What is the first step in a branding project?

Defining the value proposition. Everything visual should derive from it, because design produced before the positioning is settled tends to constrain that positioning rather than express it.

Should you build a brand around the buyer or the user?

Both matter, but they often conflict, and branding usually gives precedence to the buyer. In enterprise security the practitioner uses the product daily while the CISO authorizes it, so the two need different messages.

Why do detailed personas matter more than demographics?

Because they capture the pressures, language and decision context of a real person. A demographic sketch tells you who someone is; a persona tells you what they are trying to do and what would make them act.

How often should a brand be revisited?

Whenever the market or the business moves materially. The episode treats a brand as a living system rather than a finished deliverable, on the basis that categories reshape faster than most brands are updated.

Branding Part 1: Before the Flashy Logos - The Must-Know Foundations of Branding!

Phill Keaney-Bolland· Co-founder and Designer, YayaNovember 12, 20242 min read

With Adam Yaya-Durrant, Co-founder and Design Director, Yaya

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

Key takeaways

The first step is the value proposition, and everything visual derives from it.
Clients consistently want visuals before the strategy that should inform them.
Detailed personas produce sharper branding than demographic sketches.
Buyer and user personas pull in different directions, and the buyer usually wins.
A brand is not finished at launch, it needs revisiting as the market moves.

Start with the value proposition
Why clients ask for the logo first
Personas, and the buyer versus user tension
Brands are not finished

A 2024 episode, recorded before the cybersecurity focus, and the foundation still holds: positioning and audience decide whether an identity lands, and both are settled before anyone opens a design tool. Security founders tend to arrive asking for a logo and leave having rewritten who they are for. Part one of three, and the same sequence we run in the Cult Products Programme.

Start with the value proposition#

The opening argument is the one we make in every project. Branding begins with a defined value proposition, and the visual work derives from it. Reversing the order produces something that looks considered and says nothing, which is the most common failure in the category.

The formula we keep returning to is simple enough to write on a napkin. We help X to achieve Y by doing Z, unlike everyone else. If a founder cannot complete that sentence, no amount of design will fix the gap.

Why clients ask for the logo first#

The hosts are candid that clients almost always want to see visuals early. It is understandable. A logo is tangible, and strategy is not. The job is to hold the sequence anyway, because a logo approved before the positioning is settled becomes a constraint on the positioning.

Personas, and the buyer versus user tension#

Detailed personas do more work than demographic summaries. The complication covered here is that the person who buys and the person who uses are frequently not the same, and their needs conflict. In enterprise security this is acute: the practitioner lives in the product, and the CISO signs for it.

The episode is honest that buyer personas usually take precedence in branding, and about what that costs.

Brands are not finished#

The closing thread treats a brand as a living thing rather than a delivered artifact. Markets move, categories norm and form, and a brand set once and never revisited drifts out of alignment with the business it represents.

Phill Keaney-Bolland

Co-founder and Designer, Yaya

Co-founder and designer at Yaya, and host of the Cult Products podcast. Fifteen years designing products, brands and UX across multiple industries before narrowing to cybersecurity, and lectures on design at Imperial. Works with cybersecurity founders on positioning, strategy and the website that has to carry a launch, across identity, cloud security, AI agents and software supply chain, including Twine out of stealth and Geordie AI, which won the RSA Innovation Sandbox in 2026.