Building a brand from the ground up with Oyster HR's Kevan Lee

Summary:
This week on How To Win: Kevan Lee, Senior VP of Marketing at Oyster HR, a management platform for globally distributed teams. Before joining Oyster, Kevan spent six years as VP of Marketing at Buffer, a social media management platform that helps brands and businesses engage with their online audience. Kevan is an expert in brand strategy, marketing leadership, and category creation and shares his expertise through regular appearances at events and on podcasts.

In this episode, Kevan walks us through some key marketing strategies from across his career. We discuss differentiating your brand story, the benefits of handling PR in-house, and why the category you choose matters. I weigh in on the power of organic social, investing in original research, and why you should strive to be a category of one.

Key Points:

What marketing strategies worked at Buffer? (01:32)
Advice for building a brand from scratch (04:08)
Kevan talks brand story structure (05:25)
I weigh in on the issue of sameness across brand stories (07:40)
Kevan emphasizes the importance of 'the why' with a quote from Simon Sinek (08:32)
Kevan lays out the important pieces of the Buffer marketing engine (11:36)
Kevan reflects on Buffer's success with in-house PR (12:02)
I weigh the benefits of PR investment with a quote from Axia Public Relations' Jason Mudd (13:37)
How is Oyster's marketing machine set up? (14:54)
I explore a successful organic social case study from creative agency Rise at Seven (17:06)
Kevan talks about Google and LinkedIn paid social (19:11)
How has timing impacted Kevan's career? (20:13)
Kevan discusses the creation of the Global Employment category (21:51)
I discuss the idea of being a category of one with a quote from Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal and Palantir (23:44)
What bets haven't paid off at Oyster? (26:02)
Wrap-up (30:31)

Mentioned:

Donald Miller's StoryBrand Framework

Simon Sinek Website

Jason Mudd LinkedIn

Rise at Seven Website

My Links: