Apple’s tagline: ‘Think Different’, became ingrained in our heads. Not because Chiat/Day was a wildly superior marketing agency (although, the 1984 ad was game changing), or not because the grammatically incorrect tagline was overwhelmingly captivating on it’s own; but rather, that it defined the way the entire company thought (and still thinks), inside and out, and that is what people relate to— each other.

When we begin to create a brand, we often think about the market, the product, and the service. Yet, the way a brand is often defined comes, in many ways, from the inside. When we think about brands we relate to, it often transgresses the brand itself and becomes personified. Nike, RedBull, Google, (just some of many), all remind you of a person you may know. Nike is that athletic, driven friend, who you admire for their athletic talents. RedBull is your crazy extreme sports friend who you admire for their fearlessness. Google is your geeky friend, who you admire for their intelligence. All these brands are in essence people, or even more closely, a ‘person’ reflective of the people.

Brand or company culture (the people of the company and how they interact), is exactly the people who initially define the brand. Apple thought differently inside. They encouraged free thinking, counter-culture individuals to be themselves. Google is known for their 20% time strategy, because of the type of people who use this 20% time. Behind every great marketing campaign is a company culture that inspired it (we highlight the word ‘great’, meaning not all campaigns were inspired by company culture, even though we think they should be).

“While it’s all very logical to try to find your point of differentiation from a product, package, or price feature, some of the greatest marketing strategies reside in tapping the underlying culture of the organization itself,” writes DuckTape Marketing, a small business marketing strategy blog.

At BNOTIONS, marketing is a small cog in a technical wheel of developers. But, it is the developers who define how we appear to the public and our clients. The in-house teams who build our products are not just brilliant engineers, but artists, DJs, athletes, parents— big personalities. We have so much personality, we had to create a separate YouTube channel, and music library, just as a creative outlet. We started a weekly online radio show, where people spoke of their random interests, in and out of BNOTIONS. At one time, we had a web series produced during events and meetups. We even had a podcast (run by Justin Kozuch at 49Pixels.tv) run out of our office. It was all these things that combined to make BNOTIONS the company it is today.

We don’t just have people working (far from it). We have people passionately building technology together, because together that is what we like to do, what we care about, and what we believe in. As we direct our marketing efforts, it will be nothing short of who we are and what we believe; because, after all, marketing starts with company culture.

Disclaimer: We are purposely not linking all the content sources above, because that treasure hunt can be yours to tackle…that and nothing is formal, just a creative outlet.

Lastly, I will end with the BNOTIONS haiku (part of our core values):

At the end of the day
the bottom line is:
be good people.

-BNOTIONS

Jenna Hannon | Director of Marketing | @JennaHannon