The Philosophy of Brand Evolution with Paul Jun

Welcome to another edition of Behind The Brand, a weekly newsletter featuring leaders at startups and VCs to highlight their unique perspectives on design, brand, and marketing for founders, operators, and investors across the early stages.?

At Slope , our goal is to build category defining creative for exceptional companies, and we believe brand is applicable to everyone in different ways depending on your role, stage, or industry.

This week, we’re excited to feature Paul Jun, Principal Brand Strategist at Mixpanel.?Mixpanel helps companies measure what matters, make decisions fast, and build better products through data. They have raised $277M from investors including Bain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, David Sacks, Marc Benioff and more, and have achieved a $1B+ valuation.

Recently, Mixpanel underwent a rebrand, which was done in-house and led by Paul. Learn more about that here !

“This brand evolution is a big push for an industry that, frankly, is unbranded.

First off, what is your background and how did you land in your current role?

I started my career path in 2009 and I call myself a writer to keep things simple. Throughout my career, I’ve had various roles in various industries, from marketing at startups, consulting with nonprofits on content and community, helping build the world’s largest in-person creative community, building the first cohort-based course, building an editorial platform at a renowned agency and working on incredible projects. Now I’m at Mixpanel, imagining a more exciting future for analytics.

While at an agency, I learned about brand strategy that was on a different level than what I read in blogs or books. One of my close friends, Nick Ace, got me into projects where I could listen to founders and teams, unpack their ambitions and goals, ask the hard questions, and distill everything down into clear and compelling strategy. To create a foundation to make decisions from. A jumping off point for design. A narrative that tells a story about why this company was created, who it is for, and the change they hope to create. I loved it. It took my writing and craft to new areas that I otherwise would have never been able to learn.

I did some freelance brand strategy after my time at the agency, working with a wide range of different clients. I learned about other industries that I probably would never work in and that objectivity is a beautiful thing for a strategist. Another close friend, Mark Johnson, asked me if I wanted to help out at Mixpanel, as they were thinking about their future. After my final presentation of the strategy, I was offered a full-time role as Principal Brand Strategist by Amir, our CEO, to lead the brand evolution. My role isn’t purely strategy; I also do creative direction, art direction, all of the copywriting, shaping all comms, and working with product and design teams.

How do you define brand strategy, and why does it matter?

I simply look at brand strategy as having a philosophy. It is the foundation for decision-making. When you have a philosophy, you live by a set of principles. When you have principles, it’s easier to make decisions based on those principles versus moods or emotions.

Brands are treated as living beings these days. So they need to have an internal philosophy that shapes and informs every decision the company makes. What do you stand for? What future are you trying to build? Who are you not for?

Look at how Stoic philosopher Seneca describes the practical nature of philosophy:

“Philosophy is not an occupation of a popular nature, nor is it pursued for the sake of self-advertisement. Its concern is not with words, but with facts. It is not carried on with the object of passing the day in an entertaining sort of way and taking the boredom out of leisure. It moulds and builds the personality, orders one’s life, regulates one’s conduct, shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone, sit at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in a perilous sea. Without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy.”

“Builds the personality” relates to translating your origin history—what you stand for and why you exist—into a compelling story and symbols.

“Regulate one’s conduct” relates to setting constraints and guardrails governing your behavior. Every brand has a core belief. The question is, how does it behave?

“What one should do and leave undone” relates to focus, because it’s tempting for a brand to please everyone. The best brands stand for something and are totally okay saying no to others.

“Correct course as one is tossed about in a perilous sea” describes the marketplace, the relationships we have with customers and companies, and how that’s all changing very fast.

In a world of sameness and mediocrity, having a brand strategy is about giving yourself the chance to be different and true to your path.

So many companies just copy each other and don’t have a real sense of direction or purpose. When a company doesn’t have a solid brand strategy, decisions are made on a whim or based on emotions or trends. There are no boundaries that clearly define what you won’t do for money. So, companies make bad decisions all the time, and this is why they fail, get called out publicly, or do embarrassing things

Seneca had another wise thought about philosophy that relates to brand:

“My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works.”

Too many strategies are filled with word salad. They are littered with feel-good buzzwords in a deck. Happy! Fun! Human! It makes a pretty presentation, but is ultimately a waste of time. Worse, clients can be so blinded by these fancy words that they forget to ask the important question: What does it look like in practice? How do these words become works?

When you have a brand strategy, it makes it easier to say no to distractions or empty projects that do not advance your mission and vision.

It’s helpful to have it as a story, a narrative, because that’s what resonates with people to be enrolled and excited. Yes, have your spreadsheet with the individual boxes that outline your value and mission, but more importantly, turn it into a story worth reading. In there, you will create—and return to —language that is the essence of your brand.

As head of brand strategy at Mixpanel, how do you push for creativity within a framework of an already established brand?

Luckily, in this unique context for a company with over 10 years of history, everyone was hungry for change and all felt the same frustrations. I have to note that this is insanely rare — most companies talk loudly about being different and creating change, but it’s mostly that, all talk. People will default to the safe and comfortable versus being bold and taking risks. I was lucky to have leadership buy-in and an insanely talented design team.

A brand evolution demands creativity. Anytime someone flinched or got nervous, I would show them what we were building towards, and how it would position us to be different. To think of this work as a constant work in progress and that we have to start somewhere, because where we are now... there’s not much opportunity than racing to the bottom. Where we end up will always be new and different, and that’s the point.

Creativity is about uncovering new ideas by mixing ideas, so it’s okay that the process feels daunting or challenging. New is the point. If it’s new and rooted in our strategy and vision, then it’s worth pursuing.

Another way to think about it: focus 80% of your time on enrollment. I learned this from Seth Godin. Enrollment is about showing people a better path to take. “Do you see what I see? Is this path worth taking? Do you believe it’s authentic to us?” If you get true enrollment, then creativity flows naturally, because everyone is on the same page. So often, projects fail because people are not on the same page, so there is no trust, and if there is no trust then there really is no project. There’s just endless meetings about a project that is never going to happen. A waste of time and talent.

What are the pros and cons of a startup opting to do their branding in-house vs. hiring an agency?

This might get a little spicy as I’ve been thinking about this a lot, having worked in both worlds and having very close friends in both. I’m starting to see patterns that show the way things have been done are losing strength. There needs to be a new model moving forward.

Ok, in-house versus hiring agency — it varies greatly depending on whether you’re a startup of 5 people or if you’re on a third round of funding.

In-house is hard because it requires strong design leadership and talent. Hiring an agency is the common path because these agencies will typically do a much better job. They’re on the outside. They have the experience and expertise. So many branding efforts fail because it’s led by the wrong leader, with the wrong strategy, that has no taste or experience in brand building, and absolutely zero clue as to how to work with designers. So many companies end up creating more advertising versus a brand. All of the world’s best branding knowledge lives in agencies, not at tech companies.

In-house requires insane focus and the right gathering of talent. Building a strong design/brand team is such a long game. Time is the most precious resource and startups don’t have much of it. To be real, most companies will have a very hard time pulling this off. Which is why hiring an agency is the safest, smartest decision. Let the experts do the real work and have them educate you on how to use the system, the tools, the thinking, etc.

I have a hunch that there are many well-meaning, talented creative designers/writers/strategists that want to do good work... but their boss won’t let them. Because their boss doesn’t understand the importance or practice of building a brand. Because it’s hard to measure. Because they can’t take it to their boss and get a promotion. Instead they end up playing the advertising game (which is running out of road). If it works, good for you. The challenge of only relying on advertising is that your relevance in the marketplace is only as long as your budget. Building an iconic brand is much harder, but I think it’s worth trying.

Some pros having done the Mixpanel work in-house:

• You are responsible for it. The buy-ins, the check-ins, enrollment, the development of the process, sharing knowledge with other teams, and ultimately the progress of it.
• When you ship it, there’s no greater feeling than knowing you brought the idea to life with a small team. Everyone has context. Everyone has skin in the game. Everyone deeply cares about the quality of work.
• You learn a lot about how other teams work, what they care about, what they need to do their jobs well. This is useful for future improvements and projects.
• If successful, you get more resources to do more fun things. If really successful, you’ll attract really great talent and be able to build a team around them.

Some cons:

• Many times, we would ask ourselves, “Is this good? Are we going absolutely mad?” This makes it harder when people feel doubt and start thrashing. Now you have to calm their emotions while still being dedicated to the work.
• While working on the brand evolution, other designers were helping with product, marketing, sales, etc. The benefit of an agency is they can throw bodies at the project. So when you do this in-house, don’t assume that you’ll be able to laser- focus on this 100%. It is very rare if you can.
• Mediocre agencies hand-off the work to the client and say bye-bye. Great agencies educate the client on how to use the system well and watch the client take the work further than they could have. There are few agencies that think this way.
• What you see in the case study is not typically what you see IRL. That’s because the client doesn’t have the time or team to fully execute the work. So you end up seeing a sugar free version of the project. They have to start somewhere, but from the client-side, it’s incredibly deflating to know that you’re not expressing the full breath of the brand (and they have to find tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just lying around to extend the work).

How do you think about bridging the gap between brand, product, and community?

This is the next frontier for companies is combining all three of these things. And very few companies have done it well so far (Duolingo, Notion, Figma, Spotify).

The three things to think about:

1. ?Function: what the product does.
2. ?Features: the bells-and-whistles that enhance function.?
3. ?Experience: the feeling of using it.

Many startups will focus on the first two, as they should. Once you have PMF and are growing, you have the opportunity to think about the experience. How does it feel using the product or service? What story does the customer tell themselves? How do they transfer that feeling/story to their friends? This is where evolving a brand is incredibly useful to think about, and begin, this process. Because without a focus on building a brand, you’ll end up having a bunch of one-off projects, like redoing the homepage or doing a set of illustrations, with very weak connection to the bigger strategy. Instead, I would push people to zoom out, look at all the moving pieces, and start to tailor the experience thoughtfully using the new brand system. Where is a moment for good copy? Animation? An illustration?

Community is another one of those awful buzzwords. Most companies don’t have a community, they have users or customers or an audience. A real community self- organizes, shares knowledge with each other. It’s a place to be better, a place of becoming. Notion was successful not because of billboard ads, but because they have a real community of people that share ideas and help each other. That community then feeds their customer stories, blog, social media, product features, etc. It’s a well of new ideas and feedback. Same with Figma. Back in the day, you could win the market if you had a lot of money to throw at ads. But that’s not a winning strategy anymore.

People want to love the products they use. They want to give money to a brand they believe is doing good. They want to see themselves in others by joining—and contributing to—a community.

Who or what inspires you the most?

Strip away all the job titles and what I really am is an artist. I didn’t go to a fancy school or work at any famous tech companies. Completely self-taught. I benefited from having a non-linear career path. I pay attention to the world and I make things with imagination and stories. And mostly, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to meet insanely smart people who gave me a shot, who answered all my silly questions, put up with my bullshit, and supported me during tumultuous times. I’ve had an awesome career so far not through sheer will or initiative, but because of the people in my life.

I am always and endlessly inspired by artists, writers, museums, documentaries, movies, and books. In no particular order.

• The Met Museum
• The Guggenheim
• The Brooklyn Museum?
• Seth Godin
• Maria Popova
• Steven Pressfield?
• Martha Graham
• Photo books
• Design history
• New York City
• Sports like basketball and football
• Going on long walks without headphones (15-20 miles minimum)
• The ocean
• Going into nature for 3 days minimum, sitting by a fire and cooking on the fire?
• Street photography
• Animated shows and cartoons
• Podcasts of all varieties, from philosophy to psychology to tech and careers?