What makes a great brand? After working at Google and Square, Arielle Jackson has spent the past eight years consulting startups on how to create powerful messaging that works. In this jam-packed episode, she shares how to pick a winning name for your company, create a brand purpose that excites your team and customers, and position your company and its products for success. You don’t want to miss this one!—Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-of-building-legendary-brands—Where to find Arielle Jackson:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/hiiamarielle• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariellerjackson/• Course: https://maven.com/arielle/startupbrandstrategy—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• Flatfile: https://www.flatfile.com/lenny• Unit: https://unit.co/lenny• Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lenny—Referenced:• Positioning Your Startup Is Vital—Here’s How to Nail It: https://review.firstround.com/Positioning-Your-Startup-is-Vital-Heres-How-to-Do-It-Right• Three Moves Every Startup Founder Must Make to Build a Brand That Matters: https://review.firstround.com/three-moves-every-startup-founder-must-make-to-build-a-brand-that-matters• What I Learned from Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox, and Thumbtack: https://review.firstround.com/what-i-learned-from-developing-branding-for-airbnb-dropbox-and-thumbtack• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/0071373586• Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life: https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Curious-Science-Creating-Business/dp/006238841X• The Vanishing Half: https://britbennett.com/the-vanishing-half• The Mothers: https://britbennett.com/the-mothers• Nik Sharma’s weekly newsletter: https://www.nik.co/subscribe• How I Built This: https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this• In Depth: https://review.firstround.com/podcast• Unseen Unknown: https://unseen-unknown.simplecast.com/• Luca: https://movies.disney.com/luca• Encanto: https://movies.disney.com/encanto• Old Enough!: https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279• The Sociology of Business with Ana Andjelic: https://andjelicaaa.substack.com• David Ogilvy: https://www.oneclub.org/hall-of-fame/-bio/david-ogilvy• Rory Sutherland: https://twitter.com/rorysutherland• Seth Godin: https://seths.blog/—In this episode, we cover:[04:04] From making jewelry as a side hustle to launching products for Square: Arielle’s background[12:32] What makes a good name for a product or a startup[19:17] How to come up with a great name[24:59] How to run a naming brainstorm for the best results[31:09] Bad names and naming mistakes[34:17] Arielle’s brand development framework and when founders should implement it[36:02] How do you know when brand development is completed?[41:17] How long should branding take?[42:42] How to build a brand purpose that ignites excitement[48:51] Specific tactics for building your brand purpose[51:12] How to master your positioning[55:22] Why it’s important to stay niche when you’re mastering your positioning[59:15] The process of positioning and Arielle’s bar test[1:02:38] How to build a brand personality using the five big brand descriptions[1:07:39] Where to put brand and product positioning documents so they’ll actually get used[1:09:14] How startups can get PR[1:14:49] When should you hire a marketer?—Production and marketing: https://penname.co/ Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Today’s episode is with Arielle Jackson. For the past 7 years, she’s helped hundreds of companies build their positioning and brands from the ground up, both as our Marketing Expert in Residence here at First Round and in her own consulting work.Before helping early-stage startups, Arielle started her career in Product Marketing at Google, where she helped launch and grow Google Books and AdWords before leading marketing for Gmail. She then joined Square, where she led the launch of the Square Stand. She then headed up marketing & communications at Cover, an Android app that was acquired by Twitter.Given that she’s worked with so many companies, Arielle is a pro at spotting common patterns when it comes to early marketing, so today we spend our time digging into the challenges and missteps she’s seen so many founders run into.From category creation and company purpose, to messaging, brand personality and launch strategy, Arielle details both common pitfalls to avoid and the exercises and frameworks that she shares with founders in her consulting work.Whether it’s about not falling into the trap of focusing too much on other startup competitors, relying on emotional instead of functional benefits, or coming with unrealistic PR expectations, Arielle has tons of examples to bring these concepts to life. If you are looking to learn more, Arielle has turned the brand strategy work she does at First Round into a cohort-based course, powered by Maven. The course runs in February and applications close on Jan 28th – find out more and apply here.Additionally, here are the resources we talked about in the episodeArielle’s First Round Review articles:- Positioning Your Startup is Vital — Here’s How to Nail It- ​​Three Moves Every Startup Founder Must Make to Build a Brand That Matters- So You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Marketer? Read This First.The books on the subject that Arielle recommends:- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind- Play Bigger: How Rebels and Innovators Create New Categories and Dominate Markets- Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our DecisionsYou can follow Arielle on Twitter at @hiiamArielle. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.