Identity vs. Brand

Dear adventurer,

Did you vote? About a month ago, I ran a poll on LinkedIn asking for your reaction to some new designs for the Aha! homepage.

I found it heartening that so many of you were willing to share your perspective and make thoughtful suggestions for how the imagery and copy could be more successful. (I did another poll with fresh options after our team made some updates based on your feedback.)

This got me thinking: What were people’s perceptions of Aha! as a company and did that line up with how we think about ourselves?

It is essential for an early-stage startup to clearly convey to others what makes it unique — that criticality only grows as your company matures. The hard part is representing what you are about with integrity.

What you show needs to be true, and that requires self-reflection and a certain level of vulnerability. You need to consider how others would define you.

I think this is one reason why people confuse a company’s identity with its brand. I should also note that some of the confusion comes from the odd term “brand identity.”

So I decided to ask what you thought was the difference between a company’s identity and a company’s brand. You can read through the answers here.

Many folks (especially those who self-describe as working in the design field) replied that a company’s identity consists of visual elements, especially a logo. I think this is a start.

Others left comments alluding to a broader definition of a company’s identity. This definition includes mission, values, and culture —?everything that informs how you behave and what you do. I agree with this one wholeheartedly.

Identity is who you are. It is what you believe in and how you behave. Brand is how people you care about perceive you based on their interactions.

Your company’s brand may evolve over time, but most successful companies do not have wild identity swings. Looking back at how Aha! expressed our identity via our website over the last 10 years shows that we have remained true to our early point of view and the actions we took based on that.

Aha! has grown from a bootstrapped startup to a well-known $100M business that serves more than 700,000 product builders worldwide. During that time, we went from one roadmapping product to a comprehensive suite of product development tools.

So I thought it would be interesting to look back at a few of the previous iterations to show our evolution.

The way people perceive us has shifted and evolved with each phase of growth at Aha! — but who we are has not fundamentally changed.

Hitting our 10-year anniversary and expanding our product portfolio with the launch of Aha! Notebooks created a natural opportunity to reimagine the way we communicate what our company is all about.

We first worked to capture the essence of Aha! in words. (The final list, inspired by our mission and values, is “bold, expert, responsive, heartfelt, and successful.”)

Then we focused on how to best showcase what makes us unique — being a different type of high-growth software company, the power of our products, and the extraordinary team that guides our customers’ success.

My advice to startup founders? Your company’s identity is unique to you and is the basis for a lasting business — so it is worth being intentional about it from the beginning.

Uniquely yours,

Brian

P.S. If you like discussing all things startup, you might like the live version of The Startup Adventure.

I will be hosting an "ask me anything" open session on December 14: https://www.aha.io/academy/tutorials/

See you there?