The biggest shift my company has made in branding

I like Cuban. Of course, most of my experience with him is on Shark Tank, like much of America, but I did read his book years ago before starting my company.

I see a lot of layers in this quote. Mark is right—people gravitate towards greatness. But I see another layer beneath this around how companies are branded. So many companies try to brand their way into being great.

You can’t brand your way to greatness.

For example, slapping on some core values that don’t align with your culture is like trying to teach a pig to sing—you waste your time and annoy the pig.

A new logo and mission statement isn’t going to save a company that isn’t focused on good fundamentals.

I just went through an intensive branding project for my company. I usually share stories from years past on this newsletter, but today, we’re diving into the new brand we just launched on Monday, Holler Commerce.

Let’s talk about why we did it, and how we got there.

Brand positioning 101

I never kept count, but I’d guess I have been a part of more than 100 branding projects at a fairly intimate level, and that’s probably a lowball guess. I spent seven years in ad agencies, and five of them were at an agency that nearly always had a dozen active branding projects.

As Creative Director, I watched time and time again as companies wanted a face life and would push for values, positioning and missions that were who they wanted to be, not necessarily who they actually were. There are a few projects that I remember wrapping and rolling out, just knowing it was literally lipstick on a pig.

The branding was the CEO’s ideal company, but it wasn’t the company they ran. Your brand has to represent who you actually are, or the positioning will fail. You might get a customer’s attention, but to Mark’s point, people will soon see they were duped.

Evolving our company’s branding

This week we introduced our new company, Holler Commerce. We were flooded with questions, and this one was my favorite:

"When did you know that you had to spin GoWild into Holler Commerce? What was the signal?"

Emily Geiger Draugelis asked the question, and it’s a smart one.

In 2019, our board member Jack Danehy walked into our Christmas party a month after we launched Gearbox and said, "Love the new product. When are you going to white label it?"

It honestly put me on my heels a bit—we had just worked our tails off to launch this product. Gearbox was an affiliate aggregator, pulling together tens of thousands of products from a wide range of affiliate platforms. It took months of work to get it live for us, and now Jack wanted me to turn around and build a B2B version of it.

Jack saw it before I did.

I came around. For about a year, we thought the real value of the tech was this aggregator. We'd built for affiliates what Plaid built for bank accounts. Plaid built the tech that made Venmo possible.

However, 2020 decimated us. The affiliate payouts were dashed by many retailers. Suddenly 10% payouts were cut to 1%. Ecommerce was booming—the retailers didn’t need their affiliates anymore.

So we said screw it, we'll just become a retailer.

And we did.

After much experimentation, we ultimately rebuilt the Gearbox tech to function with a network of manufacturers and distributors. The affiliate product is still there, but in time, it was clear—this new retail model was the value.

Once again, Jack pushed me to think bigger. “You’ve built the operating system for social commerce. No one else even comes close. I love the hunting and fishing niche, but we can do this in any vertical.”

As we came to the end of 2022, I realized we were ready. The technology was ready to spin off into a new product.

Simply put, the white label version of our tech in Phase I will empower established brands who have large audiences to add a store to their site, and turn their impressions into revenue. They can instantly open up a new revenue stream with a branded store, and they never have to buy a dollar’s worth of inventory. It’s a really powerful play for companies that have reach.

In December, I had another moment similar to Cuban’s quote—an opportunity appeared. I had a brand who was ready to partner on with us to make our first white label happen.

We’re still working on finalizing this relationship, and have since lined up another verbal with a huge potential partner for 2024. As I thought through this product and what it would be, it was clear to me—this wasn’t GoWild.

This was bigger than GoWild.

While GoWild had built the tech, we needed a new product, and more than likely, that product needed to have its own company presence.

This was going to be a lot of work.

Repositioning everything we’ve ever worked for

My biggest fear with launching a new brand was that it would diminish what we’ve built with GoWild. My heart and soul lives within GoWild, and the same can be said for the team that’s building it. But sometimes in business, you face moments of opportunity, and it creates adversity. Often the Goliaths that fall grew too fast and couldn’t keep up with their own success.

While we weren’t a Goliath—heck, we’re probably more of a David—but I still had the same fear. GoWild is growing well. We’re on pace to 3X our revenue for the third year in a row. Would adding in this new product be a distraction, or an opportunity?

I’ve been here in the past. We’ve launched products that we thought would hang the moon. Instead they failed slowly. It’s hard to even see it in real time. But this new product had a different feel.

With a real partner at the table, I decided it was time.

The coyote howls

Donovan Sears, my Cofounder and our Chief Product Designer, and I got to work on some of the name ideas I had. They were OK, but it didn’t feel quite right. What I did love was the theme of the coyote.

Coyotes are absolutely incredible animals. They can adapt to nearly any weather, environment, food source, and even change their family group/pack behaviors in different parts of the country. They're practically impossible to eradicate (just ask your suburban neighbors on the Nextdoor app). I respect these clever survivalists.

What better spirit animal can you have for a brand? Coyotes in a nutshell:

• Great communicators
• Clever
• Survivors
• Adversity adapters
• Beautiful

So while the yote was sticking, the names weren’t. Then, Chris Gleim, another Cofounder and our Chief Development Officer, said “I just love the idea of Holler.”

And it clicked.

I bought HollerCommerce.com within 15 minutes, and we got to work on the new brand.

The future of GoWild and Holler Commerce

Today, we’re still operating as GoWild. But in time, Holler Commerce will become the company, and GoWild will be a product of Holler. GoWild isn’t going anywhere. It’s my baby, and I’m committed to continue serving outdoorsmen and women with this ridiculously powerful tool. GoWild will also operate as our sandbox—a place to try and out test the products we have planned for Holler (right now we have 4-5 years worth of product development on a road map).

As for Holler, we’re hoping to end the year with two partners on board. That may sound like a small goal, but remember, we’re targeting big brands in this Phase I. It was a strategic decision. We could have likely brought on three dozen small brands (we’ve had nearly that many reach out in a week), but we’d be scaling too fast and incapable of taking the appropriate amount of time to test the product in this early phase. Not only that, but our early models show that just two partners will open up a multi-seven figure opportunity in the first twelve months, and we’ll be more than happy with that pie if we can bake it.

I was in a weird position. Rebrands are common, but evolving a product that actually becomes the company is more rare. It does happen, as you’ve seen with massive companies like YouTube (started as a dating app), Twitter (started as a podcasting platform) and Instagram a location check-in platform.

If you end up in a position where you need to rebrand, I do have some tips below that can help you through the process. Just remember—it’s best to frame your branding around who you really are, and what’s unique about you. Otherwise, you’ll spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours and be left with a pig that still can’t sing.

3 tips for authentic branding

1) Stay true to who you are

Of course, if who you are sucks, you don’t need branding, you need a cultural shift. That’s a whole different topic. But if your brand isn’t aligned with the great company you already are, focus first on discovering what those values are that make you unique. An agency can help with this, but it’s also possible to do internally with team surveys and interviews.

2) Lean into the edge

So many companies go through branding, only to play up “our service makes us different.” Literally so many brands say this that it actually makes you sound like a pubescent teenager finding their way— they just want to be different just like everyone else. Go through some brand exercises with your team and find what collectively makes the company special, and bring those values and characteristics to the center of it all.

3) Don’t play it safe

The life of the party is both who everyone hopes will attend, and who they remember when they’re gone. Safe, boring branding means you may miss the chance Cuban was talking about—people may not notice you, and if they do, they may forget you. Bold is memorable. You don’t have to be obnoxious, either. Simply finding a few fun or memorable aspects of your brand, and amplifying them can make a huge difference in positioning.

Who I’m listening to: Justin Wells

What I’m reading: “The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett”

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