ScalePassion Introduces Brand Strategist Steve Klinetobe to Our Team

Brand strategy is really about articulating what drives the company, where it gets its energy from and capturing that in a way that is lasting.

One of the most important aspects of nailing your strategy as a business is the ability to articulate who you are and why you exist in a way that is clear and simple enough for a fifth-grader to understand and compelling and relevant enough to inspire a legion of true fans. Sound a bit rudimentary? It’s one of the most overlooked strategic steps to starting and running an impact business.

Too many young companies dive into early-stage marketing too quickly and without understanding in a deep way what their vision for their company is, what their mission is for how they will realize their vision and what kinds of core values will guide them every step of the way, through thick and thin and more changes and pivots then they can possibly anticipate.

With deadlines to meet and promises to keep to partners and customers, they hire a marketing firm and invest in logos and websites and ecommerce tools and start selling the lights out, or not. And before they know it, they’ve moved to a place where they don’t even recognize themselves anymore. As long as they’re growing, they may overlook the disconnect between what they’ve become and why they started the business in the first place.

But what if they aren’t growing? How can they assess where their product-market fit went sideways when they have no such strategy?

My experience working with fast-growing companies that have reached full-blown adolescence is that all of the new faces and new products introduce little warps into the culture and thus the brand itself. Over the long run, that’s rarely a good thing for the brand or the business.

This is why ScalePassion is thrilled to introduce Steve Klinetobe to our team as a brand strategist and coach who can help founders and business leaders develop powerful brand narratives and strategies that will help them hold a steady course through every stage of their company’s growth. The co-founder of a content development agency that worked with clients such as Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Disney, Steve broke into the health and wellness sector at Aisle 7 and, later, with Netrush, where he became chief creative officer and built an amazing team.

I know all this personally because I worked with Steve when I launched Findaway Adventures in partnership with Netrush. I was so impressed by Steve’s creativity, which allows him to design powerful campaigns as well as build and lead creative teams, but also his deep understanding of how to connect brand strategy with business strategy to ensure that impact never gets squeezed out of the picture.

Every business needs a North Star

“Brand strategy is really about articulating what drives the company, where it gets its energy from and capturing that in a way that is lasting,” said Steve. “Marketing campaigns are important, but many businesses begin doing them too early, before they’ve had a chance to understand what truths they stand for and will never waver from, what their promise is to their stakeholders.”

Steve says that a great brand strategy should sing like an anthem that tells a great story about who you are, why you exist as a company and why the world should care about you. It’s a story you never tire of telling and, if you tell it right, your stakeholders never tire of hearing because it inspires them to be part of it. Your brand guides your operational decision making, your culture, your messaging, and it holds you on course through all the new people, products and pivots you experience.

That’s why we’re calling Steve’s 8-week offering our North Star Platform.

“This platform is for passion brands at pivotal moments in their development,” says Steve. “We call it North Star because it is an articulation of the founder's passion. When they lose their way or can't see their WHY, it helps them find their way home. It guides founders at the beginning of their journey who need to capture the energy and build a lasting platform to guide them through their growth phase. And it guides adolescent companies looking to re-articulate their WHY and remember what brought them here and what will carry them forward.”

In addition to working with Steve on brand strength assessment and brand-building, business leaders thinking of adding creative resources will find in Steve a seasoned strategic thinker who can also help them grow their internal creative team or represent them with external creatives without having to hire a full-time director.

I have worn the investor’s hat as well as the founder's hat, and I can tell you for sure that as your business grows into adolescence, new prospective investors in your company expect a deeper level of strategy than they would have earlier on when you were still demonstrating proof of concept and building a market. Yes, they want to see that you’re getting your product through the door, but they also want to know you’re going through the right doors and in a sustainable way.

Whether you’re a CPG company or working in Silicon Valley — and we work with businesses in both industries — you have to be able to show a product-market fit. Having an inspiring North Star focus can ensure not only that you always have that fit but that your desired impact is baked in there with it.

Sincerely,

Rob, ScalePassion

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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!