In this episode of "How to Launch a Product," host Ian Peterman explains how brand legacy intertwines with product launches and why it matters for long‑term success. He defines brand legacy as the lasting imprint a company leaves—positive or negative—and argues that even startups should aim for a legacy that endures beyond a single product cycle. Peterman outlines five key pillars for building that legacy: (1) long‑term planning (20+ years) that anticipates industry shifts and guides strategic pivots; (2) a evolving brand narrative that continuously tells the company’s story as it grows; (3) awareness of the broader impact of a physical product, from raw material sourcing to the many people involved in its supply chain; (4) delivering a consistent, positive customer experience across all touchpoints; and (5) early adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, even in informal or small‑team forms, to embed social and environmental good into the brand’s DNA. Throughout, Peterman uses examples such as a shipping company diversifying away from oil and the ubiquitous Bic pen to illustrate how small actions aggregate into significant legacy. He concludes with a call to action to subscribe, like, and visit his firm’s website for further guidance.
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Hello everyone, this is Ian Peterman, your host, and on today's episode of How to Launch a Product, I want to dive a little bit into how you can build a brand legacy. And you might be wondering, well, what does branding have to do with products? This is about launching a product. And it is. So your brand is absolutely a part of how you launch the product, and it can, it can really make an impact and a difference in whether your product is accepted really well and if it connects as well with your intended users and audience as well as it should. So I want to talk about what brand legacy is, a little bit of long-term planning, brand narrative, your impact, what that looks like. It's bigger than you think. And customer experience and CSR. So first, what is brand legacy? Well, when you think about big companies, long-lasting companies that have been around for a long time, they've made a big impact, some positive, some negative. Definitely the longer you're around, the more chance there is for you to get a little bit of mix of both. But basically, it's what allows a brand to keep going. Brand legacy of, you know, some companies like Coca-Cola is well known. It's been around for a long time. They have brand legacy behind them. So, you know, you basically— if you grow up in the United States, you absolutely know about them from the time you're a little kid. and can understand what's around you from there. And they've built a very big brand legacy. Now, some people will say their legacy isn't all that great in some cases, other people's do, but it's not really whether it's positive or negative. It's just building a legacy, something that is going to last longer than you might if you're just a quick, quick product that's going to turn and then fade out. So the whole point of having brand legacy is intentionally creating something that is going to last a long time. It creates a lot of value over a long period of time. And something that I really focus on when building it with my clients is what that looks like and thinking about things like your impact. What is your long-term? What is the brand narrative? So Second thing I wanna talk about, long-term planning. So long-term planning is a key part of building a brand legacy. You can't build a brand legacy without long-term planning. And by long-term, I mean 20+ years. Now, does that mean you're gonna know everything that's gonna happen? Absolutely not. Good, smart business plans don't go that far and advanced in the minutia. Now, as an overarching impact though, and looking at what your long-term is. Maybe your long-term goal is to reduce waste in a certain industry or to make X easier, or something that's going to be a long-term thing. It's going to either be around or it's going to take a long time to make the impact you're wanting. And so that kind of long-term planning, looking ahead, not being completely short-sighted, and being aware that things change over time. Good example of this I heard once is there's a— I forget the name of it, but there's a shipping company that they made their big money in transporting oil. However, in the '90s, they realized that oil was going to go away. So instead of purely offering that as their only— the only commodity that they transported, they began transporting other Other commodities. And as the oil industry will continue to decrease in demand, they have already built for the past 20 years a solid business in providing transportation to other commodities. So that long-term planning, they made a shift way before they needed to in order to avoid the potential of a downside. And so they're building something that's going to last that way. So thinking ahead It doesn't have to be, you know, you know exactly what's gonna happen in 20 years. That's really impossible. But just thinking a little bit longer will allow you to build a brand legacy that's going to actually last more than a few years. Third thing is brand narrative. So a good story is always part of a good brand. It needs to be something that connects. It needs to tell a story because that's, as humans, we are storytellers and we love listening to stories. So when you want to create something that's going to last, making sure that you're telling your story and you have put together that narrative. Now, it doesn't mean making up some story. It just means telling your story, the story of your brand. And that story should keep going. So it shouldn't just be the startup story, and that's your story for the next 50 years. It should be the story of the brand as it grows and as it matures and as things change. Your story should keep growing. That narrative should never stop. And that's part of what will keep customers connected to you and keep them interested. And in order to have a brand legacy, you have to have customers who care about you in the beginning, and they keep caring about you and keep staying connected. And having a strong brand narrative that grows as you grow every year, it should add, you know, if we're talking about a story, should add at least a few sentences. It's not a paragraph to your story. You should be continuing to tell your story as your company grows. And when you do that, your narrative will keep going and interest will keep coming and people will feel more connected to your brand and your brand legacy and how it's growing. Fourth thing to talk about is your impact. Your impact is absolutely bigger than you think. Even if you're a tiny little brand, you're just a startup, maybe you're a bootstrapped single-person startup, where you think you don't really have a brand yet, you do, and your impact is bigger than you think. You know, there's— when you develop a physical product, any physical product, your impact is tremendous. You may not think it is, it may seem very small, but in reality, in order to get a physical product made, likely you have over 100 people involved. In some capacity in order to get that product made, because the raw material has to be acquired, has to be grown, mined, recycled, recollected, has to be processed, it has to be turned into the final form that you want, it has to be transported, it has to be assembled possibly, it needs to be purchased. There's a lot that goes into it, and people don't really Think about what the impact is. And you know, something as simple as a Bic pen—not many components—it is touched by a lot of people in order to get to you. Even if you're ordering only one, you have impacted a large amount of people, maybe in a very tiny way, but your impact is a lot bigger than you think, and you can do more about. making sure your impact aligns with your brand legacy that you want. If you want your brand legacy to be about sustainability or social justice or something like that, where you— it can be easy to ignore all the little touches because you think about, oh, what's the big impact? Oh, I don't have a big impact. Well, all the little ones add up. And so you want to think about your supply chain and you want to think about Who is involved? How many people do touch or use or are part of the process of getting your product from raw material to the customer? And when you think about that, your impact is big. You can make a big difference through small little pieces, eventually adding up to a large impact by being aware of those. So be aware of those. And, you know, really importantly too, People are aware of how much the impact you can make, and we can't just ignore that. So when you think about that, if you're— if you want that to be part of your legacy, you need to think about the entire process and what that supply chain really means for you and your product and your brand. Fifth thing, customer experience. Customer experience. If you're going to build a brand legacy that you want to remember and want to be remembered by and want your grandchildren to think positively of, you must have a good customer experience. It needs to be something that people will enjoy, people talk about in positive ways. It needs to be thought through. You can't just build a great product, have amazing social impact and environmental impact, and then have terrible customer experience. It really just kills— it kills the whole experience for your customers. And You want to make sure that your customer experience matches the brand legacy that you're wanting to build. People should be able to go through the customer experience of buying your product, talking to your team, getting support on your product, the sales team, learning about you, all of those areas. They should be able to do that and should feel the brand and what you're trying to achieve through their experience. You know, going to be their narrative. It's going to be their story of your brand, and you want it to be a positive one. Now, CSR, corporate social responsibility. These are typically in larger companies. The CSR is put together in order to make sure that the company is making a positive difference in community and social, societal areas, making sure that basically we're improving the world from a human standpoint, in addition to of course hitting their financial and other goals that are required to keep business operational. Now, this is something that a lot of big companies use. So CSRs are typically a very corporate term. They're big companies use it. They have division put together, a team put together to make sure this is happening. It manages things like group of volunteer efforts. And, you know, when, when a company puts together an employee food bank event and go help food bank as a company, that's a part of CSR. And it's really important if you're going to build a brand legacy to not wait until you're really big to put something together. It doesn't have to be super super formal. It doesn't have to, you know, you don't have to call it a CSR, but the point is you want to have someone being aware of and tracking and making sure that you have something like that in place because that will be part of your brand legacy. And in my opinion, if you're gonna build a brand legacy, if you're gonna build legacy into your brand, you want it to last, it should be positive. It should make a positive difference. You should be doing things like Donating time and resources back to the community and being aware of your impact and making sure your impact is one that is sustainable and is socially good for people around you. And so by creating something in, in your team, it can just be one person that says, hey, we should do this. Hey, we should be tracking this. Let's be aware of this. Let's give back in this way. And putting that together, if you have that as part of your company at an early stage, it will make it easier to do that when you're bigger rather than having to put together a huge team to make something happen once you're big. So hopefully this gives you a little bit of an idea of how you can build brand legacy, what, what is involved in creating it, and how you can start even as a small company. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed. And like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description, and of course we're on all social media as well, so check us out there. All right, thank you.
