By Guest Author Adam Von Rothfelder, Founder of Strong Coffee
When I founded my company, Strong Coffee, I didn’t want to just create another product. I wanted to create a movement.
Something timeless and iconic. Something people trust.
So instead of building my company around a product, I built my product around a brand. And that brand is based on a strong foundation of intention, passion, heart, and honesty.
And because I approached my business this way, it’s grown into a community of people who resonate with my values — and that has resulted in a stronger, more resilient business with customers that are loyal and engaged.
In this post, I’m going to share:
- The framework you can use to start (or grow) a resilient, one-of-a-kind brand — just like I did with Strong Coffee
- The role “brand foundation” plays in connecting with customers and building a community
- How to establish a brand foundation in 4 growth scenarios (like starting a new brand, expanding an existing product line, and more)
What Is Your Brand Foundation?
A strong brand foundation tells the story of how you got here, why you started this business, and how it will positively impact the consumer. It communicates your brand’s identity and values, and how you impart those qualities into your products.
It’s something you might find on an About Us page — like ours at Strong Coffee — but this messaging should reverberate throughout your marketing.
And when you tell this story in a way that’s relatable, clear, and cohesive, it establishes credibility and camaraderie with potential customers. This is how you build a brand, and not just a business.
As you’ll learn in this article, a strong brand foundation is essential to success for a modern ecommerce business.
In a lot of ways, your brand foundation acts as a compass that helps you navigate the violent seas of the entrepreneurial journey — guiding you to make one business decision over another in order to align with your values.
Now, let’s dive into the crucial role a brand foundation plays in the 4 different types of business growth scenarios.
1) Building a New Brand & Product from Scratch
Starting a new brand involves developing a unique product concept, establishing a brand identity, and launching marketing strategies from the ground up.
A strong brand foundation is important for new brands because it establishes credibility by communicating the brand’s identity, values, and commitment to quality, thereby building trust with potential consumers.
In order to make this happen, your brand needs two very important things:
- Clear messaging, which is essential to differentiate your brand in competitive markets by making it easy for consumers to understand why they should choose you over your competitors.
- High quality standards to address consumers’ needs and enhance their satisfaction and loyalty.
When you do it successfully, building a well-established brand foundation helps provide market differentiation that a brand needs to stand out in the market and lay the groundwork for long-term success.
Without a strong foundation, new brands in particular may find it challenging to compete effectively, attract loyal customers, and achieve sustainable growth.
To ensure a strong foundation when starting a brand from scratch, focus on clearly defining your brand’s identity, values, and core offerings.
Invest time in understanding your target audience and market needs, and ensure every aspect of your brand — from product development to marketing strategies — aligns with this foundation to build credibility and effectively compete in the market.
Case Study for Creating a New Brand: Strong Coffee
The best example of incorporating a brand foundation into a new venture is my own brand, Strong Coffee.
Strong Coffee was borne out of my own experience, based on my own personal history and challenges. This is common for entrepreneurs, who often position themselves as the first consumer of their product.
This approach ensures the solution they develop is genuinely needed and well-understood, which means it has a good chance of resonating with other people facing similar issues.
In my case, these were the series of events:
- Health issues in my family helped motivate me to become a gym owner and trainer
- During that time, I created a healthy coffee concoction that took 30 minutes or so to create
- My clients started taking interest, and telling me “that smells amazing,” so I started making it for them
And thus, Strong Coffee was born.
Growing Strong Coffee wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t a linear process. There were a lot of ups and downs, including many obstacles that took grit to overcome. I’ve had to deal with failed launches, huge order cancellations, fulfilling orders out of my house, even traveling and sleeping out of my van.
And that history gives you a little insight into the Strong Coffee brand.
Strong Coffee talks a lot about strength — the word is right there in the name — but it doesn’t refer to raw strength in terms of how much weight you can lift. Instead, it’s all about resilience. That message of resilience resonates a lot for me, because I had to exercise a lot of it while starting this company!
As you can tell, the Strong Coffee brand is intricately tied to me: my unique blend of experiences, skills, and passions. I call that your “ness,” as in your unique-ness, and it’s your brand’s superpower.
Leveraging your “ness” is what sets you apart in a crowded market and helps your product resonate with your audience. In short, it gives you a competitive advantage that is authentically yours.
2) Expanding an Existing Business or Product Line
“Expansion” can mean a few different things — including adding new products to an existing product line, entering a new market segment, or scaling operations to increase market reach
In each of these cases, having a strong brand foundation plays a key role in your level of success. Specifically, a strong brand foundation helps you to:
- Maintain brand consistency, so you can expand while maintaining coherence across all product lines and markets.
- Leverage brand equity, allowing you to capitalize on your existing customer loyalty and market reputation to help make your expansion a success.
- Provide strategic focus, aligning your expansion efforts with your core values and market positioning, and ensuring that your expansion will be in a great position to appeal to both new and existing customers.
Expansion isn’t without risks, of course. The main risk being the risk of brand dilution.
Without a robust brand foundation, an expansion could potentially harm your brand’s reputation if your new products don’t meet customer expectations or your existing quality standards.
Case Study for Brand Expansion: Coca-Cola
For a great example of the successful expansion of a product line that maintains consistent branding across all its offerings (old and new), look no further than one of the greatest brands of all time: Coca-Cola.
By using its distinctive logo, color scheme, and font across all their new products — like Coke Zero, Cherry Coke, and other variants — Coca-Cola has ensured that each product is instantly recognizable as part of its iconic brand.
This strategic approach to branding reinforces their market identity and fosters a strong, cohesive brand experience across all its products.
Source: https://www.marketingweek.com/coca-cola-moves-to-one-brand-strategy-scrapping-individual-brand-campaigns/
3) Building a Second Business or Acquiring a New Business or Brand
Next, let’s discuss growing your brand through the strategic acquisition or starting of a new business.
Acquiring a new brand:
One way to diversify your holdings and/or to enter new markets is to acquire an additional business that complements your existing one.
When acquiring a new brand, it’s critical to evaluate the brand foundation of both your existing brand and the new brand to be acquired. The strength and clarity of those foundations will affect the acquisition in a number of important ways:
- Valuation: A strong brand foundation in the new company increases valuation, potentially commanding a higher price due to its established market presence and customer loyalty.
- Risks: On the other hand, acquiring a new brand with a weak foundation can pose risks—such as making integration difficult, requiring substantial repositioning efforts, and potentially tarnishing your brand’s reputation.
- Brand assets: A strong brand foundation in your existing company allows you to effectively utilize your existing brand assets, knowledge, and market presence to drive growth and achieve rapid synergy between both brands.
Case Study for Brand Acquisition: YouTube
You can’t talk about successful business acquisitions without including a mention of Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006. In hindsight, this was one of the savviest purchases in history.
After the purchase, Google made the wise decision to maintain YouTube’s unique brand identity, logo, and user interface, thus ensuring that the platform’s already well-established community and brand equity were preserved.
Notice that even now, YouTube’s branding makes no mention of its parent company:
This approach helped to foster trust and continuity among YouTube’s vast user base, while still allowing it to benefit from Google’s technological and financial resources.
Starting a secondary business:
If acquiring a new business isn’t an option, another alternative is to start your own. When starting a secondary business, having a strong brand foundation is essential to maintaining brand coherence and integrity.
Here are a few concepts to keep in mind:
- Differentiation: Without a strong foundation, the new business may struggle to establish its identity, differentiate itself from competitors, and gain consumer traction.
- Dilution: Another risk includes the potential to dilute the brand equity of the primary business.
- Consistency: To avoid dilution, it’s important to maintain consistency across business entities. When you ensure that your brands’ messaging, values, and customer experience are aligned, it can help reinforce brand loyalty and trust.
A strong brand foundation also gives you the opportunity to leverage your existing brand assets — such as your brand’s reputation, resources, and customer base — to provide a competitive advantage and accelerate the success of the secondary business.
Case Study for Building a Secondary Business: Android Phones
Let’s stick with another Google example here by looking at Android. Android has skyrocketed to become the world’s #1 most popular mobile operating system, turning into a huge success for Google.
Android certainly benefited from access to Google’s vast technological and financial resources, helping it to achieve success much faster than it might have otherwise.
Notice how Android uses a similar color scheme as the parent brand to help maintain brand consistency:
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Even more important is the improved user experience. Because Android is built for Google, Android users get the ideal experience when using Google apps on their phone — thus bolstering the customer experience for both brands.
4) Rebranding an Existing Business
Rebranding involves refreshing (or completely changing) the brand identity of a business to reposition it in the market or rejuvenate its image.
When rebranding, a strong brand foundation can help to…
- Maintain clarity of purpose and ensure that your rebrand aligns with the brand’s core values and identity.
- Maintain consistency and cohesion, even as your brand goes through changes.
- Imbue your brand with greater resilience, helping to minimize disruption and maintain stability and brand confidence during its rebranding.
- Maintain customer trust and loyalty by reassuring them of your brand’s commitment to value and service.
- Enhance employee engagement, encouraging them to advocate for and embody the brand’s renewed values and vision.
A well-executed rebrand can play a key role in making sure that your brand stays relevant in changing times.
Case Study for Rebranding: Meta
One of the most notable rebrands in recent years came in 2021, when Facebook rebranded as Meta.
Despite making significant changes to their name and corporate focus, Meta still managed to maintain brand consistency and recognition by strategically retaining the same color palette and design elements.
The use of familiar visual elements helped ease the transition for users and stakeholders, preserving a sense of continuity and trust in the brand’s evolving identity.
Source: https://www.transformmagazine.net/articles/2021/the-experts-view-facebooks-move-to-meta/
The Importance of a Strong Brand Foundation
As you’ve just learned, there are myriad benefits to building a strong brand foundation.
It lays the groundwork for differentiating your brand from competitors, gaining consumer trust, and achieving market success and long-term sustainability. And it’s a critical factor to consider whether you’re starting a new company or growing an existing brand.
For a full deep-dive on how I build successful brands and launch sell-out products, check out collaboration I did with Smart Marketer: Smart Product Creation.
This has been Adam Von Rothfelder of Strong Coffee — thanks for reading!
