Why Startups Need Branding – Upstage Brand System Building Part 1
2022/09/02 | Written By: Sungmin Park
“It’s a startup, will we need to invest resources in branding?” 👀
“Isn’t branding only for major corporations?” 🤔
Most startups think of these questions when they think of branding. For small startups and recently-formed businesses, branding is difficult to prioritize due to the time required and financials to be considered. On the other hand, as market competition intensifies, many companies often try new approaches while sparing no investments to create a more competitive brand.
What exactly is a brand, and why do so many companies strive for branding? Is branding necessary for startups as well?
The early-stage startup Upstage, which currently prepares to launch a total AI solution encompassing all of the systems necessary to introduce AI technology within the year, has also shared its in-depth thoughts on this topic. During this process, Upstage summarized why branding is necessary and organized a unique brand system for itself.
Through this series, we review the reason startups need branding (Part 1) and provide insight on the Upstage brand system and its establishment process (Part 2).
Brand Essentials
If you take a look at domestic and international companies, there are those with very distinct colors. The images that come to mind when we think of companies such as Nike, Google, Apple, and Kakao are the result of their consistent and dedicated branding.
Beyond global factors such as globally successful services, friendly customer service, exceptional promotional skills, and capable staff, companies still require a “clear brand identity” to develop their unique color. A brand’s identity has the power to attract people, just as we are captivated by another person’s unique personality, scent, style, and way of thinking.
So, why is a well-crafted branding system necessary?
Why Startups Need a Branding System
There are five main reasons for why a brand system is needed:
Consistency: Branding ensures consistency in the name, logo, products, services, marketing techniques, and messages across all channels of a company. This consistency enhances the brand experience and satisfaction for customers.
Monetization: In businesses, branding is a key factor in generating sales and revenues. Depending on how a branding marketing strategy is carried out, the message of a company can reach many people, leading to a direct source of revenue.
Trust: Branding positively affects the bonds formed with customers and enhances customer loyalty. The more pleasant experiences a customer experiences with a brand, the more they will trust it. Therefore, even a single line of text on the official company website can determine the tone and manner of a corporation identity.
Originality: Branding is the identity of a business, determining how consumers perceive the business itself. Branding ensures an originality which competitors cannot imitate, making it necessary to have a brand system that shows the company’s unique color and style.
Motivation: Motivation is the most important factor for early-stage startups and their members. In order to promote branding to the world, an effective internal branding must be preceded.
A powerful brand improves the quality of a company’s work. Branding is not just a single meaningless sentence line or a ridiculous image—sentences have power. A significant reason for why individuals decide to apply for a company is their compelling mission and vision.
As such, branding is a powerful tool in keeping members motivated with a sense of belonging. When it comes to the location and time of work, businesses can furthermore cut down on communication resources by making decisions based on branding principles.
Factors to consider when building a brand system
If companies and startups can form a strong internal branding by sharing their corporate vision and mission effectively from the start, external branding will lead to significant business promotion.
Branding goals
Upon realizing the need for assiduous branding implementation, what branding goals should a corporation set first?
1. Indicators for External Communication
First, the fact that branding serves as an indicator for external communication must be kept in mind. As mentioned earlier, a company’s branding is a promise to their customers. Consistency and dedication are essential to fulfilling this promise. Every action communicated by the company to the world is portrayed through branding.
A great example is Apple’s policy: By maintaining security before product launch, Apple creates a strategy that delivers unique experiences with the core values of ‘surprise and delight.’ Annual Apple events, from planning unusual attractions to presenting unique products, capture audience attention through their frequency and constancy. The consistency of these events further establish Apple’s clear image framework. As a brand that prides itself on the element delivery of surprise and joy, branding is used as an important indicator of all external communication, including marketing, sales, recruitment, event execution, and service provision.
Even in startups, as their size and influence grows, a consistent voice will become a principal factor for introducing the company to the world.
Apple logo Think Different.png:derivative work: Stoopkitty (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
2. Indicators for Internal Communication Among Members
“The creation of a strong brand depends on how much consensus a company has with its internal members.”
No matter how well-built branding is, it will fail without the rapport and understanding of company members. Upstage recognizes the importance of strong internal bonds, and strives to create powerful brandings in which members can identify with the company’s mission and grow together with a common purpose. Branding is expected to align ultimate goals and guide communication, product development, marketing, and sales activities alongside company decision-making.
Startup Rebranding
We have now taken a look at the reasons startups require a branding system, as well as summarized the purpose of branding. Upstage has revisited the existing brand system based on these new understandings, showcasing the essentiality of Upstage on the world stage.
The AI Startup Upstage created the mission and vision of ‘Making AI Beneficial,’ focusing on ‘Easy-to-Apply AI’ through numerous discussions and considerations from its very establishment. Upstage’s core values encompass One Team, Sharing, Personal Growth, One Step More, and Ethics. However, the conclusion was reached that rebranding is necessary—but why?
Upstage is working to refine the mission, vision, and core values that have been followed since its establishment in order to realize a unified identity among its members. For instance, when considering the mission of ‘Making AI Beneficial,’ each member will hold a different definition and interpretation of the phrase.
In order to keep a consistent image, we compiled the subtly different images held by the star members, refining and sharing our identity once more. This is because our brand’s identity must have a consistent interpretation and meaning both within the company and without.
An important factor here is the ‘customer-oriented mind.’ It is crucial to keep customer-oriented values such as messages and benefits in mind, not just what the company wishes to express. This is because a major role of branding is its promise to the customer. By addressing these points, we introduced the Upstage brand system, to be introduced in the next part of this series.
Points to Consider When Setting Up a Brand System
When setting up a brand system, a company must first create a core value to act as the center focus. Upstage sought to incorporate core values and create a satisfactory brand system by asking the three questions below:
Is the vision easy for everyone to understand?
Does it accurately portray consumers’ impressions of the company?
Can it serve as a reference point for decision-making among internal members?
Core values should be keyworded with the idea that both customers and internal personnel should understand and identify with the service’s values. Successful branding ultimately begins when internal members personalize and represent the company’s core values.
In the next episode of this series, we will introduce Upstage’s establishment of the brand system, as well as its process and outcomes. If you want business and branding insight through the colorful branding process of Upstage, don’t miss our upcoming content!
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