It's all about your system

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a lovely New Year's Eve.

Read time: 3 minutes

Today, we will review last year's brand work at FANtium and share how we started as an early-stage brand. Just a heads-up, your brand system is quite important! 😉

In the last few years, I helped multiple startups with rebrands. This gave me firsthand experience of the requirements and costs associated with scaling without proper brand work. I wanted to avoid making the same mistake for FANtium.

How we started our brand:

1. Brand Foundation

2. Brand Development

3. Brand System

1. Brand Foundation

The first thing we did at our first in-person meeting was to have a brand workshop, aligning with the company's strategic positioning. When we talk about the brand, we are referring to what a business stands for at its core. To drive success, the brand cannot just be a layer and a logo that sits on top; it has to be integrated into the business itself.

➡️ ➡️ Never let this work be done by an external party. The brand should be an ongoing, guiding force that drives how a business behaves. This needs to come from the founders themselves.

2. Brand Development

Based on the Brand Foundation, we looked into the assets traditionally associated with "branding": a name, a logo, fonts, colors, and a tagline. However, these are only effective if you have done the hard work of figuring out what your brand stands for and why it matters in the first place.

➡️ ➡️ Start with the basic Brand Assets. Don't build a fully executed brand. As founders, we know that a startup can take on a life of its own and pivot in unexpected ways, so we need room to adapt our brand to these changes.

3. Brand System

As mentioned earlier, the System is crucial. You could do the best work before, but if you don't have a strong system for scale, your startup will encounter trouble when it grows.

• Set up a brand book and share it with the company. Make it part of the onboarding process for new joiners.

• Establish a style guide and a simple design system for your digital product. Start small and allow the system to grow with your product. Connect fonts, colors, etc. with your design tools like Figma to minimize errors.

• Create an online hub for the main Brand assets, which external partners and the press can download. (Link)

• Convert your landing page into a CMS (Content Management System). This is a game-changer as now anyone on our team can launch new content on the page.

I remember working for Nike years ago. We received a Styleguide from the HQ, Wieden Kennedy (Nike's Lead Agency), which was very straightforward. It included a library of professionally shot images, always with space for the headline, type, and logo. Everything was defined, leaving no room for error. Even less skilled designers produced great work using that foundation.

This is especially important for early-stage startups. When you have the luxury of growing rapidly, it is easy to fall into the trap of not only hiring the best people. By setting up a system that minimizes the chances of making mistakes, you will be in a good position.

💡Takeaway → Build your brand around what your business stands for at its core. Implement a straightforward system that promotes growth without unnecessary complexity.

If you enjoyed it, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share it with friends who are interested in startup branding and growth. This would be a small reward for me. 💚

Catch you in a couple of weeks.

Thanks, Chris

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 more ways I can help you:

On-Demand Brand Agency → I have compiled all of my learnings into this Agency to help early-stage founders implement a distinctive brand correctly, saving money and achieving long-term success. Link

1:1 Consulting → Need guidance and expertise to make your brand stand out? Join me for a 1:1 branding consulting session where we'll dive deep into your brand goals, target audience, and unique value proposition. Book a Call