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The Factory Floor is hosted by the three co-founders of Conversion Factory, the marketing agency at the forefront of SaaS growth, marketing, and tech trends. Episodes are released on Twitter one day early, @coreyhainesco.
Every other week Corey, Zach, and Nick break down what’s working right now in SaaS marketing, share real-world lessons from the field, and give you the strategies you need to outpace the competition.
You can also find us on YouTube, X, and everywhere you listen to podcasts!
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Nick Loudon (00:00)
Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the factory floor. My name is Nick Loudon. I am joined by Corey Haines and Zach Stevens, my partners in crime, though we don't commit any. And today we have something super special to talk about, which I'm very excited about because Zach will be imparting his wisdom onto us as we absorb ⁓ everything we need to know about branding.
specifically we're talking about branding options and like rebrand options is maybe a better verbiage for that, not specifically just branding, but rebranding. So a lot of times when we're working with clients, they like, they want to rebrand, but that could mean a bunch of different things to a bunch of different people. But, ⁓ Zach has kind of come up with a little bit better of a way of sorting out what those types of rebrands are. So Zach kind of
Can you give me like the why, where this came out of, how these three types of options were like birthed in your mind and how it came to life?
Zstvns (01:02)
Yeah, when we've had clients come to us that want to improve their design, but they're not necessarily looking for complete brand overhaul. And so it got me thinking there's a spectrum to which everybody is going to fall on as far as how intense and how much depth is going to be included in their rebrand. And I have it listed into three buckets. There are revolutions, evolutions, and then optimizations.
revolutions and optimizations are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum and evolutions fall somewhere in the middle. And I did this because I wanted to have something that was pocketed and readily available to send clients to give them an idea of what are your expectations for this? Are you looking for complete total transformation or are we just looking to use the assets that you currently have but in an improved way? Not necessarily changing them but ⁓ focusing more on refined execution.
Nick Loudon (02:02)
And I feel like clients usually have, once you kind of break it down, they tend to have an idea of what type of rebrand they're looking for. Is there anything that you would do like outside of their ⁓ goal where you would kind of like sift through and be like, yeah, I think you are in a good position to just do an optimization.
or you're in a position, like what are the markers you look for? Like, no, no, no, I really want to hold onto that. I don't want to lose that in a rebrand. It's like, this is more of an evolution or an optimization than a total revolution.
Zstvns (02:33)
Yeah. Well, we have our, our 73 point audit that we run clients through as well. And a lot of that details the branding assets that I would say are key. it's stuff like, does your logo function really well? Like it's supposed to, is it simple, distinct and appropriate for the brand? Do you have a defined color palette that you use consistently? Do you have a defined typographic palette that you use consistently? Do you have.
consistent graphic visuals that all feel thematic and like they've come from the same place that they carry the same visual characteristics, regardless of whether it's a printed PDF or on your website. Do you have defined icon libraries? And that ranges as well from things like more utilitarian icons, like things that you'd see on a button, all the way to very illustrative ones that you could use in place of your product sometimes like
more abstracted elements. And I think, and then pattern and texture as well. So do you have brand patterns that you use to kind of unify as a backdrop to all of your other material? And then just cool, like, do you have good accented elements that we can bring in to add a little bit of fun and dynamism to your layouts?
Nick Loudon (03:52)
Dynamism, that's a word I never, is that a real word? That's awesome. Is that different than just dynamic?
Zstvns (03:55)
Donamism? Yeah, Donamism.
Corey Haines (03:55)
Mm-hmm.
Zstvns (04:00)
it'd be a ⁓ noun version of it or it is to be dynamic or to have an element of dynamism.
Nick Loudon (04:02)
Come on, Cory.
Corey Haines (04:03)
It is to be dynamic or become more dynamic.
Nick Loudon (04:07)
Whoa. Dude,
you guys are so schooled. OK, let's get back to it. Sorry. Sorry for the.
Zstvns (04:16)
point being, check those things and of course offer our suggestion as far as we think based on this criteria that you are in need of major overhaul or you have a lot of these things, there's probably not used very well. And, you know, maybe there's some stuff we want to keep. There's some stuff we want to add that'd be that evolution area where it's somewhere in the middle, ⁓ compared to optimizations, like you have good things. There's not executed well.
Nick Loudon (04:41)
Can you show us like those differences and that way like someone can kind of put themselves in the client seat and be like, ⁓ and like, you you'll send them a loom like, hey, here are the types of differences and kind of what we're evaluating, kind of just show them that so we can look at it. ⁓ nice.
Zstvns (04:54)
Totally.
So
we have our three options here. They are revolution. So this one you could see here, it's like, it doesn't even look like the same brand. If I zoom in, this is what we did for RUYA. So this is what they looked like before. They didn't even have the same name anymore. And then they became this. vastly different as far as like the, the colors that we're using, the typefaces, the patterns and the
the visual themes that are applied to this compared to this one. Pretty much nothing's off the table here when you're going down the revolution route.
Nick Loudon (05:36)
All the way to name. We renamed them, yeah.
Zstvns (05:37)
All the way to the name.
Then you have an evolution, which is where you keep some stuff, but then you add some things that, ⁓ know, maybe we're missing. The HOA life was actually the first client that we had where I came up with this idea of doing something like a really, really quick creative direction that maintained some stuff like, you know, they were really big on their logo. We don't want to change your logo at all. Great. Let's not change your logo, but let's add.
pretty much everything else around this change. The typography is different. The colors are similar, but they're a little bit updated. You know, we really just stuck with the blues and then changed the orange to be a little bit, ⁓ less red and intense. And then added things like, you know, the icon libraries and the, the motif of putting their logo as a backdrop within some photos and the gradients. So you can see here, it's like it maintained the color palette a little bit. And then the logo.
and their name, but it looks really well improved or there's a lot of improvement that was done in here. And we added some stuff as well, like these squiggles and graphic marks to add that dynamism that we were talking about.
Nick Loudon (06:48)
Right.
Zstvns (06:50)
And lastly, we have an optimization. So sensible, I think is the best example of this that we had done where they had really good brand assets, like their colors were great. They had a good logo, good typefaces, really good brand patterns, but you can see here, like this layout's kind of boring and there's a lot of harsh contrast between the patterns that were here and the text. So it made it really difficult to read and they didn't have a lot of structure as far as like, well, this is when we use this type size and, um, you know, secondary typeface colors.
So we fixed that and it cleaned things up quite a bit. made the patterns still visible, but more subdued. And ⁓ general cleanup is the route to go here where we're taking, like I said, what you currently have, but making it feel better. So we didn't change the typefaces here. Didn't change the color palette, but more of a focus on things like layout, hierarchy and execution.
Nick Loudon (07:47)
Can you like, okay, just again from like the client or potential client like shoes, let's say I'm like, ⁓ I, I would like a revolution. I want like, would love the all new stuff, but I'm also concerned about speed and execution. Like I want to move quickly. And so I, that would make me lean towards an optimization or maybe even an evolution. ⁓ Can you talk about like the differences in like
how long one takes versus the other and like kind of the routes that you take to get those executed and completed.
Zstvns (08:21)
So doing the trade-off as these go up is time or a loss in built-up brand equity. So some of the trade-offs that I list, if you were going to be doing a revolution, is that you're gonna spend a lot of time replacing your current brand because it means that everything that you had created in the past, like your website, your collateral, that's all gonna be redone.
You know, don't want to have two separate brands living out there in the wild, especially when they look so vastly different. It's not going to make any sense. You're asking for timelines as well. So the timelines actually get the actual branding part done, building those foundational pieces and getting the creative direction for us takes two to four weeks, depending on how much looking to do. That gap in there is
usually because they're doing something like naming, which takes a lot of feedback to get done and that lengthens the process quite a bit. ⁓ Evolutions are a lot quicker, where it's one to two weeks because we relegate that specifically to exercises on a website hero section. And it's far more condensed route. And then optimization is immediately, know, like we start working on stuff and are just applying good design skills.
to the assets that you have and there isn't a gap. You start with what you currently have, you can keep your existing collateral, though you probably will wanna update it to have it match the new way that things are executed. Like in the case of sensible, ⁓ the patterns intensity was something that we scaled back quite a bit as far as its usage and that's something that should be consistent throughout all your collateral.
Nick Loudon (10:14)
Alright, okay that makes sense.
Corey Haines (10:15)
question when
I think like you said it's it's usually like a big lift for someone to go through a brand revolution so for clients that are like oh can we just do an evolution what are the things that you're like oh there's this this and this we should really push for a revolution because this this and this just aren't gonna cut it
Zstvns (10:40)
Yeah, well I think that if you never took the time to formulate and think about your branding more concretely, like what do you want people to feel? And what are some things that inspire you? And how can we take that and apply that to your brand? Those are good indicators that it's time to take this more seriously. Or if you're growing quite rapidly, like maybe you you nailed product market fit and this is something that you could potentially see having a
and exit in three years or something like that, do it now because otherwise you're going to end up with the dirty dish problem of we have a bunch of stuff like mismatched, hodgepodge, collateral and website and now this company taking over is gonna redo all of that. Whereas the sooner you start, the better your chances of maintaining that continuity and actually building brand equity where people recognize your stuff and they don't have to be told.
This belongs to Acme Co. Acme Co already has a visual language that makes it more easily identified in the context of your competitors. Or it might be a really good time to do it if you had really good branding at one point, and then maybe you went through this in the 2000s and then it's been 25 years and you haven't modernized anything, then it's time to give it more of a revolution.
Nick Loudon (12:05)
Revisit.
Zstvns (12:06)
and revisit, but extensively, because you let those things go for too long and then they became stale. They got put on ice.
Nick Loudon (12:14)
Yeah, go ahead.
Corey Haines (12:15)
I was trying to think of
times too where we've seen like big companies who do have product market fit rebrand for some reason and do let that revolution style rebrand where it's not just a, you know, we've used terms before like, Oh, it's not a rebrand, it's a refresh or, you know, there's like these kinds of different terms to try to classify like how big of a change is happening. But I'm wondering too, kind of the strategic implications.
of when it's good to do a revolution, true rebrand. There's a couple examples out there. think like one that just came to mind recently was Vercell. ⁓ Vercell is like a super, super successful dev tool and like well-known brand in the space. And I remember actually when they were one of the, not one of the first, but when they were first starting out and I was the head of growth at Barometrics, I did a demo call with them.
Zstvns (12:47)
Mm.
Corey Haines (13:14)
and their new CFO. And back then they were called Zite and everyone actually really liked the name Zite. And then they chose to rebrand. I think maybe a year later, this is probably like 2019, 2020, something like that. And they rebranded to Vercell. And that was more of like a strategic move. So walk me through a little bit more of the strategy side.
Zstvns (13:37)
Yeah, well, in the case of someone like Vercell, ⁓ they probably changed their name because Zeit is a German word. And if they were expanding into English speaking markets, it probably was very difficult to spell or, know, cause I'm assuming it was spelled Z-E-I-T, which means, you know, site in German, but Vercell is far more ⁓ phonetic as far as it's spelling ⁓ and easy to understand.
Corey Haines (13:53)
Mm-hmm.
Zstvns (14:04)
You also have different tiers of these, right? So Versel, I'm assuming they're not a publicly listed company yet, are they?
Corey Haines (14:11)
No,
but they're a high growth startup.
Zstvns (14:14)
Yeah, super, super high growth startup. So when you do a rebrand like that and it comes out as polished as there's did, it signals quite a few things. A, you're here to play and you are going to compete at a really, really high level. You know, it's, it's a question of first impressions there where we're not standing shoulder to shoulder. We're a head taller. Just look at us. No, like we know what we're doing very clearly and we have time to work on stuff like
rebrand like this or enough money to pay somebody to do it. There is also
PR plays as well. Uber had some mishaps with their former CEO, with Travis Kalanick in the late 20, know, 20 teens. And so to move forward from that, when they took on a new CEO, they rebranded and kept the name Uber, but changed the visual language quite a bit so that it...
appeared less aggressive, and this is particularly because there were sexual harassment allegations, so they wanted to make it appear a little bit more friendly. There's also reasons to do it in the context of something like that too, where your old branding doesn't fit a global ⁓ expansion. This doesn't necessarily fall into a revolution only, but Amazon did this where they created their own typeface, because they needed something that...
could expand into Arabic, they could expand beyond Latin characters, it could do Cyrillic, it could do Chinese or Japanese, and still all look and feel the same. So I wouldn't necessarily consider that type change always a revolutionary thing. It's very expensive, but it's not always a revolution. So does that help?
Nick Loudon (16:08)
Yeah, that does.
Corey Haines (16:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have two other scenarios that triggered ⁓ this thought spring too is one, like positioning changes. ⁓ And here's, here are your thoughts on that and like positioning, not even just like, we're, changing our product completely. Positioning change doesn't have to be like a total product pivot, but it could just be the way that you're trying to communicate what you do.
Zstvns (16:18)
That too.
Corey Haines (16:37)
Like I think of ConvertKit to Kit, for example. And number two was actually, the other scenario was acquisitions, either getting acquired or acquiring another company that you're rolling in and that's changing your product suite or product strategy. So what about those two?
Nick Loudon (16:54)
you
Zstvns (16:56)
Okay, so first one, ⁓ a change in your positioning. With ConvertKit, they were changing their value proposition as well, alongside their, which is part of the same thing with the positioning of being for creators who mean business. And so if you look at their old branding, it was far more Etsy, arts and crafts-like when you took a look at their visuals. Didn't look like the creator OS that they were looking to create. ⁓
when you have people like James Clear and Andrew Huberman, Matthew McConaughey and Tim McGraw, these really huge creators that use your tool to send out your stuff and when your value becomes now about, we can help you go from turning your craft into a source of income, your perception has to change visually. They also had some issues as well with where their visuals were, ⁓ it wasn't as systemized.
And so that's why they started working with Coto to do the brand visuals and they were changing their name. So they had all the elements of, yeah, you need a revolution. You're changing your name, you're changing your positioning, your visual system is a little bit antiquated, it's time to create something for the next phase of your company. Maybe that's a good way of phrasing it, is if you are entering into a new era, then a revolution might be in order. But it might not, it depends.
Corey Haines (18:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It made me think of like, ⁓ I know for ConvertKit, especially I've heard Nathan Barry, the CEO talk about this, where, you know, started as basically just ⁓ another email marketing tool, right? And then he started building and building, building, building, and find part of market fit. You start expanding and now you're thinking a little bit more strategically about, okay, now like, what is our strong suits? It's automations. no, now we're gonna loop in commerce. now we're gonna loop in landing pages and forums. ⁓
And now it kind of like, it went from just being an email marketing tool, with good automations to like an entire suite of products for creators. Like I said, that creator OS. And sometimes I feel like all the connotations of what you do can be wrapped up in your name, where when you hear a convert kit, you think of email tool with strong animations. But now if you're trying to break out of that, you need something like kit where it's like, ⁓ now it's an all in one, or it has a whole suite of.
tools.
Zstvns (19:19)
Yeah, it's changing the way people think about you. Airbnb had something really similar happen where they were trying to become a top contender and they needed a better brand that felt global. And so they hired design studio out of London to make that happen. Same thing with Mailchimp, but kind of like in a reverse way where they felt that they had become a little bit too corporate and stuffy and they wanted to go back to their roots a little bit, but in a way that was very artistic. And so that's where you get things like, you the introduction of Cooper as their typeface.
Nick Loudon (19:43)
Hmm.
Zstvns (19:49)
and
these really funky images and sketches and doodles but done in a very very high-end taste way. It's kind of like, you know, like high art where if it's done very poorly it sucks but if it's executed really well and you could see the cleverness behind it I really respect ⁓ what they've done.
Nick Loudon (20:12)
Yeah, I was going to ask, because you mentioned earlier about like, not enterprise, but companies that are needing to have more polished brands for like, you know, raising money or selling or, and I thought of a lot of the calls we've had with companies where they're like, yeah, our ICP, you know, are we're selling to enterprise. ⁓ And so we need to look a certain way.
Zstvns (20:26)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (20:37)
And so we're like, okay, well, you don't look like that now. like we, you you're, you've got a big project on your hands to overhaul this whole thing. And I feel like there's a lot more pushback on that than I would have expected. I'd say it's maybe 50, 50, like 50 % of the time they're like, yes, we need to look different. We need to look more professional, more trustworthy. And then the other 50 are like, you know, it's like, it's not a top priority. Like I'm worried about other things.
It seems pretty like universal that a lot of the anybody who is selling to enterprise needs to be very clean in their branding for the most part, very like high end. And I need you to debunk that if it's not true, because to me, it seems true as a layman, a branding layman.
Zstvns (21:24)
I don't like the, I think that the terms are misconstrued, because what people will say most often is we want to look professional. And that term is not used well, which is why I don't include it in vocabulary that we put people on. Like, do you want to feel masculine or feminine, youthful or established, luxurious or...
economic, you know, I don't put professional in there because professional is far more tactical in the way that you should like, all it means is can you do your job? You know, regardless of the how the day is going, can you show up and play? Fisher Price is a, are they a professional brand? Yes, I trust them to make really good kids toys and to, you know, not use lead paint in the stuff that they're going to sell to kids.
Nick Loudon (22:17)
you
Zstvns (22:21)
But do they look stuffy and corporate and like they have a stick up their butt? No. That they're all about the numbers? No. And I think that's the confusion people have when they say we wanna look professional. So what you need to have with an enterprise brand, because Intercom or Expensify or let me think of some others here. mean that corporate Memphis was a huge thing for a long time. The style of like
oblong illustrative people, what you need is to have things buttoned up and consistent and displayed in a way that uses basic design principles and then the flavor and the spin that you put on it can vary depending on whether you want to be something that's a little bit more cutting edge or if you're trying to be very approachable and friendly. And that's where I think it's good design always, but the flavor that you assign to it can vary regardless of whether you're enterprise or...
Nick Loudon (23:14)
you
Zstvns (23:19)
mid-market or entry level.
Nick Loudon (23:22)
Hmm. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. yeah, we skipped that. ⁓
Corey Haines (23:24)
So we circle back to the acquisitions part, cause I'm curious about it. And I had,
I had a, another thought too, which was just about to whether you are rolling up to another, like rolling into another product or company or whether you're rolling something into you or if you're building more of like a suite or ecosystem, you know.
Zstvns (23:48)
I mean, that's a topic in and of itself apart from just these three routes. The question is about brand architecture and how things play off of one another. And there is a brand decision tree that my mentor, Bernie Schroeder wrote about in his book, Brands and Bullshit that we've referenced quite a few times. And it's a series of questions to ask like, does this brand...
Corey Haines (23:51)
Hehehe.
Zstvns (24:16)
Will it be owned entirely by the brand that's acquiring it? If the answer is no, then it stays at SunCyber Brand. Is this company, the acquiring company interested in the business full-time or for long-term? If no, then it maintains its own brand. Where it becomes a little bit more nuanced is, is it a expansion of the offers? Like are you moving into a new market with it or perhaps a new vertical?
with the thing that you're in which case it would be very closely endorsed. That's the suggested route to go. If it's a reinforcement where it's like, no, no, no, this just makes the acquiring company a lot stronger. It'd be like if Lego acquired a...
What's a good example? Like if they acquired something like ⁓ magnetiles, you know, like it's similar, but it, you know, it just, it's more of a reinforcement of what we do already, which is make, make toys and specifically things that you build with. Maybe there's like a wooden version of Legos out there somewhere that exists, which would be a reinforcement, not a new product. The, my favorite example this is a brand like Kashi where Kashi is actually owned by Kellogg's and
Corey Haines (25:09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Zstvns (25:33)
you know, Kellogg's is notorious for making sugary, you know, crack cocaine cereal and Kashi was known for making very healthy cereal. So Kellogg's Kashi doesn't work because the value proposition is false. It's not. Yeah. There's the through line is lost between Kashi and, Kellogg's Coca-Cola did the same thing when they, I mean, they own a bunch of different beverage companies, but
Nick Loudon (25:38)
Cereal.
Sugar healthy. Yeah. ⁓
Zstvns (26:03)
Pure Leaf Tea is the one that comes to mind for me where it's owned by Coca-Cola, but you would have no idea. Sometimes brands will go through this when they are looking to be acquired because it's a signal to the market, like we're here to play, look at how, like we're nice, new, and shiny. It's like getting dolled up before you go on a date. We're ready to be acquired. Take me, take me to bed. Or acquisition.
Nick Loudon (26:31)
acquire me. ⁓
Corey Haines (26:31)
It's true.
I
think of examples like Atlassian. They just bought ⁓ the browser company. ⁓ Yeah, and ⁓ they have a whole suite. They've bought products like Trello, Jira, I don't know, a bunch of others. And so for me, when I think about the REO framework of revolution, evolution or optimization, it's like, okay, does Atlassian do, or,
Nick Loudon (26:49)
Yeah, they have.
Corey Haines (27:02)
an optimization evolution or revolution or does the browser company in order to kind of fit the product suite or none altogether because they each have good distinct brands in the first place.
Zstvns (27:14)
Yeah, with the browser company, it'd probably be something where it's the browser companies left on its own and it's just funded by Atlassian. But you saw this with Loom, you know, Loom was formerly a all purple brand and now they have transitioned their colors. Not necessarily, I wouldn't even call that an evolution or a optimization. It was like, you know, they changed the colors just a little bit. It's somewhere in between the optimization and an evolution category. Not even, it's just like.
Corey Haines (27:26)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (27:39)
It's like a pivot or something. Yeah.
sidestep.
Corey Haines (27:46)
minor tweak it's like yeah
Zstvns (27:46)
Yeah,
minor tweak to have it fit the larger suite of brands. The thing there though is that Loom was already well constructed and branded and designed. So, and their design was very ubiquitous as far as its application. Atlassian lucked out because they both had that same SaaS aesthetic that is quite modular. And that as long as the colors match, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the two companies.
So they had that going for them.
Nick Loudon (28:18)
is, was Cracker Barrel an a revolution, evolution or optimization?
Zstvns (28:23)
Hahaha
somewhere between a revolution and an evolution, because they kept a lot of the makeup of the stores or the restaurants, but just updated them, made them a lot cleaner. They added, I'm pretty sure they changed the typefaces, they added a couple patterns, they modernized their logo, which I still stand by, it was a good decision, I don't think they should have come back on it. But they got rid of some things that were very valuable, like the guy sitting.
and in the rocking chair, know, that's something that's like, if you're going to do this, you have to maintain the things that like, this is what I mean by diminishing your brand equity. You know, the thing you have to watch out for when you're doing a revolution is you have a bunch of stuff that's already built up. And when you get rid of that for no reason, then people are pissed, but you can be very like, it's creative work. You know, you can find a way to bring it in that guy.
for from Cracker Barrel without having to be a part of the logo or maybe he is part of the logo, but it's the expanded logo. You know, like the, the full fledged one that could go on posters and ephemera and t-shirts and things where it doesn't have to be super small, but then you have other ones in there. So I think that was just a faux pas rollout and one small thing of like, could you just kept, could you have kept the guy in there? If they'd kept the guy as part of their branding, there wouldn't have been any issues.
Nick Loudon (29:39)
You
Zach
is woke. That's what we learned on this. It was like a whole woke thing. don't even, I was like, I'm not even gonna pay attention. This is all drama.
Corey Haines (29:47)
Hahaha
Zstvns (29:50)
They say that,
I think that's a mass hyperbole. It's a mass simplification and hyperbole on the right side of politics. Because if they'd kept the dude in with everything else, mean, they just made things a lot nicer and simplified. No one cares. Missed that dude.
Nick Loudon (29:57)
Simplification.
Yeah.
Missed that dude. They brought it back, right? Didn't
they switch it back?
Zstvns (30:19)
Yeah, they brought back their old logo, but it's like.
Nick Loudon (30:21)
They just backpedaled
completely like, sorry. I wonder how much they spent on that backpedal. That's crazy.
Zstvns (30:26)
a lot.
billions and billions of dollars millions not billions millions probably
Nick Loudon (30:33)
geez. ⁓
Corey, anything left unasked of our brand guru here? Probably a bunch of things, but.
Corey Haines (30:42)
No, not
unasked, but if he has any comments on this, I'd be interested. I know for example, Ryan Culp, part of his acquisition playbook is to always do a rebrand. Sometimes it's not always a revolution, but it's usually always a evolution of some sort. And I remember that from his micro acquisitions course way back in the day, the heat that he created that I bought and went through.
And I always thought that was interesting because again, he framed it always as like kind of marking the start of a new era for the company and the product and rolling that out with a bunch of new features to show that you're building momentum, you care, you're invested and that you're listening to customers and you want to elevate the product. and so I always liked that because I never thought of it that way. ⁓ but I think it does really stick in people's minds.
Zstvns (31:23)
features.
Totally, mean, it's really similar to when people are selling their house. You know, that's actually when they go through the most amount of renovations. not changing the structure of the house, but they are putting a fresh coat of paint. They're perhaps getting some new furniture, making it look a little bit more updated. And it's no different than if you're selling a brand, like what you want. It's nice to get handed the keys to something that is functional and organized compared to something that is a mess. It's like, just even something as simple as like...
This is our Figma website file and look at the style guide. You see, it's got all the components your design team could ever want to work with and it's gonna be real easy for you to make updates to the same thing with the new website that we just built. You like you don't have to do that because it's arduous for someone to come in and have to like, you know, take over somebody else's mess.
Nick Loudon (32:31)
Hmm.
Corey Haines (32:32)
Yeah, right. That's kind of his whole value prop, using that same house analogy, like his strategy was more, you know, finding the, the dumpiest place on the block and then making it the nicest place on the block where he like sees the value in. Okay. First we're to do some like structural updates. Maybe we're going to add another bedroom. We're going to build a pool in there. We're going to fix up the front yard. And then we're also going to like do interior remodel and we're going to put a fresh coat of paint on the outside.
Nick Loudon (33:00)
Yeah.
Corey Haines (33:00)
And then
Zstvns (33:00)
Totally.
Corey Haines (33:01)
when they go to flip it again, all this new value structurally is reinforced by the aesthetic upgrades too.
Zstvns (33:10)
Yeah, to follow the analogy, I think an optimization in the context of a house would be like, you clean things up and maybe put a new coat of paint on it, probably hung some more furniture. It's things that don't require any kind of structural.
Nick Loudon (33:26)
Demolition, yeah.
Zstvns (33:27)
Uh,
I wasn't even going to say, Oh, you know what? Yeah, we'll follow that. It doesn't require any demolition to do those things. Whereas an evolution could include some where, you know, some of the stuff that you've made in the past has to get reworked. know, like in the case of HOA life, well, you need to remake your entire website because we've changed your typographic palette. We've changed your color palette. We've updated your, your positioning. We've updated your messaging where essentially the only thing that we're keeping is your color palette and your logo.
So everything else is gonna get touched. And like in the context of a house, that might be something like, well, we're taking down some of the walls, like, cause maybe they're moldy or they, you know, we're gonna break down the wall that's separated in the kitchen from the dining room to open up space. And then we're gonna repaint, refloor and add new furniture on top of that. Revolution is like down to the studs. You know, like we're changing.
everything but the foundation of the house and the wall layout. that's it. Which essentially means we're pretty much gonna touch everything marketing related except for your product, which can stay the same.
Corey Haines (34:45)
Hmm, I like that.
Nick Loudon (34:46)
Super
great. Love it. ⁓ Okay, I think we are at about time to wrap up. We just want to say thank you to Zach for laying all that info out. Super, super interesting. A lot of nuance in there. It's not all or nothing people. You know, there's some half measures. I was just kidding. ⁓ Anyway, thanks for listening to the factory floor and we will see you next time. Peace.