Branding.
It seems like a wildcard in marketing. Some people put lots of weight on it, others don’t.
In general, though, there’s a tendency among mediocre brands to hire an agency, figure out their “brand identity,” and etch it in stone.
Marketers often stick with this initial branding exercise for years and years, even when their businesses change substantially.
Successful brands like Morning Brew don’t do this. Here’s a quick story:
- Morning Brew started out as a finance newsletter called “The Market Corner.” Their logo was a bull and a bear dancing. While this worked, it was hyper-focused on finance people, especially students.
- As they grew, they changed their visual and written identity. The Morning Brew you know today has mass appeal, a wonderful name, and a simple logo: a coffee cup with an arrow going up.
It’s not just Morning Brew: Most successful brands completely overhaul their brand identity as they grow.
There’s a good chance that what worked when you started isn’t the best branding to be using today.
Don’t be too hard on your first branding assets and positioning. Instead, just iterate and evolve.
Plus: Early on, good branding often follows an MVP-like framework, meaning that you don’t need much more than the basics to get running.
Your typography, color scheme, and logo aren’t likely to make or break your business.
So if it’s not perfect, that’s OK. Just make sure to be flexible as you grow to the point where you can pay a design team to improve the work you did on three Red Bulls at 2 a.m.