2023·05·23 · 49:23
Mastering WordPress Product Branding with Joost de Valk | WP Product Talk
I talk about branding as a trust problem, not a design problem. When people buy a product, they are deciding whether they trust you, and your brand is the sum of everything that shapes that decision. I cover the accidental origins of the Yoast brand, how naming a company after yourself creates complications when you eventually sell, what made Yoast’s visual identity work at scale, and what I would do differently building Emilia Capital as a new brand from scratch. I also discuss the ROI of branding investment and when it starts to see diminishing returns.
0:41 [Music] this is WP product talk the place where every week we talk about the business and workings of owning running managing succeeding and even failing in the space of WordPress products and product ownership
1:16 I'm Katie Keith CEO of planting plugins miss my line and I'm Matt Cromwell co-founder of give WP and now senior director of customer experience at Stellar WP and today's topic is what makes for a great WordPress product brand and why you might want to Rebrand now I've personally been looking forward to this one uh it's honestly something that I don't feel like it's very much conversation in the WordPress product space and yet it's really fundamental and really important so looking forward to this
1:47 and to introduce Our Guest today we have a special appearance from Michelle frechette I am Michelle frechette from podcasts like WP Coffee Talk under represented in Tech WP motivate and the new podcast series WP constellations I'm introducing today's WP product talk guest Jose Volk Yost is an internet entrepreneur hailing from the Netherlands he's the founder of yoast the company which was sold to newfold digital in July 2021. he's an extensive background in digital
2:20 marketing and WordPress yoast is married to Marika who previously held the physician of CEO at yoast until the company's acquisition the couple has four children together through their company Amelia Capital Yost and Marika invest in businesses that operate at least partially within the digital realm they also manage their own projects such as marika's Empower women's initiative it is my pleasure to get to know both yoast and Marika through the WordPress community and I've enjoyed following their initiatives that help make the community more accessible
2:51 to underrepresented people I'm excited to see what will come as Amelia Capital grows and wish them amazing success and now here's Yost hey welcome welcome thank you that was a nice intro we try we try to make people blush when they come on here yeah I'm all blushing now I'll have to thank Michelle for that so Michelle thank you if you're watching
3:22 absolutely cool well here we are and like Katie said talking about branding I'm excited um and uh how we always kick this off is uh we want to encourage everyone who's watching to uh use the chat if you're here on YouTube um use the chat and give us your questions or your comments or your feedback or throw tomatoes at yoast or whatever you like um uh we can handle it if you're on Twitter use the hashtag WP product talk and we'll be paying attention um but uh the first things first is uh
3:54 why this subject is so important um yoast this was actually your recommendation as a subject and uh so you're you're on the you're on the on the platform here why is this so important why is this such a big deal so in the end I think everyone when building a product once wants people to buy that product and a large part of that decision is do people trust you do people know you do they so all of these things are important and a
4:26 lot of that is is always considered marketing but a very important portion of that is branding and and it's very important that people understand who you are but also have a feeling when they see your name they have to have that positive connotation to your name they have to trust you to actually fix their problem for you so um branding is indeed not talked about enough in the WordPress world I think one of the reasons yoast got as big as it was was because we did our branding
4:57 very well and I would suggest that everybody who wants to build a product brand like that do the same and and and things about their brand and builds it and that's more than just creating a logo yeah absolutely for sure I mean I definitely have heard folks there's I've heard some mixed reviews on the aesthetic of yoast honestly some folks don't love it but I think every single person finds it distinctive like you can't not
5:28 remember it that's the thing I think that's really interesting I I think that's more important than than necessarily having everyone love the imagery or whatever it is you're using um I I I think that the well it's one of the things that we did when we created yoast is it literally the second person we hired was a web designer or and a designer in general and the third person we hire was an illustrator and uh before
6:01 we even hired any coders so having that that design and standing out from the crowd which is what you're doing literally has always been very important yeah absolutely I think it's really clever with the yoast brand how you've got kind of the right balance between a personal brand and also something that can stand away from you which is obviously important as you step away more um like you've got entirely entirely now I'm not involved anymore at all which is
6:33 weird but it's but it's true it must be and with your name you'll always be branding wise symbolically and even right down to the little ghost Legos that people still have in their children's toy boxes and things but it is a distinct brand that can continue without which is really clever and it is we had we actually had a project at some point taking yoast out of yoast um and and our project was very much like because in the very beginning and and the WordPress uh old people will
7:04 remember this like Katie is far too young for this to remember this I think but I I was in the header of every page like literally my avatar was in the editor of every page on that site and at some point there were like 25 people working at Yellowstone we still had that and I I talked to a friend at a conference and he was like dude you need to get away from that I'm like yeah you're probably right and and then we did so we we had the taking yoast out of yoast project and now it happens sometimes
7:36 that I'm introduced at conferences as this is Juiced from yoast yeah yeah and nice Katie what about you um so yeah definitely an important topic for all those reasons it also makes you stand out from the competition and can help to justify a premium price tag so if you just have kind of a really neutral brand that isn't very memorable people will expect to pay kind of
8:07 middlely prices if you've got a really distinct professional brand then I think you can charge more for what is otherwise the same product because it's all about perception and as yo said a minute ago it's not just about visuals because it cuts across all of your customer contact points right down to things like the tone of voice that your support team use when they respond to technical support tickets but um not enough WordPress companies put that emphasis into their brand so we we should be talking about it as the
8:39 WordPress product Talk podcast and whether it's worth putting that investment in to get a more distinctive brand mm-hmm absolutely yeah those are good considerations for sure I mean I think in some ways we should probably kind of distinguish for some folks that a brand is a kind of like an umbrella term for a lot of different things like you have your brand name you have your brand logo you have your brand icon um you kind of have often like a brand um voice um or tone or identity um that you want to represent in
9:12 different ways uh we we could talk about all those things I'm not trying to limit the conversation but uh in many ways I think like starting with just the name itself like starting with yoast or starting with barn two we'll get into our our story talk a little bit later about these things but like those that that name by itself regardless of the icon or the logo I think is is uh unique and different um and can be the premium thing all by itself depending on on what that what that name is especially if you combine
9:44 it with like a really slick domain if you're able to get away with like a really like a six letter domain in many ways you know nobody gets four letters anymore but um you know things like that can really be a big deal sometimes they're surprisingly cheap I mean yoast.com I bought only well that's not true it's like 18 years ago that I bought that I think but it it was only two and a half thousand dollars at that point nice all right what about yoast.nl do you
10:15 have that one too we have yeah we have a lot of the different versions yet so um the funny thing is there's more people named Jost that I used the the same way of spelling it so it took some time to to com to get them all and also to use the power of a registered trademark and which you should do by the way if you're if you have a product and you have a name that you can register register that trademark yeah um to to actually get all the domain names and all the the Twitter handles
10:48 and everything like that yeah yep really important um for me I think when it comes to branding uh the reason why this is such a big deal is it's really the very first impression of your product um you know they're gonna see the name they're gonna hear it uh from a friend um they're gonna see it online in the social context or an ad or something like that that's going to be the very first interaction um that they get in different ways in one way or another
11:20 um and um I uh I I really think First Impressions matter a ton when it comes to um customer trust in who you are and what they want to do and whether they want to spend money with you at all um I I think Impressions first impressions are a big deal well and it's also not just First Impressions right a lot of this is people hearing about you multiple times before they buy from you uh and and getting onto your website probably a couple of times before they buy we see especially with three medium
11:54 products it sometimes takes more than a year for people to go from free to premium and uh and and that is building up that brand recognition and that well that that power that they attribute to your brand over time so it's that's also why consistency in these things is very important you have to be consistent about how you how you do all that yeah absolutely good points um who out there do you feel like is um
12:25 some other really good examples of like a brand name and WordPress that really nailed it okay so can I be highly critical yes please I think there's far too few companies doing it very very good because it's it's literally one of the things that Marie can I talk to a lot of our investments about like we need to to improve on that branding um so it's too easy maybe to shout out to some of our own Investments but I think
12:56 after Rim is actually doing quite a good job with something that is also like not just a logo but also the atrium Summit and everything around that it became a part of their brand and I I think doing things like that like we did videos as well with yoastcon is super important to um also emphasize who you are and what you are but then you also have to make sure that everything that that thing is really is
13:28 a good well representation of who you are as a company yeah atarim is a good example in terms of like a brand a re a relatively recent brand that ditched the wp like that's a good question to bring up here too Barn two also no no WP there yoast no WP with give like it's a four-letter word it's kind of like we we had to kind of go with the wp in some way or another because and it's a beautiful brand yeah yeah I'm just going to give that an example actually because you follow it you
14:04 thing in all mediums even like Communications with Affiliates and things like that it's almost the brand is indistinguishable from the values which is unusual but you could lose the wp if you think about iconic for example they couldn't get the iconic.com domain but they've never called themselves iconic WP really mm-hmm yeah same thing with us like we there was no way we're going to get give.com um and we can't trademark give as a term uh but give WP we can and we have so
14:35 um that's kind of a little bit of the struggle but like WP Fusion I like WP Fusion a lot as a brand name in terms of somebody who chose the wp um and it sounds like what it is like I like the idea of using the word Fusion for you know being a connector of things like I think they did a good job there but like another one is learndash didn't choose the wp I like learn Dash as a brand a lot personally a little bit highest slightly I like learn Dash too but we
15:07 always used it too so I no I I agree but at the same time it's also like you're not by adding WP you're limiting yourself to the wp platform yeah basically for a long time and for some companies that might not be a problem at all but yoast for instance is it exists for Shopify as well and if it had a WP in it it that would actually be problematic problem problematic so um I mean maybe Katie I don't know how that is for barn two but I can imagine you doing similar things for another platform and I think you could actually
15:40 use burn two there too yeah it would be an option so let's say if the terrible happened and WordPress lost its market share or something then we could pivot with our brand into more of um I don't know apps for other platforms so while that's not on the road map now it does give us that flexibility and that's a really good point about how having WP or even Wu or something else there's lots of variants like that in your brand does limit you because you never know what your future Direction might be however
16:11 strong your business plan and goals yeah yeah and I think that it's important to realize if you do it right and your brand is bigger than a lot of these things so one of the so not everyone remembers this but what the plugin that's now called yo so it used to be called WordPress SEO in the beginning and then we started rebranding it WordPress SEO by yoast and a couple years later we we changed it to your cisio for WordPress and the funny thing is that over time you
16:43 saw the Google Trends searches change and literally people started searching for yoast SEO mode and for WordPress SEO so your brand at that point becomes bigger than what you were before that and I think that that is actually well a a very good indicator of a strong business and I I think that that's something that you have to try and build over time a brand doesn't get built in two days it really takes a bit of time it also doesn't have to take two years
17:14 but it but it is important that you're like that you're consistently doing a thing for a while before people actually trust a brand in the WordPress world one of the examples that a lot of people might know is post status it has actually become a brand for a community and and with that has has gathered well a lot of um Trust From A lot of people and it's where where all of us gather all the time so you so it's something that that's very like very at least very dear
17:46 to my heart uh and I think that that's the sort of connection that you want people to have to a brand mm-hmm yep nice uh let's talk a little bit about our experiences um in um this subject in particular we all have um some experience here to that we could talk about um I I'll kick it off today like I think the big three that I've been directly involved in are are give WP of course another brand that a lot of folks don't
18:17 know that we also carry is called WP business reviews and then most recently we did a big Rebrand in public of uh I themes changing to solid WP um and I think that I'll zero in on give and solid like one of the real consistencies between the way we approach the give brand and the solid brand where we really wanted to focus in on like a a really recognizable term uh and word um a word Mark essentially that folks
18:48 would would recognize and would stick in their brain one way or another um of course these are like English terms um and um that is one thing to keep in mind too like we have we might want to talk a little bit about internationalization of brand names um but um and how that applies in different ways but um I think English does have a little bit of an advantage um in being so widely uh spoken as a second language for so many people um but
19:19 um give in particular we wanted it to really be a short um uh four-letter brand as much as possible um even though we knew we weren't going to get away with the.com of that and that was really helpful even our slug on wordpress.org is just give g-i-v-e um and things like that I think were really useful um uh when we first picked it um and it's helpful in the cases like ours where we were kind of like first to Market when it comes to like a big
19:50 donation plug-in essentially uh not exactly but close to it um so and that same thing with solid um we really were looking for something that um people would recognize and be familiar uh right away um that is one kind of downside I think to adoram um is that sometimes it takes a little bit of a mental jump to to really recognize what that term is and what it means and or or why you should remember it things like that um it pros and cons to both for sure um but for us we wanted something that
20:22 really evoked like foundational aspects because we're really trying to do you know plugins that every WordPress website needs as the foundation of their site so solid WP um so and and it's supposed to sound very um Premier or Elite in some ways but also approachable and easy and straightforward too so um uh yeah um it's it's very clear that you've thought about it a lot more than we ever did
20:53 [Laughter] so for me yoast was literally I had actually started my own business I was in the shop with one of my kids and I got a call from my accountant saying yes sorry that name's already been taken by another company that did the other name that I had you need to come up with another name and I literally was on the phone with Marika saying okay so what do I do and she said well just call it yoast like your bloke you're not gonna this is never going to go anywhere just call it after yourself
21:26 yeah and then you're stuck for for a decade plus with a name that's constantly your own name which is sort of annoying yeah yeah no yeah so it but it was a good brand in many ways because it was short and memorable Etc so it has it has some very good things but it was I'm I want to say that we we fought about all of this from the beginning but of course we didn't I mean this is literally we're talking about
21:57 2010 yeah uh WordPress was yay big yeah and yeah no we were nowhere close to to what we were all doing did you think about Bond two and how did you get to Ubuntu I now want to know Katie because would Barn at the time we now live you know somewhere completely different in Majorca not in the anywhere near the animals and things that we had in the old house and we're stuck with it and we talked earlier about
22:29 internationalization apparently the word Barn is something to do with a baby in um Scandinavia and so people in Denmark and things are like what's your company got to do with babies so it's not even in good International English word and then you can never change it we also made the mistake of starting off as co.uk because the.com wasn't available so then we had to spend a reasonable amount of money to get the.com once we realized we were an international
23:00 company which we'd never anticipated when we started designing WordPress websites in 2010 so that's another example of not really planning for your future growth yeah now that's such an interesting story I love it um and I I do I do have a real font spot for like both of those stories in terms of like we're just like hobbyists just kind of doing a thing on the weekend and we're just gonna give it a name and then all of a sudden it becomes this big deal it's like it's really fun I love it
23:32 well it's also I I think in the end that's how a lot of Wordpress companies started yeah and in general how a lot of companies start is it just happens yeah and but like I mean that that's uh the space is changing you know and that's I think that's a little bit like where we all came from is like what we got away with like eight ten years ago we can't get away with as easily today um and so that's what I like about where you're coming from yoast now with Amelia
24:03 Capital it's like you're you you're like if somebody's like I'm just gonna name it after myself or my after my first born kid and you're like no no don't do that like I did that and I wouldn't do it again right so so Emilia capitals actually has a has a fun story to it too because we our address is actually Emilia Vanessa Street here in the Netherlands and Emilia was a princess from the town that we uh that we are in or actually she was a Dutch royal princess that lived in this town for a while and the castle she was quite
24:34 badass so we were like hey that that's a good name for our company but it I I do like a a name with a story uh to it uh and and well Emilia ticked all the boxes and we're we're well that's actually probably the second time I get to build a brand like that uh and and with Marika again and and we'll play with it create logos do the whole thing again and think about hey what what what do we want to be what does that look like mm-hmm
25:05 yeah well it does definitely feel like a very different approach to a brand than yoast was right yeah but it's also a very different Beast uh so it's very much not a consumer brand um it's very much something that um well it has two places to be in I think one is the WordPress community and and the other thing is towards companies looking for investment which is a very different way of of looking at things
25:36 um in some ways you want to look professional and like you know what you're doing when you when you're investing in other companies and of course we don't because nobody does um but yeah so you need to portray that nicely um so it has a different role to play and I think yoast is very very much more a a brand that talks to a very wide community of users
26:07 um where both of you probably play as well I mean Barton 2 has is a bit more towards the e-commerce side and most of its plugins I think but I I um you're talking to a much larger market of users than we are with Amelia it has a very different approach well for you it's more of a supportive tool really isn't it so people will apply for investment or something and then that adds credibility afterwards it's not so much for getting that deal
26:41 I think most people want this as investors because it's Marika and me and not necessarily because we're called Amelia because nobody really cares I think at the same time once we start combining these Investments and people look at it at it more than maybe it might it might become a bit more than that but we'll see I we um we've got plenty of ideas for the next couple of years and uh and well it's it's all just starting literally uh so uh yeah looking forward to build on that and see where we can take that
27:13 maybe we'll do an Amelia Khan at some point but then we'll have to come up actually combining multiple Brands into a single brand because that's something that Matt you've been doing with Stella isn't it each of those was branded its own rights but you're bringing them together now they have this Mutual support network so I suppose an accelerator type program is similar um yeah I think umbrella Brands is like a whole nother conversation um those are harder
27:46 um and even with Stellar like um Stellar Works only because we're making it work I think in many ways um it doesn't sound like a like if it was like Michelle just launched uh WP constellation um podcast you know constellation sounds like a grouping of things you know it just automatically sounds that way Stellar just sounds like awesome you know it's uh doing awesome things um but it's a whole nother conversation I think well it's also interesting
28:17 because there's you've made it very different choices and for instance Syed did with it with his uh plugins because he's it's all the wp beginner family but it's it's not really an umbrella brand and and yet it is and there so there's there's a lot of different ways you can go about that and I mean the only thing that I I'm always a bit afraid of in these things is how not to confuse the end yeah uh which honestly with Stellar is a bit like it's it's a
28:49 stellar it's a liquid web brand and there's like there's three layers to that which is quite a lot to to comprehend um but umbrella Brands I well if you get to that problem it's a good problem to have yeah true delicious brains is another good one um well that's not quite exactly an umbrella brand anymore but like um a holding brand for several different products um and I I it's an interesting approach because like none of their product names sound like delicious
29:20 brains at all and none of them sound related to each other in any way um and delicious print itself doesn't sound like an umbrella uh term in any way but they just ran with it and they just made the website really reflect it really well um so I love the brand name though it's yeah yeah it's just very cool all of their products are or most of their products have WP in them though if if I recall correctly but it is like yeah well migrate DB Pro not quite but like
29:52 yeah yeah there's a couple of them yeah yeah and then they purchased ACF which also doesn't have yeah but they never really co-branded that like whereas with their other products that had unique color schemes and logos even within the wider brand which was quite nice yeah true true Katie you have a note here about what you would do differently next time I want to lean in on that a little bit okay yeah our brand kind of just just it's interesting we did the opposite of yoast who you just said your
30:23 I think was it your third and fourth hires were designers and illustrators and so on we literally just hired our first designer a couple of months ago our first full-time designer we um our logo was designed by somebody on 99 designed so was the home page of our website which is not the most professional way to get a brand so I would definitely hire somebody proper either an agency or in-house that doesn't really matter but it's about having an individual you can build that
30:56 relationship with so I would do that differently uh other things I would do differently um would be to aim higher our Brand's fine but really I would like it I would Aspire for it to be as professional as the best SAS companies I think we should be looking outside of Wordpress in our aspirations for our brand because Beyond WordPress yes the standard is the average standard is higher so I'd like to up the level of our brand at some
31:27 point but we're kind of daunted about the size of that project so we're trying to evolve our brand gradually and now we've got an in-house designer and he's designing so it's nice things like our t-shirts for word Camp Europe and all the swag and um all these things we've never had before but I would definitely do that differently and another note it's interesting to think about uniqueness because you never know like for example our t-shirts last year were the same color
31:59 as the volunteers at word campus and people kept asking us for directions so this year it's actually a good marketing play lots of people talking to you but for the wrong reason and then this year we've gone for quite an unusual color of blue and as you can see yoast has the same color T-shirt and I just got off a call with some other WordPress people and Jason Coleman had the same color t-shirts as me I thought it was unusual so
32:30 I think yoast is quite clever because that kind of burgundy dark red and your t-shirts always stand out at word camps as the only ones that color yeah yeah we that we did on Purpose By the way we actually because we were orange at first which I was gonna say yeah it was quite typical for a Dutch company but we were quite sick of it at some point yeah uh and um we literally did an exercise where we put all the logos of all the big WordPress companies uh uh on a on a wall
33:03 and just started throwing new combinations of colors into it like what are we gonna do and this one stood out the most absolutely that's an ongoing joke in Stellar is that with Devin and I in particular all of the brands are blue except for give is green and we're like the next brand we acquire cannot be blue that's right but it honestly at a WordPress conference a lot of a lot is blue but it's even worse when you go to cloudfest you'd think that all these hosting Brands looked it would would
33:35 have like very distinguished Brands and then all of them basically look the same hmm yeah but I agree with Katie it is like aspiring to to be a bit more than than what what the average is in the WordPress world is important in these things and I think that actually starts with something different than logos and um and and names it starts more with like what are your core principles what what is it that your company stands for what
34:06 besides making money is important to your company and thinking about those things and then Translating that into a story is probably a much more important thing that that a lot of companies should do a bit more well exercise on I think yeah yeah that's going back to what I was saying about brand voice I think in some ways um you know when I want that when people think of solid WB they think of um the solid foundation for their whole website um that are all about security and
34:38 backups and maintenance like that's what I want them to hear every single time in one form or another um we'll see if that works Katie but are you actually doing kind of like a soft like announcement that you're like considering a Rebrand is that what you're doing right here is are you telling us this breaking news no no it's something that you know I have been debating for years he in particular thinks it's worth it and I'm like okay you lead the projects and he hasn't chosen to but yeah this was a problem
35:09 with our last Rebrand um it's the biggest uh the nearest we've ever come to falling out uh you know we've built lots of plugins and other aspects of the business together and The Branding was the thing that was the most sensitive so we're a bit reluctant to get into it again and I've been very clear that it has to be his project because I can't go there yeah I can imagine yeah so it's more like a dream that we would click our fingers and have this magical new SAS level brand but there's no immediate
35:41 planned to do it yeah yeah I'll talk to Marika about this we should probably just talk write about this a bit more and she's done a lot of that That Brand Story type work here and it is something that we that you you run into uh a lot with companies is that that is hard to do that and it's actually it's a lot of work and it takes time away from stuff that you that that seems like a lot more important in the short term um but I do think it's actually good to to go through that process and you
36:13 become a better company for it well in terms of return on investment when we first started selling plugins we just put the plugins on our main agency website which was fine but it wasn't that professional it was just average we then did some work to just improve things like fonts and spacing and attention to detail and our conversion rate shot up and we really saw the difference after that mini Rebrand and then when we did the whole project to
36:45 get our current brand there was no measurable increase in conversion rates we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars no not hundreds tens of thousands of dollars um hours and hours months of work and we didn't measure an improved Roi so I wonder if there's a law of diminishing returns where once you're professional it's harder to quantify going to the next level yes to some degree but I also think that there's that you just can't measure over
37:16 fishing yeah and uh this in particular is is very hard to put a proper measure on um and that you're also selling yourself short by doing that a bit it's it that brand is important for multiple things it's not just important for who you sell to but if you at some point want to sell your company then that brand is actually an asset that they that they will look at like hey this is good this is something we can use um
37:47 and I think that there's there's a lot of a lot that you could do with that and um it just in thinking about hey who are we to whom and how do we how do we portray that um and thinking that every one of these things can be measured is honestly um I think one of the fallacies of marketing in general at the in the in the last decade uh and it's getting less and less true so yeah yeah or at least getting a lot more challenging to measure measure
38:18 accurately um yeah we could do an entire episode on on measurement and how you can do that it's the best way to get Marika uh mad is to say that you can measure everything precisely because you can't and um but it it is yeah it all of these things tied together um I think good branding and and knowing very well what your brand is and what you stand for also leads to easier decisions and marketing
38:51 and and to quicker decisions in marketing so it has a lot of these spin-off effects that that are super important to Growing your business no absolutely uh yes do you have a note here too about the importance of your own events um as you get bigger um what's that about yeah so for me it's and for us it's always been very important to to more to be more than just a WordPress
39:22 company or just an SEO company so we try to combine those things into yoscon Marika created that entire program and I and I think that it's super important once you reach a specific size and and you have enough of an audience to be able to to pull that off that it's super helpful for everyone not just to the outside but also to your team because you suddenly so what we always did is we brought in what we thought were some of the best speakers
39:53 in the WordPress space and in the in the SEO space and combined them and it's super energizing because you you get all these ideas so after that a lot of things would always happen in the company I think that's super cool to do um and it doesn't have to be an event right it can be a a another thing as well but I I do think that it's important to make your brand be more than just a logo it it has to be an experience and it had there has to be
40:24 if you can if you can attach experiences to that to that brand name I think that's super powerful in the long run um and it's also um Katie mentioned already like the people recognize their yoast college shirts and on work camps Etc it's always like yes we're there we're there usually with a lot of people as seo's team and you talk to a lot of people and you have a lot of fun conversations um and you make some rules about that so one of the things that one of the first rules we always had was you don't get
40:55 drunk in a Year's shirt um uh because your brand perception is important I still get mad when we we have Flags outside of our offices here in a couple of places and if those if those flags uh are ripped that you don't do that to your brand you make sure that you replace them in time so it's it's something that you take care of and that is uh and that is a bit more than than just um the physical appearance of it it's very much also like how those people
41:27 interact on a worst Camp is super important yeah yeah really simple application of that honestly is just when people try to put together brand guidelines and things like that for how others should be using the brand if they're going to promote you or if they're an affiliate things like that the truth is in the WordPress space I often see that the brands don't even follow their own brand guidelines on their own website or in their own product like I'll often see people putting their their icon or their logo
41:58 like in these weird colors and shapes and all kinds of stuff but without you know without any real uh care for their own style guide you know um I think I think that kind of thing is also really important um uh because if you don't do it yourself you can't reach out to an affiliate and say Hey you made my logo look like crap on your website like help me out here it's like well you kind of do that yourself so it's hard you have to set the right standards so um I like the way that
42:30 um yoast again I like the way that you're able to use the Y icon um and like like recently I'm seeing it a lot with the rainbow behind it for example um I think that's really really clever um the way that's been able to be used in a lot of different formats um and with different approaches to it we've tried to do some fun things with the give G here and there like we put a Santa hat on it sometimes during the Christmas season and things like that but it's a little bit harder to get away with I think with our give G
43:02 um well you need a level of brand recognition that's pretty hard to achieve I think before you can do weird stuff again with it and that takes time and money yeah uh and those sponsorships at wordcamps are pretty costly so it is uh I mean it is that sort of thing that that you need to do to also get that word out there yeah um but it's still like um uh I think it's worth it too and I agree with you that that style guide is
43:34 important but it's also like don't take yourself too seriously [Music] um if you if you take your own brand seriously but also not too seriously I think that's the best way of being at it yeah and that's why I love the barn too I mean even if it's weird in some languages what that that it's it is what it is right it has a history and and that's a good thing yeah absolutely well we are coming to the end and uh we want to wrap up with some of our best
44:06 advice so uh if you are working on a new product uh or a new brand um we're gonna come rapid fire with our best advice right now so first up uh is Katie Katie what is your best advice for folks who are building out a brand new brand yeah well we need to think about people's different budgets and so on so as an absolute minimum create a simple brand that is highly professional and will build trust and if possible if budget allows invest further in a more professional unique brand identity that
44:39 people will recognize much more nice that's really good actual advice and I I would add to that that create just a few rules of what it is that you want to do in the world besides making money because I assume that all of you want to make money but what are the other things that that you want to achieve and that you would like the world to see and write those down and discuss those with your company and see like how how do people react to this and that bring that into your brand yeah a couple times in here yoast you
45:11 also mentioned like the non-physical aspects of your brand is that that is is that what you're touching on a little bit there yeah yeah I think a brand is much more a it's something that people can rally around so it is it is uh a flag but it's also what that flank stands for so the rainbow colors for yoasts are very much something that fits with the values the core values of yoast and um having those core values and being being
45:42 clear about what your company's core values are is is super worthwhile yep absolutely that's definitely a guiding thing we did with give is like our tagline is democratizing generosity and so everything that we do um with our brand and uh is all about how we can encourage people to be more generous in one form or another um I think my best advice um if you're just just barely getting started is to really focus on um
46:13 recognizable names that are easy um especially internationally I don't want to throw this company under the bus but I do have to mention like in in the Work Camp Europe space right now we have a media partner named WP giz um and uh spelled with a G and it's a little bit unfortunate honestly and it's caused a little bit of controversy around where Camp Europe a bit because the pronunciation is a bit unfortunate when it comes to English um and uh but they're doing some really cool media work honestly like I've been
46:45 watching them closely they're doing a really good job um so really focus on International pronunciation as much as possible and develop a tone guide specifically because I really think between having a really great term and then having a really strong and Clear Tone guide like logo icon colors all of the starts to get a lot easier once you've really honed in on the word Mark and honed in on a really good tone guide in particular those two things just um make
47:16 everything else a lot easy going forward so cool that's all we've got any other last final comments uh anything else um special do you want to call out any great reveals coming up this way from Amelia or Barn two oh I'd like to know more about what you're doing at wordcamp Europe oh yes so at work and Bureau we have a couple of companies pitching us so we're doing a sort of like uh people have called it a mini Shark Tank uh but yeah
47:48 people are pitching us their new products for investment we still have a couple of spots open now because someone dropped out so if if someone wants to purchase their company we're still very happy to receive those pictures um and we're also just going to be there and have fun and meet up with all our our WordPress friends so I'm really looking forward to getting to Athens that's awesome sounds amazing so when is it because I didn't see it on the schedule isn't it is it which schedule were you
48:19 looking at at our side word Camp Europe one um oh the timings now we'll publish the timings uh later this week so we will make sure to check uh follow follow us on Twitter Emilia Capital it's very simple um and what do we got going next week um we're bringing on Michelle right yep so we've just had her for the introduction she is our guest next week and that will be the last full week before word Camp Europe so we thought we
48:50 should do a word Camp Focus WP product talk she's um obviously amazing Community leader and we're going to talk to her about maximizing your words Camp experience tips for specifically product owners in how to get the most out of word Camp just right before we get to a lot of us put it into practice the following week excellent I'm always looking forward to talking with Michelle for sure so thank you everybody for a great week for a great conversation and uh we will see
49:21 everybody next week with Michelle have a