Lyft's outgoing marketing chief reveals the one thing tech startups must do to build and sell a successful brand

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Joy Howard is the outgoing chief marketing officer of Lyft. Her previous roles include vice president of marketing for Converse and Coca-Cola's global marketing director.
She has recently been appointed CMO of Dashlane, a software security firm which raised $110 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital in May.
Speaking to Business Insider, Howard says companies need to think about their brands as the culture they want to build around their product, and outlines what separates good marketers from great ones.
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In a deafeningly noisy world, selling your own unique brand has never been more important, whether you're a budding Instagram star or an unhappy cat.

Few appreciate this better than Joy Howard, the chief marketing officer of Lyft, who is about to take up the same role at software security firm Dashlane, which raised $110 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital in May.

Her previous jobs include stints as Sonos' CMO, Coca Cola's global marketing director, VP of global marketing for the Converse All Star (owned by Nike), and VP of marketing at outdoor clothing firm Patagonia.

Howard says there is a particular way that all companies — tech startups included — should think about their brand. It is this way of thinking that holds the key to successfully marketing your company, she says.

Brands symbolise the culture you want to build around your product

"People often have a misconception about what a brand is," she explains. "They tend to easily conceive of it as a value proposition, and a brand is something much, much broader than that. It's really the set of perceptions that shape your experience of the product. In other words, you have to think of it as the culture around the product.

"In that respect, the most important thing marketers can do is think about how they want to use their company to shape people's perceptions of their product. What do you want the experience of your product to say about your brand and who you are as a company?

lyft

"So that would be my highest-level advice: To think about the brand as the culture of the product. Especially earlier-stage companies who think the brand is the name, the logo — but that is really not a brand.

"[You have a brand] when people really start to experience your product, your product starts to be something that people share. Until a set of associations come with your product, you don't really have a brand."

This is important for tech startups, who have to build a vision around what they're trying to achieve and communicate it clearly and impactfully to customers and potential financiers.

For Lyft, Howard explains, the branding message is bold. It is not just another taxi firm, it's "reinventing transportation, building cities around cars." She adds: "Brands are so much bigger than any kind of day-to-day changes. That's the promise of what a business can be but also what a brand can be."

Nike is successful because people live the brand — starting with the workers

Howard's time marketing some of the world's most successful brands only reinforced her beliefs. At Nike, people live and breathe the company's identity, she says.

"Nike is a company where you see the importance of living the culture of the product, and living the culture of the brand inside the company in order to build the brand," she says.

"Everyone within Nike really lives what that brand is about. It was the same within Converse. I think Converse really learned a lot of that living the brand from Nike.

"That's been a part of every brand I've touched since working at Nike, and it always will be, because if you think about your company as a brand, as the culture of the product, then that really starts with the culture you build within your company."

phil knight

This is not to say Howard thinks marketing doesn't depend on more foundational skills, of course. It's just that these foundational skills will not suffice to create a truly great brand, in her view.

Data is an important starting point for brand building

"The foundation is customer insight," she says. "There's also creative development, understanding marketing channels, metrics and analytics, the technology behind marketing. Those are foundational capabilities that one needs to learn. Then if you become really great at those, you can build an organisation and culture around the brand.

"So in terms of what makes you a great marketer, you want to understand and tap into culture and create something with just a very high level of craft. You want to marshal imagination and discipline and craft to really build something great that inspires people. That's what separates the really great marketers from the mediocre ones."

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