#11: Building a brand for your product

Branding is just as much a part of your product as its code, but it can be hard to nail down a definition: branding means different things to different people. For some, you say “brand” and they think “logo”. But for the Platform.sh team, branding goes a lot deeper than that. Savannah Bergeron, Communications Designer at Platform.sh, defines their branding process this way. “We really wanted to build something that helps express that emotional reaction someone has to our product when they understand it for the first time. So branding is more than just colors, it's really how do we translate and facilitate that conversation, about all of the things that our product means to different people, in a visual way.” What is your brand’s Personality Statement? It can be hard to sift through many contributing factors to grasp a cohesive idea of what your brand is. Savannah, together with Allison Simmons, VP of Product & Design at Plaform.sh, suggest interviewing both your customers and your internal team. Throughout their cross-examination, “We found these repeats that really resonated with people, it was a string of about five or six, maybe seven words. So we kind of took those words and wrapped them into this personality statement. Before anyone writes or designs anything, I like to refresh myself with our personality statement to just kind of get in the mode of who we actually are.”  Keep going until you find your “Aha!” moment  Savannah explains how customers pulling all the pieces together is critical for laying the building blocks of your brand, “One thing that's universal is this ‘Aha!’ moment. It’s this revelation our customers have when they understand our product and what it delivers. It really became a base in trying to figure out our brand and how to move it forward.” Branding is dynamic Both Savannah and Allison agree that your brand should evolve over time. Says Savannah, “Approach your brand from a human perspective, and know that your brand is a living entity. It's not a one-size-fits-all, and it's not a statue, you need to be able to change it and adjust it and kind of go with the flow.” Talk to Platform.sh to help uncover your brand voice. Platform.sh Learn more about us. Get started with a free trial. Have a question? Get in touch! Platform.sh on social media Twitter @platformsh Twitter (France): @platformsh_fr LinkedIn: Platform.sh LinkedIn (France): Platform.sh Facebook: Platform.sh Watch, listen, and subscribe to the Platform.sh Deploy Friday podcast: YouTube Apple Podcasts Buzzsprout Platform.sh is a robust, reliable hosting platform that gives development teams the tools to build and scale applications efficiently. Whether you run one or one thousand websites, you can focus on creating features and functionality with your favorite tech stack and leave managing infrastructure and processes to us.