Building your Minimum Viable Brand (MVB) with Kelli Corney
The brand expert walks us through the 3 Ps of branding (Purpose, Position, and Personality) and explains why start-ups can and should make brand a priority.
This Saturday we aired Kelli Corney’s third Content People episode. Obviously, I’m a KC fan.
Kelli’s a London-based CMO and co-founder at Planet Positive Lab, a climate tech accelerator at the University of Oxford. She’s also held senior leadership positions at NBC Universal and the Financial Times, and boutique agencies like Mightily and Sonder & Tell.
Branding has been a red thread throughout her career.
Kelli recently did some brand consulting for Medbury that was So Helpful (our new site’s up here). The work we did together was like a 121 version of her Maven Course, Build Your Minimum Viable Brand - so I asked if I could pick her brain about it on Content People.
We chatted about the 3 Ps of branding (Purpose, Position, and Personality) and why Kelli thinks all founders should build a Minimum Viable Brand into their business plans.
If interested, you can sign up for her course here (Kelli’s offered listeners a $300 discount with code CONTENTPEOPLE300). Or book a free 30-minute strategy session with her here if you’d like to chat with Kelli first.
Find the full Content People episode here, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. A few of my favorite snippets are below.
What’s a Minimum Viable Brand (MVB)?
”Minimum viable brand is just a way of thinking about getting that solid first draft [of your brand] done for yourself.
A lot of times, startups and early-stage companies will put off thinking about brand until later.
They're like: ‘Oh, we just need to build the product. We just need to get, the essentials done. And brand’s something we'll just paint on top once we get product market fit. Then we'll think about the brand.’ And I think that's a misunderstanding of what a brand is and why it's important.
I’ve talked to tech founders who, after they've done the work, are like, ‘Wow, I would advise people in the future not to write any code until you've done this work, because it really helps to inform the product you're building and it addresses a lot of fundamental questions.’”
On developing your MVB
”You don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars working with agencies. When you're just starting, you're like, ‘I can't do it now because I don't have the resources. It's going to take too long.’ And [you also know that] your company's going to evolve. So you feel like branding is a wasted investment.
But, actually, the things you do by creating a brand strategy are some of the most core, foundational elements of your business strategy in general. You just need to have the elements there so you can be tweaking them as you go.”
What Kelli’s Maven course is like:
”This is a live cohort-based course, so it's not something you sign up for and then passively watch the videos online. There are four classes total and each one is two hours long.
You’re enrolled with a cohort of other founders and marketers, and you work through the course content together. I teach it live, so we're all showing up in a Zoom room together and working for a couple of hours. And in between those classes, I have office hours where people can sign up for one-on-one time with me, where I'll give individual consulting on your work.”
Kelli - thank you so much!
Two PSs.
1. If you’re into the brand conversation, I’m so excited to have an upcoming episode with Maggie Sause, Head of Marketing at the famed branding agency Red Antler. So stay tuned.
2. There’s no affiliate link here or earnings in this for me - I just believe in the work that Kelli’s doing and want to spread the good word.