Category creation and brand building | Barbra Gago (Pando, Miro, Greenhouse, Culture Amp)

Oct 27, 2022 55m 47s 12 insights Episode Page ↗
Barbara Gago, former CMO at Miro and VP of Marketing at Greenhouse, shares insights on creating new software categories, effective brand building and rebranding strategies, and the importance of developing opinionated software to solve systemic problems.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize Brand & Product Together

Build product and brand in tandem from early stages, as both are crucial for customer acquisition, loyalty, and engagement. A great product needs a thoughtful brand, and a great brand needs a strong product.

2. Integrate Values into Brand

Weave company values into the brand’s DNA to ensure authenticity and consistent manifestation across all touchpoints and employee interactions, as values are foundational to how people behave and interact.

3. Consider Category Creation

Explore creating a new category if your product’s scope is too small for your ambition, if there’s no existing budget for your solution, or if you truly don’t fit into existing categories. This strategy is most effective during market inflection points or when introducing disruptive technology.

4. Treat Rebranding as Product

Approach rebranding with a structured, agile, and transparent process, similar to product development, involving the entire company and gathering customer feedback. This ensures broad alignment and buy-in across the organization.

5. Customer Insights Drive Strategy

Base all marketing, positioning, and category creation efforts on extensive conversations with customers to deeply understand their pain points, how they solve problems, and the language they use. This direct feedback is the source of effective positioning.

6. Engage Analysts for Validation

Build relationships with industry analysts (e.g., Gartner, Forrester) and directory sites (e.g., G2 Crowd) to explain and differentiate your new category. These entities play a critical role in shaping customer perception and validating new categories.

7. Use Content & PR for Education

Leverage content marketing, thought leadership, and PR to educate buyers about a new category, its unique value propositions, and why they should allocate budget for it. This helps generate appetite and understanding for the new space.

8. Maintain Existing Category Positioning

If building a new category, continue to optimize and sell into relevant existing categories in parallel to capture immediate budget and market share. This allows for a long-tail strategy where you gradually shift mindsets while still operating within established markets.

9. Rebrand Early & Strategically

Rebrand before significant scale, ideally once product-market fit is established, if the current name limits growth or doesn’t reflect the product’s full potential. The sooner you rebrand, the less investment is wasted on an unscalable brand.

10. Retain Brand Essence in Rebrand

When rebranding, subtly nod to the original brand’s essence (e.g., colors, key elements) to maintain connection with early adopters and existing customers. This helps transition the user base without alienating loyal users.

11. Structure Company Value Definition

For company values, use a structured workshop format (brain dump, group, vote) to gather input from the team, then assign a skilled writer to draft concise, non-generic definitions. This ensures broad input while maintaining clarity and memorability.

12. Build Opinionated Software

Develop software that enforces best practices or a ‘better way’ of working, especially to address systemic issues, biases, or lack of technology in existing processes. This approach provides clear guidance and improves outcomes for users.