The Difference Between a Logo and a Brand

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founders Journal. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. Before we hop into the show, I have a 10-second favor to ask of you. We have tons of new listeners to the podcast, and my goal is to get to know as many of you as humanly possible. Either before you start the episode or right after you finish it, shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com, which is my personal email. If you want the easiest option, the 2-second option, just say hi in the subject line and I will respond getting the conversation going. If you're a little bit more ambitious and have 30 seconds of time, shoot me an email telling me a little bit about yourself and why it is that you listen to Founders Journal. I can't wait to get to know many of you over the coming days. I promise I will get back to you. It may just take a little bit of time. And now for today's episode, I am going to talk about the difference between a logo and a brand. Let's hop into it. We live in an interesting time with the proliferation of technology, the globalization of our supply chain, and the access to more information on the internet than ever before. It has never been more difficult to build a differentiated product or business. Now, if you want to build a copycat of Away luggage, you can simply go to Import Yeti to see their exact manufacturers. You can go to Facebook to see their exact advertising creative, and you can go to archive.org for the evolution of their brand and website since inception. If you want to create your own version of almost any B2B software company from Salesforce to Gong, all you need is some fundraising, a team of talented engineers, and maybe a few former employees from the B2B SaaS company that you're trying to copy to make the road easier. I really believe that Other than truly deep tech companies like Figure Four Robotics or Siren Biotech or Varda Space, most products are commodities these days. Or if they're not, the time in between being differentiated and being commoditized is getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And what that means is owning an audience and building a brand are truly the only differentiators that allow you to attract customers for free and charge more than your competitors. Which obviously begs the question, what is a brand? And I watched an amazing video by Seth Godin that explained it, and I want you to take a listen and then I'll have some thoughts after.

So let's talk about the difference between a logo and a brand, right? Because companies spend way too much time on their logo, just like people on YouTube spend way too much time on their hair. I'm told they spend way too much time on their hair. If Nike owned— opened a hotel, I think we would be able to guess pretty accurately what it would be like. If Hyatt came out with sneakers, we'd have no clue because Hyatt doesn't have a brand. They have a logo. If I swap the signs on a hotel at that price point, you couldn't tell if you were in a Marriott, if you were in a Hilton, if you were in a Hyatt. The hallway, the room— I don't know, where am I?

No brand.

So what it means to have a brand is you've made a promise to people. They have expectations. It's a shorthand. What should I expect the next time? And if that is distinct, you've earned something. If it's not distinct, let's admit you make a commodity and you're trying to charge just a little bit extra for peace of mind. The problem that Hyatt and Hilton and Marriott and the rest have Is sort by price. Because if I go online now to find a hotel, it's really simple. Sort by price. Why would I pay $200 extra to go a block away? I don't. So what's the value of a brand? The value of a brand is how much extra am I paying above the substitute? And if I'm not paying extra, you don't have a brand. So when we think about what brands ought to do to move forward, The most important thing is to not worry about your slogan, your spokesperson, the wrapping. It's to worry about the substance. Work that matters for people who care. Find the people who care, the smallest viable group you can live with, and figure out how to give them work that matters.

Seth said a few really interesting things here. One of them is that he defines brand as how much extra a consumer is willing to pay above the substitute. I would argue a brand also refers to a company's ability to successfully launch a different product category and successfully sell it from day one, meaning that there is implicit trust and you don't have to earn that trust with the product. Whether it was Lego launching a theme park in Legoland or Apple launching the Apple Watch, these are examples of brands that are able to successfully move into a product category day one. Another way I would think about it is companies with brands attract blank checks. What I mean by that is there are a small group of entrepreneurs that I trust so implicitly that if they were to start a new business tomorrow, I would hand them a blank check and I would tell them to fill in the amount I should invest and I would be completely fine with it. I think companies that have actually built brands have this similar level of implicit trust with their customer. Which is also why I believe so few companies have actually built a brand. Like, I think way fewer than the world makes them out to be. Apple has a brand. Rolex has a brand. Harvard has a brand. The United States of America has a brand. I think a lot of people have brands actually, like individuals, which is why you're seeing creators and creator businesses pick up so much steam. But I would actually argue most companies have logos, not brands, which is why I also believe so few companies that are around today will be bigger in size or impact 25 years from now. And it's also why so many of the companies that were huge in 2015 during the D2C boom, like Warby Parker, Casper, Away Luggage— it's why all of them are so much less relevant today than 8 years ago. Logos, designs by Red Antler, subway ads, and big funding rounds do not earn you a brand. You build a brand by wowing your customer for decades straight. And in today's day and age, I think there are 3 ways that you can wow a customer. You can wow them by being first with a product, meaning you start as having a differentiated product before it has a bunch of copycats and you're commoditized. You can wow by being better with a product, which I think is exceedingly difficult, or it's short-lived like I mentioned. Or you can wow by doing unscalable things to build a relationship with your customer. I think that's a lot of what we did at Morning Brew. And say you do those things. Then the question is, how do you know you're on the right track since building a brand takes so incredibly long? Here are a few anecdotes or a few things to look for as you are on this journey for building a brand. When a friend is asking you for a recommendation in your product category, you're the first brand that they recommend. That's a good sign. When a customer gets your product with a sticker of your logo in the box, they're putting that sticker on their computer or phone because it's a status symbol. That's a good sign. When a rapper talks about you in the lyrics of their song, that's a good sign. And what's so hard about building a brand is staying focused for such a long time and not just wowing a customer once, but wowing them over and over and over for years to come. Proving that you're not a one-trick pony is exceedingly difficult. As always, thank you so much for listening to Founders Journal, and I'll catch you next episode.

Bye.