Startup Upstage Branding 2

Upstage brand system building Part 2: Startup branding process

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How do early startups implement branding? Follow our previous episode featuring why startups need branding . In this episode, we will introduce the process and outcomes of Upstage’s brand system renewal.

The journey of creating and branding a brand Before we renewed our brand, we reasked ourselves a question. What exactly is a brand, and why is branding necessary? Brand: The image customers hold of a company, product, or service. Branding: The process of recognizing customer’s impressions and directing them towards a desired path.

One of Upstage’s direct priorities was defining a brand so that customers could recognize “Upstage” before the first product, the no-code/low-code solution “Upstage AI Pack,” entered the market. This is because logo design, product packaging, website, marketing, and all related tasks are important to Upstage branding. However, before reaching this stage of branding, Upstage focused on forming a consensus with its members , as well as sharing the vision and desired growth direction so future customers could recognize the brand. The starting point was the defining of Upstage. The marketing team and the BX team formed a TF team for branding, conducting a survey to understand and reflect Upstages’ star members' brand images and values. Brand personality survey Over 80% of Upstage’s stars participated in the Upstage Brand Personality Survey, which derived results by grouping similar submissions and creating individual keywords for each group in order to determine suitable wordings for Upstage.

Q1. If you met 'Upstage' on a blind date, what would be their personality? (What we think of Upstage’s character) When asked about what kind of character Upstage was, stars came up with an unexpected amount of keywords including consideration, sincerity, and kindness. The conclusion reached was that the point Upstage wanted to emphasize to its customers, rather than intelligence and leadership, was its steadfastness and warmth to ‘make a better world.’

Upstage Brand Personality: Integrity, Trust, and Smart Q2. I, an employee of Company A, after meeting with Upstage employees tell my colleagues that “the company is really OOO.” What word is in the blank? (Brand image recognized by customers) In this second question, how Upstage wants to be remembered by the public, businesses, and private situations—much like presentation on a blind date—was examined. Words such as 'professionalism', 'superior skill', and 'trust' had a high percentage of mentions.

The professional image Upstage wishes to reflect to the world Q3. When introducing Upstage, what keywords or phrases would you include? Many stars responded with the keyword ‘ AI leaders and experts.’ Furthermore, through several interviews and workshops with external stakeholders, the marketing team has summarized the following aspirations. Combining our internal perspective with the expectations customers have for Upstage, we can express our current image and aspirations in one sentence: “A team of top experts who sincerely use AI to efficiently and conveniently solve and improve tasks and challenges.”

Upstage's Brand Image and Aspiration Upstage Branding Process (1) Finding the upstage brand archetype After organizing keywords from the Brand Personality Survey that express Upstage both internally and externally, our second step for branding was to find our brand archetype. Brand archetypes reflect a company’s image and what type of persona a brand encompasses. In the past, consumers’ purchase decisions relied on factors such as price, quality, and service satisfaction. However, today, brand history, philosophy, and image have a greater influence on these decisions. This is why it is important to establish a brand archetype.

Brand archetype examples This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License . “Creator” was the archetype with the highest voter turnout for Upstage in the warrior star interview. Upstage brand archetype warrior interview results ‍ 1st Place: Creator / 64.5% 2nd Place: Magician / 35.5% 3rd Place (Tied): Hero, Sage / 각 29% “Creators don't follow the laws of nature, instead using tools as they please to make the world a better place . Creator brands influence their customers by presenting the possibilities of the world.” The following results were derived through these exploratory processes alongside the voices of Upstage members who want to benefit the world with AI. While we struggled to choose keywords that felt more intuitive compared to the words from before, we finalized Harmony, Barrierless, and Frontier as Upstage’s keywords.

Upstage Branding Process (2) Since even just a single word has the power to express the brand, through the process of modifying and refining keywords whilst pondering the best way to express Upstage’s identity, we came up with a final result.

Upstage Branding Process (3) The ‘sprint method’ to establishing a benchmark for branding Over the course of three months, we fiercely built an Upstage-exclusive brand system through various internal and external interviews, surveys, and competitor research. Now, we were ready to take one final step further. ‘One Step More’ was intended to set a reference point for all of our results thus far . In order to achieve this, we needed to examine the background and criteria of choosing keywords once again. However, due to limited time and resources, an effective methodology designed to acquire the desired answers was required above all else. In order to answer these important issues, we set out on a journey to find our individual answers ( upstage-likeness ) incorporating the “sprint” method, where team members had a heated discussion in a short period of time to derive ideas. The basic rules of sprint—proper team formation, sufficient discussion with all members, selection of final decision makers, and thorough scheduling using timers—allowed us to select only what we needed from sprint’s various methodologies. Step 1: What, How, and Why (15 minutes) 'What, How, Why' is a methodology based on Simon Sinek’s ‘Golden Circle .’ The premise is simple: You need to understand and have the...