Focusing On Your Brand Will Produce a Better Product
We all want to build products which connect with our users and drive engagement. In this talk, Jesus Ramirez, VP Product at Tallwave Capital, explains how effectively leveraging brand in your products can create user experiences which do just that, and which turn your customers into advocates.
Brand or Product? – Blurring the lines in user experience
Traditionally branding has been clearly separated from product. The values and stories told by legacy brands such as Coca-Cola have little to do with the experience of using the product itself. Jesus demonstrates how this is changing, with companies weaving the brand right in to the product experience, creating richer experiences for users. With examples from Uber, Headspace and Siri, Jesus explains how product content can be used to actively reinforce brand values and customer connection.
Use product to deliver your message
Blurring the lines between brand and product harnesses the power of brand into the everyday user experience, capitalising on every micro-interaction to build user connection and drive further engagement. If your brand is your message, your product becomes the vehicle for delivery.
By the same token, a strong and clear brand can inform product decisions. Having a clear purpose for you company is the foundation of strong brand identity. From that strong foundation, product decisions can be made which deliver aspects of your purpose through each user micro-interaction. Key product choices about micro-copy, notifications, welcome screens and many others, all become opportunities for your brand to interact with your customer via your product.
Making it work
Jesus emphasises the importance of establishing clear brand guidelines, in particular around voice and tone, with colleagues across departments. As product managers, you need to be able to make agile choices about product and be confident you are staying on message. Jesus concludes by pointing to Slack and Mailchimp as companies who have published great examples of brand guidelines and shown how they incorporated brand into product to build products people love.
About the author
Chris Massey
With his background in technical editing, community building and product marketing, Chris' approach to product management is inherently centered around user narratives. He spent the first few years of his career working with the B2B developer products, prototyped an experimental technical publishing platform along the way, and then kick-started the Mind the Product platform. You can find him at ProductTank, or on twitter as @camassey.
