ;-)

Bill and I talked about branding a bit after my talk last year and I _think_
we were in broad agreement — but his content background means he has a much
better grasp of it at that end. Bill's a lovely chap (@writebeard on twitter)
and will be happy to answer questions I'm sure. You might also find his video
from this years Lean UX NYC of interest — but it's more on the content side
[https://vimeo.com/94016584](https://vimeo.com/94016584)

I'm not really a "brand" person (I'm about 50/50 dev & UX) — my talk was
really more about my experiences of what worked and didn't work rather than a
manifesto or process. My broad points were:

* Busting the common misconception that "branding" was just about visual aspects (logo, style guide, etc.)

* That brand was an expression/aspect of product/market fit

* That rebranding is a kind of pivot.

* The large ad agency model of how to develop brands don't work with lean startup environments coz they're used to be being brought in to sell existing products where p/m fit is, to a large extent, already set. When it comes to p/m fit the Mad Men are on the green of the 18th hole. The branding folk for startups are still driving to the golf course and think they're playing cricket.

* That there are a whole bunch of folk in the branding/marketing world who have been saying smart things about the relationship between product, market and brand — and we should be making friends with them and paying attention.

* That bringing in branding/marketing folk early on makes sense and thinking of your brand as something that evolves and needs to be tested is a sensible approach.

Like I said though. I don't class myself as an expert on the brand stuff ;-)

~~~
decentrality
The more I look into this, there seems to be a polarity between
[http://jeremiahgardner.com](http://jeremiahgardner.com) and
[http://laurabusche.com](http://laurabusche.com) when it comes to what Brand
even is. It seems I'm becoming increasingly dependent on the language of The
Lean Brand, so I want to be certain.

I stumbled onto [http://theleanbrand.com](http://theleanbrand.com) during it's
crowd publishing pre-sale, which made the pre-order on Amazon possible. I was
desperate to clarify Brand for my self, so I bought it. But it has turned
everything on its head for me, like the Pivot you mention.

I was like a mole coming out of its hole into sunlight, hence this broader
question on HN. I appreciate your insight into not only concepts but people in
Brand. Your Agency Model comments and p/m/b fit comments read like sections of
The Lean Brand, hence my curiosity on whether we can make a wider HN question
of who is right between Laura and Jeremiah, since I am so new to this.

On Twitter I'll ask if you and Bill would do a comparison of The Lean Branding
and Lean Branding for us on HN, if I bought you both the eBook to go through.
Bill seems closer to Jeremiah than to Laura, but without a standard to offer
beyond great observations.

After reading through what I have in The Lean Brand, specifically the Early
Adopter copy and early-release of a Chapter before that, I can't understand
how the issue of a standard for Brand, or even a sane way of using the word
hasn't come around until now. I am wondering how people like you and Bill
would approach it, with The Lean Brand in mind, since you seem to know about
Lean Branding already ( at least enough to recommend it ) ... I'd value your
perspective since I am 50/50 Coder & Entrepreneur myself.

