Leveraging your people leverages your logo

Michael Jordan. Nike.

Marilyn Monroe. Chanel.

Steve Jobs. Apple.

One of the most challenging tasks for any company is to transform its name and logo into something that holds more meaning than just an identifier.

Companies will spend tens of thousands of dollars from their VC funding just to secure a domain name that makes them appear cooler.

"We're not just a CRM. We're Fire."

"Come on, I know you want to be a Fireling."

This approach might seem like a guaranteed way to gain an advantage in brand recognition.

However, there are plenty of examples, like HashiCorp, a NASDAQ-listed company, whose founder simply registered it as a placeholder and never bothered to come up with anything else.

Your name and logo are not your most critical assets.

Instead, it is what you DO with your name and logo.

Building a reputation for your company is a long-term commitment, and it can be summarized by this simple formula I created:

Company reputation = real value you offer * how well you PR this value * the number of people that buy into your PR

The challenge for many early-stage companies is that they lack brand reach from a public visibility perspective (e.g. media, SEO).

The difficulty in building a voice for your brand lies in the fact that people don’t usually want to hear from profit-making corporations. It’s challenging to give a human voice to your logo.

A more effective approach is to use champions for your company, either internal employees or external ambassadors.

People connect more easily with people than with brands when the brands lack real influencing power.

By using people as proxies for the brand itself, the brand benefits from the trickle-down effects of being associated with a real human, who inherently has a much broader profile and value system than just wanting to sell something.

I have employed this strategy before. At an early-stage tech company, it was exceedingly difficult to make conversions with software engineers whose primary platform was Twitter.

By shifting from a corporate approach (representatives of the company) to a personal approach (champions of the company), people were much more inclined to engage in meaningful conversations.

If you are an early-stage company, leverage this approach as much as you can. You can use it at any deal size, noting that you might want to start with people on the same status level as your champion (professional and fame standings).

As your company grows, if you simultaneously expand the presence of your champions, the same strategy will work for larger and more ambitious connections and deals.

Start as early as possible.

It is much easier to grow a person's Twitter than it is to grow your company's Twitter.

Investing resources into your champions not only strengthens the bond between you and them, but also signals to your target audience that your logo cares about people.

If you are a CEO, sit down with your marketing team today. Tell them that you want them to market you. This is not self-conceited; it is strategic.

And it will work.