

Your brand is not your logo or color scheme, it’s how people think about you - brendan
http://savagethoughts.com/post/5222035873/build-a-great-brand-experience

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alexqgb
Having worked in ad services for many years (to the point where I really can't
stand the words 'brand', 'branding' and 'brand equity') I just think
"reputation" instead. Because that's what it is.

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joshkaufman
"Branding" is an overrated buzzword: <http://personalmba.com/branding-
overrated-buzzword/>

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lessallan
I totally agree! [http://b.lesseverything.com/2010/3/30/brand-is-the-
aftermath...](http://b.lesseverything.com/2010/3/30/brand-is-the-aftermath-of-
your-actions)

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ThomPete
Interface is brand.

(Shameless Plug)

<http://000fff.org/mr-brand-manager-tear-down-this-wall/>

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michaelpinto
I have a background in branding so I don't want to throw cold water on this
post, but you can take things a step further: For a startup your product is
the most engaging aspect of your brand — so get it right.

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faulkner8
From the post:

3\. Creating a genuinely useful product.

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michaelpinto
It's a bit more than a "useful product" — for example an engaging game like
Farmville isn't "useful" but it does quite a bit of brand building within the
product. In many ways you an give software a personality (example:
gamification), and those little touches might not be useful in and of
themselves. A good real world example would be that the old Macs booted up
with an icon of the computer with a smiley face — that wasn't useful but it
was a great brand building exercise. Contrasting with that Acer did the same
thing with their monitors and their logo was so ugly it made the brand cheap.

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faulkner8
I think the product is the obvious part of brand experience and the one that
most startups think is the silver bullet. It isn't...there is no silver
bullet. It is about delighting people every single time they come in contact
with your company.

In a B2C context, the only contact the user may have may be the product in
which case focusing the brand experience around the solely around the product
may make sense.

In a B2B context there are touch points such as support and customer service,
billing, development, etc. Whether you know it or not, you are have the
opportunity to build a relationship with that customer at every single touch
point. If they have an experience that blows them away at every time they come
in contact with your company...this is something that goes way beyond just
having an engaging product. This is something they will want to tell others
about.

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nametoremember
I would have assumed everyone would know this stuff, especially on HN.

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sambeau
<grumpy opinion> A single color scheme is the second-most immature form of
branding, just behind combining initials into a logo. </grumpy opinion>

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vacri
I'm not so sure. At my last company, we sold to four reasonably separate
industries with a small amount of overlap. The four lines of products had
nothing in common to look at - different shapes and styles, different colours.
The marketing department liked the different colours because it made sorting
the propaganda _cough_ sorry, I mean 'info packs' easier. But the effect was
that there was no commonality in the field - a user from one industry crossing
into another would not recognise our equipment.

For the marketing power of unified forms and colour schemes, see Apple. Colour
schemes all by themselves probably aren't enough, but they are a fundamental
part of 'form'.

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sambeau
I don't think you can use Apple to make this point. Apple do not have a
company colour and they just have one very simple logo: an apple (not a weird
union of A, P, L & E). Software gets logos usually in the form of an icon.
Hardware has iconic photography. Icons and logos change with time. This is
sophisticated adult branding.

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skmurphy
Two definitions for brand I find useful:

"relevant differentiated promise"

"your brand is the promise you keep" Kristin Zhivago

