Everyone has a story.
Stories are how we relate to one another. How we connect or how we decide that we don’t. Either way, stories make us feel something.
In a business sense, things we typically ask people, and ourselves, are centered around what we think.
A very analytical action. A process of calculations and dissection, which are a fantastic and necessary part of our lives and what we do, but when it comes to building a brand, most of us have come to experience that we don’t immediately love a brand because of how it makes us think. We love brands for how they make us feel.
In technical industries, this is a common mistake. Putting the thought before the feeling - and the argument we’re trying to make here is not which one is more important, but simply that we need to consider leading with the feeling before we can architect our thoughts into the solution.
So for those who can relate: You might be in a position where you’re months or even years into your business, and you come to a point where you’ve put a ton of thought and effort into a solution that solves a pretty good problem. But as you continue to grow and develop, you realize you start to hit a wall. That wall is the point where further growth and future development are critical, but you’ve reached the crossroad of where to go next. How to expand IS the fork in the road.
So when you get to this point, what do you have to ground yourself? You could float in infinite directions - but what’s your north star? Purely charging forward based on thinking has only gotten you so far. Not to say that isn’t a substantial place, but as you float out in thought, what is consistently anchoring you back home?
Imagine yourself lost at sea, on the cusp of discovering a new land. At this point, you’re at the mercy of the waters - they could take you anywhere. You can only think yourself out of problems as they arise. You take on water - you bail it out. You lose an oar, you makeshift one from a sail. But, what is the drive that keeps you from losing hope? The thing that keeps you going? It’s the feeling of landing safely in a new place you’ve never seen. How the sand feels on your feet, the feeling of gratitude that you survived. The feeling of meeting new people. The feeling is the north star to take you there. The solutions you’ll think of when problems arise, are the secondary act.
So that being said, we can understand how connecting to the feeling a brand gives us, and building brands that have strong foundations in this principle, are the guiding light to the decisions we’ll make for our businesses as we trudge through uncharted waters.
It allows us to stand confident in what we say yes or no to, and what problems are important to us and our customers. From there, solutions to the challenges we face ahead all come back to a decision we made based on our brand's north star. The brand values and brand heart are where these foundations lie, and that’s why it was so important for us to solidify who we are and how we want to make people feel in order to stand strong in the product solutions we create.
So, here we are. After many years developing a creative solution for our users, our recent rebrand called us to revisit and solidify our brand foundation and values. It is our mission tocontinue to grow in a way that consistently stays true to who we are, and why you love us. This is the baseline that anchors all our thoughts, solutions and features. It’s more than just airy words on paper that will never be looked at again.
This is LEON - what we stand for, and how we connect to the people who matter most - the customers we serve. This is our purpose, our north star.