Why ignoring brand early costs you later.
“Brand? I’ll think about that later…” If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re not alone.
When your to-do list as a founder is endless and your product isn’t fully figured out, Brand can feel like a vague, optional exercise. But the thing is, even early-stage Brand thinking, as messy and unfinished as it may be, still sparks valuable conversations, helps align your team, and sets the groundwork for more confident decisions in the future.
Brand is more than visual
Of course your logo, colours, typography and the rest matter, to a point. But they’re just the “outfit”, your brand is the story, the intention, and the overall feeling your company gives to the world, not just your visual identity.
Early Brand work isn’t about ticking the boxes. It’s about peeling back the layers to find the “soul” of your Brand. With poor clarity, founders often throw out answers for questions like “Who are we?” or “What’s our purpose?” and consider the work done. Real clarity comes from contradiction, exploration, and testing assumptions in the world. That process determines how your brand looks and feels, how the guiding principles act, and how your team carries it forward, as well as give the visual work meaning and purpose.
Early Brand is a Work in Progress
Early on, a brand is less a rulebook and more a vision board. You define it with intention, send it out, see how it responds, and let it grow over time.
The goal isn’t perfection, it’s direction. By starting early, the layers you uncover become building blocks. Ask yourself:
How do I want people to feel?
How should our culture show up?
How can we twist what’s already out there to do it differently?
If you wait, those same questions can feel like ripping things apart just to move forward. Starting early means every insight, every layer, becomes part of natural growth, giving your brand focus, confidence, and clarity.
The true cost of “later”
Skipping Brand work early doesn’t just mean a future redesign. It means delaying the peeling-back process that reveals your brand’s soul. Founders often think they’ve answered the big questions, but without digging deeper, those answers are shallow and hard to act on. Later, revisiting foundational questions while running your business slows growth, confuses your team, and makes each iteration heavier and more expensive, and often creates friction between brand and marketing objectives. This misalignment between what you promise and what you deliver is exactly why Brand is the “glue” your Product and Marketing.
But when you start early, the same work becomes a progressive evolution, not a disruptive “reset”.
When to start
The earlier, the better, even before marketing, product launch, or team growth. Brand isn’t a side project; it’s the framework that makes your marketing, product, team, and culture all make sense.
Start by exploring four pillars:
Your story
Your belief
Your purpose
Your positioning
Your actions
The deeper you dig now, the clearer your foundation will be when your business is in motion.
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For example: Nike
Nike is a classic example of a brand that got its story and purpose right, letting it guide every decision.
Story: Bill Bowerman, a track coach, making shoes for his athletes.
Belief: If you have a body, you can be an athlete.
Purpose: To inspire everybody to move.
Positioning: For everybody, from weekend joggers to elite athletes, democratising what it means to be athletic.
Actions: Building products that support movement, creating tools that inspire movement, telling stories that make people believe they can move.”
Notice how every decision builds on the foundation; the layers discovered early became an evolving, consistent brand experience, and this isn’t just for consumer-facing brands. These are the raw foundations of brand work for any company, no matter the industry or audience.
Ready to build your foundation the right way? Learn more about the architecture of kick-ass brands.
