19/03/2025
To get leadership to care about branding, you have to speak their language.
When I joined a tech startup as a contractor, I found a company that had rushed its brand strategy, leaving the team struggling to clearly explain what the business actually did. My role involved fixing that mess, but in a fast-paced startup with constant challenges, branding was far from leadershipโs top priority.
With engineers tackling product issues, sales teams struggling to close deals, and investors demanding rapid growth, talking about "brand consistency" or "emotional connection" would have been a waste of timeโor worse, dismissed as irrelevant. In a high-pressure environment, those concepts can seem like fluff compared to the immediate fires that need putting out.
So, instead of leading with traditional branding terms, I focused on what mattered to leadership: metrics. I connected branding to tangible outcomesโlower customer acquisition costs, higher conversion rates, and improved sales efficiency. When branding is positioned as a driver of business performance rather than just a creative exercise, leadership is far more likely to take it seriously.