Brand is behavior
B2B companies are looking towards brand building to improve their product and create a cohesive experience from end-to-end. But no B2B company has figured this out. Here's a start.
You’re about to read a presentation I gave during a work onsite. The room was filled with approximately 100 people, mostly engineers. My task was to enroll them in the long game of building a brand as part of our next growth phase.
I was not joking when I told myself I could be out of a job if the idea didn't resonate. Building and imbuing a brand into the product and every function of the organization is still a puzzle for many companies. Some B2C companies like Duolingo and Spotify have fused their brand and products beautifully, but B2B companies haven’t mastered it yet.
Many rebranding efforts focus on superficial changes like updating the logo and homepage. Rarely does the work extend beyond these surface artifacts. It is nothing more than a pretty paint job. It’s the equivalent of someone wearing a Gucci tracksuit—you look interesting, but it doesn’t mean you are interesting.
I hope this essay will open up a new perspective. If the rebrand ends up being a superficial makeover—rather than a shift in how the company prioritizes products/features and decision-making—it will have the shelf life of a banana.
In B2B, the product is the brand. The real challenge is in building a brand that extends beyond the product. B2B companies often fall into a features war—a competitor does X, so your company tries to one-up it, only to be outpaced months later.
This isn’t a winning strategy. There is too much competition and not much real innovation these days. Tech, like Hollywood, is in a recycled and stagnant culture. So, how do you win over customers if every company has similar products and features? The only way to win is to build a brand. To stand for something. To earn your place as a leader in the category. To have an opinion about the world and where it’s headed. And for the product experience to be irresistible, elegant, and useful.
A brand strategy serves as a foundation for decision-making. It’s guardrails for what you won’t do for money.
The next frontier for many companies (who have reached PMF and/or late-stage growth) is merging the product and brand. Functions, features, and experiences must be cohesive, consistently delivering the same promise and story over time—the same feeling everywhere you go, from the ad you saw on LinkedIn to the in-product experience to the pop-up event in another country.
When brand influences EPD and product roadmaps, you invest in features that advance the mission and vision rather than trying to one-up the competitors. You create your edge and expand it. When you’re stuck in a features war, it’s a race to mediocrity, and whoever has the most money often wins.
The best part? If competitors try to copy your brand, they dig their own grave. Because what they’re building is not authentic to the products, company vision, who they are, and who they seek to change. Remember those illustration styles from 2015 of floating people to make a brand appear “human”? Time will expose their foolishness, and the market will treat them as they deserve.
As my former boss, Brian Collins, taught me, a brand must answer two questions: What do you believe? How will you behave?
Building a brand—nurturing and evolving it over time—is a long-term endeavor to create something iconic, memorable, and loved. It's an ongoing game of making progress and delivering what customers need. While campaigns and other tactics might move the needle, building a brand can propel the industry and category into new realms. It is the only path towards word-of-mouth. You begin to anticipate and answer questions your customers didn’t know how to ask. That’s when you’re a leader.
There aren't enough knowledgeable, experienced executive-level experts leading these projects. The merger of brand and product to create memorable, cohesive, and resonant experiences is largely untapped.
Please enjoy, and don't hesitate to comment if you have any questions or are experiencing similar challenges at your company. And tell your boss about me.
Reminder: this is not about frameworks on how to imbue brand into everything the company does. I would have to charge 100x more for it. It’s the pre-talk to help people learn that a brand is not just a logo and homepage. It’s about behaviors. Behaviors reflect beliefs that customers feel, scrutinize, and care about. They will champion you or destroy you.
For most of history, yes, the association of a brand was a logo.
These logos signified quality. They represented a standard, a shared feeling, and a story that could spread from person to person.
The Industrial Revolution led to massive improvements in manufacturing and the need for wider communications. The post-World War II era was another transformative time in product manufacturing, capitalism, and communications.
During this time, a brand was limited to static posters, billboards, magazines, newspapers, and radio ads.
A logo is a vessel for a story. During this time, the story was about quality, and that story was transferred from neighbor to neighbor. People likely chose the products because of proximity or heritage.
Today, people pick because of identity and belonging.
Do people like me use products like this?
“Fundamentally, branding is a profound manifestation of the human condition. It is about belonging.” — Wally Olins
This was the era of what I call BRAND AS LOGO.
Enter: Television.
The dramatic shift of television expanded the edges of brands and the types of communications that could reach—and stir emotions—in people.
Now, stories can spread faster. They’re more visual and engaging. It’s new technology, so everyone wants it and will do what they can to get one.
This supercharged capitalism and introduced a culture of mass consumption. It also created counter-cultures because groups of people could see how other people behaved and wanted to push back.
Television democratized cultures. It allowed everyday people to aspire to something bigger than themselves and to learn about different ways of living and belonging.
We are social animals. Television was a culture’s grand mirror to reflect all the possibilities of a thriving and growing country. Television and advertising took brands to another level where they became more than just a logo.
And for a very long time, this was the measure of a brand.
You bought ads, became famous, gained market share, and made money.
It’s no wonder why so many advertising and marketing folks think building a brand is about running ads.
It used to be—but not anymore. You are not Coca-Cola.
Apple’s “Think Different” campaign was ahead of its time because it placed its brand in the eyes of a culture of geniuses, makers, and innovators—even though more than 50% of the people in this image never used an Apple computer or knew about one, probably because they were dead.
Before television, the brand was a logo. People bought it because it represented a standard of quality.
Because of television, brands influenced not just a singular culture—there is no such thing—but the creation of many different cultures. Counter-cultures. Niche cultures. Weird cultures. Fringe cultures. Ephemeral cultures. Popular cultures.
Brands as identification and belonging, paired with television and mass advertising/communications, created the world we’re in today. Where the belief that an Apple computer makes you more creative. Wearing Jordan sneakers can make you perform better on the court. A specific cigarette makes you more manly or not.
”Humans like to think of themselves as special and different from one another. Some people like to think of themselves not only as special and different but also better than others. We almost always used ‘things’ as a way to identify ourselves and to identify others.”— Dori Tunstall
Tattooing, one of the earliest forms of branding, is just another representation of our human condition.
What tribe do you belong to? Where are you on the ladder? How do I treat you? Are you like me or like them?
Branding is a way to belong and be seen, for good and for ill.
Supreme started as a skating brand, then positioned itself with status and celebrity culture. Shirts went from $20 to $100+. The anxiety that a teenager feels standing in line hoping to get some Supreme merch to look cool to his friends is the same anxiety that drives a middle-aged 40-year-old man to pay 10x the box price for a hammer or skateboard.
Below is a regular basketball court.
This is an arena of victory.
One court attracts a certain kind of basketball player. It enables a specific kind of experience. Those who see the logo know the story and expect an experience that wouldn’t occur on the other court.
As my former boss Brian Collins famously quipped:
“A brand is a promise performed consistently over time.”
And here we are today.
Look up any branding exercise or framework, and you’ll usually get an image of Post-Its on walls and stock imagery of corporate suits smiling at their screens.
A whole wave of charlatans are selling bullshit ideas to people who don't know any better. Brand exercises are summarized in a seven-step process. A logo can be created in just minutes! You can acquire a certification from people who, if you research the instructors or institution, have no earned expertise to be selling you knowledge like this.
No wonder “branding” as a discipline and practice is fragmented, why so many companies fail, and why creators are led down the wrong paths. It’s no wonder why the real brand builders are at agencies and rarely, if ever, share their knowledge and processes.
A great brand extends far beyond the logo and is being built far differently than before.
Companies struggle to connect the dots between their product, marketing, brand, community, and sales. On one hand, most executives don’t have the experience or vision. On the other, many companies think of a brand as aesthetics—and not behavior—the project usually dies when launched.
Think of a brand as a concoction of elements.
So, remember…
Brand is not just a logo.
Brand is not just your illustrations.
Brand is not just your typeface.
Brand is not just your website and homepage.
BRAND IS BEHAVIOR.
How you behave reflects what you believe. Decisions are not made on a whim but rather from your values, your strategy, what you stand for. Building a brand is insanely hard because it requires cooperation, collaboration, creativity, and focus.
Take a look at these four companies.
All of them are about investing, spending, saving, or receiving money. How do they stand out? Make specific things for specific customers?
I want to highlight Cash App, how they built a different brand, and all their expressed behaviors.
Why didn’t Venmo or other brands do the same thing? Well, probably because it wasn’t part of their mission or values. Cash App built a unique brand, specifically uplifting underserved and low-income communities that lacked banking access. Cash App had a point of view about money and crypto that others didn’t. Their behaviors—sponsorships, partnerships, campaigns, and product features like easy banking and getting paid 2 days earlier—all resonate to serve their customer base.
Another example!
We know what these companies sell. All very great products and quality.
But we also know which one has a point of view on the world and stands for something: Patagonia.
I’m not saying the other brands are bad—they have made great efforts in sharpening their messaging and point of view—but let’s be real: Patagonia was first. Not only first, they were consistent over time, delivered on their promises, and got other brands to sit up straight and follow through.
I love the story of CVS. A perfect example of organizational transformation, good behaviors, and ultimately, incredible growth for the business.
CVS started the rebrand in 2013 with the agency Siegal and Gale. One of the biggest decisions was to stop selling cigarettes—a potential loss of $2 billion a year.
“This is the right thing to do.” I can only imagine how difficult the conversations were to make this change.
From that point on, they made a series of good decisions. They behaved according to their strategy and values.
The result?
From nowhere near the top 10 companies in the world to earning their rank nine years later.
I had to close the presentation with a good laugh.
Last example!
A story in three acts about brand is behavior.
Imagine they abandoned the core audience that made OnlyFans the greatest creator platform, beating the Patreons and YouTubes and their fragile promises of “supporting the creator economy.” Another competitor would have come right in and took their market share.
Brand is behavior. How you behave reflects what you believe. Decisions are not made on a whim but rather from your values, your strategy, and what you stand for.
Today’s brands are built differently: They’re open, collaborative, built with networks, and must adapt every few years versus every decade. They are more responsible for uplifting the communities and cultures they seek to be a part of. Over time, if a brand is truly authentic and delivers on its promises, the work will resonate within a culture and be part of it someday.
By evolving the brand, your efforts across product, design, marketing, sales, partnerships, support, and community are enhanced by unified tools and shared beliefs that allow everyone to build the future together.
Building a brand is not about creating a hit song. It’s about the emergence of creating music together. And the brands that successfully do this have the largest, most engaged crowds. They orchestrate the future and bring everyone along.
Want more essays like this? You know what to do.