How engineering-minded leaders can understand branding
Relevant case studies
Outline
00:00
Introduction to branding skepticism
Chris from Parliament addresses common skepticism about branding, especially among engineering-driven companies. He explains that many people find branding confusing and emotional rather than formulaic, questioning its necessity when a great product should sell itself.
00:28
Common misconceptions about branding
Chris discusses how branding can seem mysterious and frustrating, often perceived as a form of creative magic. He highlights that engineers are also creative, but in different ways. Notably, Chris emphasizes that brand is not merely decoration but a form of alignment that helps reduce friction.
00:52
Brand as a business system
Chris explains the role of a brand as a comprehensive system that underpins all aspects of a business, including sales, recruiting, marketing, product development, and investor relations. A brand functions like an operating system for the company, providing a shared understanding of its identity and strategy. Positioning is compared to setting tolerances that define where the company competes and where it does not. Messaging frameworks are likened to wiring diagrams, where each component serves a specific purpose, and disrupting the sequence causes the entire system to fail.
01:17
Benefits and logic of strong branding
Chris emphasizes that successful branding doesn't require loving marketing or corporate communication, but trusting a logical framework. When implemented correctly, this system simplifies communication, shortens sales cycles, clarifies stories, and aligns teams more efficiently. Branding may initially seem confusing, but once understood, it becomes essential. The message concludes with encouragement to be brave and stand apart.
Transcript
Hey friends, it's Chris at Parliament. If branding makes no sense to you, you're not weird. In fact, you might be normal.
We work with a lot of engineering-driven companies, and it's really common within these types of cultures to view brand with skepticism. If the product is great, it should sell itself, right?
I mean, why do we need branding? For a lot of folks, brand feels fuzzy. It feels emotional. For them, it doesn't follow a clean formula. You know, input this, and you get this as an output. And that can be frustrating.
Moreover, it can feel disingenuous, you know, like black magic. Like, there's the creatives over there. They like reach their hand into some sort of box and like pull identities out and like how did that happen?
And by the way, the irony is that a lot of the engineering folks I've worked with are extremely creative. They're just creative in different ways than we are.
But here's the truth. Brand is not decoration. It's alignment. A strong brand reduces friction across the entire business—sales, recruiting, marketing, product, and investor relationships.
Brand creates a shared understanding of who you are and how you're going to win. Think of your brand as a system. It's an operating system that your company uses to communicate.
Positioning is akin to tolerances. What's in, what's out, where you compete, where you don't. Messaging frameworks are like a wiring diagram. Each piece has a function. Break the sequence, and the system fails.
You don't have to love brand, marketing, or corporate communication for it to work. You just have to trust the logic because when it's done right, that's exactly what it is. It's a logical framework for communication.
And once the system snaps into place, everything gets easier. Sales cycles shorten, stories get clearer, and your team aligns faster.
Branding makes no sense until it does. And then it becomes indispensable.
All right, that's it for me. Be brave. Stand apart.