Why you should give a shit about your brand

It is you. All of it. The people, the choices, the load time, the quality, the colours and the ever changing slide deck. It all adds up to what people say about you when you are not in the room. 

Let’s start with an example and I’m not gonna talk about the Eliq brand here cause that’s too easy. I want to talk about the one that actually taught me what brand looks like when it sticks.

There is one brand I will always benchmark against: Greenbyte.

For me, that is the brand that refused to die. Merges, name changes, colour tweaks, new taglines. You can rebrand all you want, but if people still say the old name five years later, congratulations, you built something real. I still have my Can I get a Watt Watt mug on my desk. 

I have not worked there in years and I still say “at Greenbyte” like it is a physical place I could just walk back into. Which is slightly unhinged when you think about it but we all have our issues. 

This does not happen because of a nice shade of green. (It was a great shade though.) 

It happens because of people, so here’s a shoutout!

My manager at Greenbyte, Caroline, did not “care about the brand”. Caroline enforced the brand. Caroline was the brand. You could not even think about placing a logo on a weird background without feeling a disturbance in the air and she would appear. She’s the reason I say ‘no *ssholes allowed’ when we talk about recruitment. 

The Brand is what someone like Caroline refuses to let slip. Brand is the people who care enough to be a bit difficult about it. Repeatedly. Forever.

So, how do you build a brand in the energy space? It’s not a very sexy space. The bar is quite low. People don’t expect the Pepsi (speaking of brand lead balloons, good on them for recovering after that wannabewoke moment of 2017) approach to brand. Which is exactly why you have room to be sharp, clear, actually useful and, maybe even a bit.. fun?

The Brand Brand.

Yes, this is the logo, the colours, the fonts and those guidelines marketing will guard with their life. And it matters. 

But only if it carries through.

• If your website says “we make energy simple”, your bill breakdown better back that up.

• If your app says “hi there”, your support team cannot switch to “dear customer”.

• If your visual identity is calm and clear, your comms cannot suddenly sound and look like legal fine print.

How?

Pick a tone and a visual style, then enforce it everywhere. Bills, alerts, error messages, pop ups, letters, the coffee mugs, all of it.

Make it practical:

• Create a “this is how we say it” doc with real life examples, not adjectives

• Rewrite one customer email and one push notification every week until it feels right

• Kill anything that sounds like it came from legal first and humans second with a pitstop at chatGPT in between. 

Personality lives in the small stuff. That is where people actually experience you.

Then OWN it. OWN what you are. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. You’re cheap flights with bad customer service? Maith sibh! You’re saving the planet one kWh at a time? Good for you, then don’t place your employees pension in the index fund named ‘drill baby, drill’

The Employer Brand. You are NOT a family.

This is why someone joins, stays, or quietly updates their LinkedIn at lunch.

• Do your teams understand what you stand for, beyond targets?

• Do people know how to make decisions without escalating everything?

• Does the culture match what you say externally, or is it two different worlds? (If you’re gonna post a picture of all the company women and non-binary on 8th of March but your C-level is 8 different John and Mark. Just don’t.)
  
  

How?

Define a few non-negotiables. Not values on a wall, but actual behaviours. How you write, how you prioritise, how you treat customers when things go wrong. Then hire and manage against those.

Make it real:

• Write down 3 things you always do and 3 things you never do as a company

• Give teams permission to say “this doesn’t feel like us” then act on it

• Test decisions against “would we be proud if this was screenshotted and shared?”
  
  

Because a brand that feels flat internally will sound flat externally. You know what, it wont make a sound at all cause no one will know you. 

The Product Brand. It needs to work.

This is the test. Ready?

The load time. The onboarding. The moment someone checks their usage and either thinks “that was easy” or “GAH”.

Does your app make energy easier to understand, or just more visible?

Do your notifications help, or just add noise?

Can a customer do what they came to do without friction?

Action!

Treat product decisions as brand decisions. Speed, clarity, usefulness. That is your personality in action.

Make it tangible:

• Test your own app. If it annoys you, it annoys everyone

• Sit next to a real user for 10 minutes and watch where they struggle. Maybe ask your mum, and now we’re all annoyed.

• Cut one feature that exists but you have no proof it’s helping anyone

Because no amount of tone of voice will save a clunky experience.

The VOICE, and we’re not talking about 4 airbrushed celebrities in swivel chairs. We all loved Duolingo and their voice on social media. Then she left, and pictures of ponies crossed with unicorns and disturbing angles of Duo’s butt appeared. Cancel subscription. Ick.

You know those apps where all you remember is anger. The text doesn’t fit the screen. The buttons don’t work. You can’t login but to contact support you need to be logged in. The north remembers, and so does the south and you are looking at a “1 star cause I couldn’t give a 0 cause GAH”.

All three need to line up. The way you look, the way you work, and the way your product behaves.

There are plenty of hills to die on, but if you don’t have the back of your brand, what do you have. It’s good hill to dig your heels into.