Thread by @chburdett

“What amount of revenue should I start caring about brand in DTC?”

It depends on what you are selling

If you are selling luxury goods - brand is your biggest lever. You cannot start “caring” about brand at 50m as a luxury brand. You won’t even get to £50m in the first place.

And “brand strategy” IS your “business strategy” - who your audience is, or isn’t. What you as business care for, and what you don’t. What you are the ONLY brand doing. Not just a “brand” doing something “better”.

and you have a brand from the moment you start a business - it’s up to you when you decide to start being intentional with it

If you are selling water bottles or wallets - your product matters more

If you are selling $1000 water bottles or a $1000 wallets - your brand matters more

Ultimately - branding is signalling status

“People like me buy products like this”

“I want to be like someone that owns a Bentley”

People will subconsciously ask themselves “how does this maintain or elevate my status” - brand is the vehicle to make that story coherent in a prospects mind. EVERYTHING you do is a signal that contributes to this overall image.

The mere fact you cannot go to a Ferrari dealership and buy a new Ferrari - is part of their brand. Or why you need to be on a 3 year waiting list to buy a brand new Rolex.

Scarcity creates exclusivity - which elevates status of ownership. It’s all bullshit - but when we collectively decide to play along with it - it’s actually not bullshit lol

When you see someone in a Ferrari - you wonder how they got so rich to buy a Ferrari. This is the primary reason that person purchased a Ferrari, because they want that feeling of knowing that’s how you will be thinking about them.

All of human life is Status Games. And this is not a game you get to decide if you are playing or not.

Rejecting the status game is a move in the game of status.

The primary reason I can sell card decks for $200+ is because of brand. And we cared about brand from the start.

As always there isn’t an absolute answer - it’s a matter of context. If you are selling a commodity - no one gives a shit. There is no “luxury” energy. But you will find we now have “luxury” water lol. Guess what… all brand.

Brand is something I’ve personally invested a huge chunk of my career into learning and executing on.

We’re actually developing a Pip Deck for branding. It’s being authored by @smithesq at basicarts.org who helped us really nail down our branding.

But you have to be careful because “brand” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

So my advice would be to go read the books recommending - absorb as much as you can. Check out stuff like StoryBrand by @donaldmiller. Read Purple Cow and other works by Seth Godin.

Ultimately the brand is already within you, as a founder - it just needs excavating.

Most Brand agencies are expensive, grifty fuckers who have no skin in the game with whether executing on your brand long term will work. That’s always going to be you.

Your brand will evolve - so it’s always going to be better to develop this in-house. And remain flexible long term.

You could totally find some good branding agencies to help you execute on aesthetics - but the point I’m making is that your brand strategy is so closely coupled with your business strategy - that most agencies are only going to focus of superficial shit.

TLDR: most people don’t know WTF “Brand” really is.

If you build your business intentionally, with a clear strategy (what you are doing and what you are not doing, who it’s for and who it’s not for), you are likely “doing branding” without realising it.

The thin layer on top is… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

“"brand" is what people are telling each other about you behind your back”

“building a brand" does not mean putting together a 40 slide deck explaining the color scheme and what feeling #24cf2f should convey

This is a convo in the @9operators podcast Slack created by @SeanEcom @JasonPanzer @mbertulli @mikebeckhamsm - legendary podcast with legendary people.