Branding The Entrepreneurs

The first thing any marketing or advertising wizard must know about branding for entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurs have no money.

- Sangeeta Mahapatra

It can be a self-funded start-up or a start-up with a $100 million funding or a start-up that has bagged some of the largest VCs in the world. They still have no money, essentially no money to spare. There are millions of things to spend the money on - to build the next iteration of the product, for customer acquisitions, for market acquisitions and the list goes on.

The second thing that the marketing wizard must understand is that the entrepreneur expects you to do a brilliant job that makes his company and him stand out against the largest players in his segment. This is because there is really no brand recall. It is a start-up. No one knows the founder/s. The marketing person has to brand the entrepreneur and his company to build recognition and create a positive vibe so that when he goes to customers, they give him the time of day.

Crucially, the branding of the start-up is, more often than not, closely intertwined with the branding of the founder. Now, when you pick up Dettol, you really don’t care who the Marketing Head for Dettol is or when you buy an LG TV, you don’t really care a whit about Koo Bon-joon, but Elon Musk is as big as Tesla. Sachin Bansal, despite being low key, is as famous as his company. Entrepreneurs and their behaviour very often define the brand. Today, the chaos with Facebook and the low level of trust that Facebook has is in many ways a by-product of how Mark Zuckerberg behaves.