Emily Heyward’s Obsessed: Building a brand people love from day one
Emily Heyward provides an actionable guide for entrepreneurs who may be starting a new company or already have a start-up. This book is great for younger strategists or any professionals new to brand strategy who want to understand the guiding principles that have established the brands of the most well-known direct-to-consumer companies like Casper, Allbirds, and Airbnb. These are some of my observations from the book based on what resonated with me and how I interpreted some of Heyward’s key points.
A brand is what a business stands for at its very core - it’s the ongoing guiding force that drives how a business behaves.
Many people think that if your product or offering is strong enough, the brand doesn’t matter as much. But the reality is, even a company like Brandless actually does have a brand, even if the brand is “no brand”. As your company matures, other players enter the market, and that’s when your brand needs to be salient and differentiated enough to stick in consumers’ minds. Airbnb didn’t create the idea of renting out homes - VBRO and other players already offered this service. They just created a stronger experience, and later on, defined their brand beyond home rentals to be about belonging. People want to feel like a local on vacation, and this insight gave Airbnb much more fertile ground to differentiate themselves. It also allowed them to broaden their offerings into experiences so that you can actually have a local provide you an experience while you travel.
Brand has become the new ground for competition because start-ups can no longer just compete on user experience. UX is now more about elegancy and simplicity.
Way back when (think 2007) start-ups were able to easily disrupt the market with a product that had a significantly better user experience than other established, older brands. Uber is an example of this - taking an old, antiquated industry of taxi driving and making it easier than ever to order a ride via app. But as we’ve seen, their brand has taken a hit time and time again due to internal conflict or negative experiences that riders and drivers have had. Lyft was able to be positioned as the friendlier, more compassionate option. Right now, they’re even helping to get more people to vote this election season. Now, anyone can create a superior user experience - it needs to be paired with a strong brand positioning and value proposition to consumers for a real shot at long-term success.
Most successful brands today are answering existing needs with new creative solutions. When thinking about creating a new brand, spend the majority of your time thinking about the people you’re trying to reach and how you can make their life better.
Heyward has created a strong approach to understanding what needs you might actually be solving with your product, called the “why test”. This test basically is about continuing to ask “why” over and over again (she relates it to acting like you’re a toddler) until you get to the ultimate human need or fear “fear of death”. You first start with the obvious problem “It’s hard to find a taxi and it’s expensive” and then continue to ask why this exists, until you get to the higher level need you’re solving. By doing this exercise, you can setup the real reason behind your brand’s existence, enabling your brand to have a higher meaning than just simply existing to replace a current, less than ideal experience.
To read Heyward’s book Obsessed: Building a brand people love from day one, check out where you can buy it here.
