In recent years, “build in public” has become a popular marketing and educational strategy for founders and early team members looking to bring awareness to their product creation process. It’s a nice way to let potential customers peak at upcoming features and updates, while also demonstrating an openness culture that can make people feel like the company values external input.
Something I began doing, but haven't seen mentioned anywhere is what I've termed, "brand in public". I've been branding in public for nearly a year, and I hope that by sharing my process, it helps people decide if it's right for them.
Disclaimers:
- I'm certain I'm not the first person to do this. I can't find a concrete example of someone doing this same thing and referring to it as such, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. I think my term is a novel spin on a recent phenomena, but that might be the only thing I can lay claim to here.
- This concept only works in select scenarios. I've found it to be immensely helpful, but that isn't to say it will work for you.
Before diving into the details, let's define the term.
The process by which a person/company steadily updates logo, wordmark, tone, imagery, etc. in forums that are public, without explicitly announcing a "rebrand".
On May 27, 2024, I came up with the initial idea for Home Plate Deals. Yes, I do have a good memory. No, I wouldn't remember this exact date if I hadn't written a note shortly thereafter detailing my initial thought process.
Home Plate Deals is an application that shows you which free and/or discounted food promotions are available in a given area, based on how the team(s) for that area performed the previous day. For non-baseball fans, many teams have promotions such as for every game where a team hits a home run, fans can get a free burger the following day with the purchases of a drink. Since baseball teams play 162 games and each team plays nearly every day, there are a lot of free food promotions going on during the season. The app is one place that fans (of baseball or just free food) can go to easily see which promotions are valid, not having needed to watch the game or checked which deal occurred based on which play.
I created the first version of the app in a very short time frame. The season was already underway and with the nature of daily updates driving engagement, each day the app wasn’t live was another missed opportunity to get users.
With a shortened timeframe, I spent very little time or energy on the initial brand. Functionality was most important, and everything else came second.
The initial logo was created at 3am in about 5 minutes. Yes, as a designer, I left the logo to be the last to-do item. Actually, it was second-to-last, as I encountered build errors just before the application went live. But, it was the last intentional task, and deliberately so. I needed the app live as soon as possible more than I needed a brand that was fully formed and beautiful.
Why it's been possble to brand Home Plate Deals in public:
- The user base is small. ~2,000 users per month is not an insignificant population, but it’s also not such a popular application that frequent brand changes would confuse or alienate a massive group of people.
- While the total changes are somewhat significant, day-to-day changes are relatively small. Most non-designers will barely notice a logo change and fewer still will pick up on the kerning or styling details of a revised word mark. If I were making significant changes daily, I’m certain users would notice and likely not enjoy the brand inconsistency.
- The application quality has not been compromised. Though lately I’ve been spending more time on the branding, the #1 priority of the app is accuracy, followed very closely by performance. Those core tenets have never changed and I will continue to keep user experience at the forefront of the application, regardless of how the brand evolves.
