Scaleup Brand building: Make people care about your product

Thanks to all of you who joined our talk. We ran out of space, so we promised to summarize a few key takeaways from the event. This is our attempt at doing that.

Monna from Mars was joined by Sondre Kvam, co-founder of Naer and Bao Nguyen, co-founder of Umble. Together they talked us through how they worked to distil Naer’s value proposition down to its very core.

Why is it worth doing? According to McKinsey the added value of a strong brand is about 96 per cent*. Interbrand illustrates the value of a strong brand with this graph.

* the McKinsey article is The future of brand strategy: It’s time to ‘go electric’

From a list of options, Naer decided on the category ‘VR Productivity’. “This way people can understand what it is without working too hard.” Within this category, the brand set out to carve out a clearly differentiated position. “We learned a valuable lesson,” says Sondre.  “We came up with the phrase Think better together and we were very happy with ourselves. But what differentiates the brand is not a cleverly formulated slogan. What does Think better together even mean? Nothing that people can understand.” Sondre explained how Naer had walked right into the software as a service-bingo trap, with a clever meaningless phrase. “Our differentiation was fun, but we were hiding it. The most important thing was a secret. You have to have the courage to choose something that matters”

If you are using any of these phrases, you're probably not quite there yet...

Bao talked about translating a brand platform into a visual universe and a distinct user experience. For Naer, the team found inspiration in the comics world, creating a virtual universe people actually want to spend time in. This is in contrast to the VR ‘plastic-toy world’ of Meta and the typical VR aesthetic. Naer takes people out of the boring situations of working into a fun and inspirational place. “Humans are lazy unless we're having fun. Unless we're engaged in what we're doing, we're built to conserve energy.»

From this...

... to something more like this.

Bao’s clear message, as a designer for tech startups and scaleups, to anyone who wants to launch products and build strong brands, is that someone in the business needs to own the brand strategy or else it won’t work. Get help, but don’t think that you can outsource it entirely.

“Once we were clear about what we are doing, what we are delivering, people took our calls and agreed to meetings. The storytelling around that was crucial.” People don’t need to be reminded about how difficult it is to be focused and engaged on Teams, Zoom or Google meet. Naer’s promise is a completely different experience.

From this...

... to something more like this.

There was a question from the audience on what to prioritize, product development or the brand. What is more important? “If you only have a shiny brand and no product, you are just a scam,” says Sondre. “However, it depends on what you mean by brand. You do not need to have shiny visuals and a lot of stuff to begin with. You can pitch with a blank page, as long as you have a clear message on what your product is. And that is actually the beginnings of a strong brand. The brand is so much more than a logo and website.”

People asked lots of questions, and we could probably have gone on at least another hour.

For anyone interested in learning more about the methodology, we have online brand strategy courses in English and på norsk. We have created a promotion code for Oslo Innovation Week that anyone can use up until September 28. Use the links below, or enter the code OIW and get 15% reduction in price.