How Great Brands Grow: Sell the Identity, Not the Product

I have not done one of these posts in a while, but like on some real shit, we just moved HQ to San Francisco, so it did take me some time to adjust over here. Okay, to be fair, I could have done it faster, but I guess you have to enjoy life here and there. So I was a tourist for the first week lol. 

This a founder note on what I am learning as I build NOA.

As for updates on where we are for NOA, realistically we are a week or two away from having a good MVP people can use; the tech is very impressive, and I am proud of our engineering team. 

Until now, I have spammed events, and everyone loves the product, brand, and mission. Now it is time for us to guerrilla market this product to the masses and make it the cool new item to have, so expect to see it literally everywhere - this is how awesome the product is. 

As for marketing, recently I have been reflecting on what makes brands great, and it got me thinking about love. One of the reasons you may fall in love with someone is the fact that they represent or hold a part you wish to embody better, while validating who you already are becoming. When building a successful business, you’re not building tech or a product to bring a “value add”; you're bringing a feeling your customer wishes to embody. A salesperson wishes to embody a person his/her clients trust, remember, and want to do business with, and maybe your tool allows them to reply faster to emails or inbound leads, therefore making them most trustworthy.

So if I have to leave some thoughts of things I’ve learned while building NOA this last week is: focus on being the yin to your yang. 

Product specs are cool, but embodiment is cooler.