How should a climatetech company think about its brand? What if it's B2B? What if it needs to be both trustworthy and idiosyncratic at the same time?!
In today's episode of Reversing Climate Change, Nori Cofounder, Ross Kenyon, is joined by his colleague, Heidi Sloane, Nori's Senior Marketing Manager. Heidi led Nori's recent rebrand, which took it from a more playful B2C feel to something more sturdy and B2B. We used the agency Odi to help us with it. Great job, Odi!
Heidi explains how a brand can retain its personality and uniqueness while also communicating that it is serious about what it does and can be trusted. Just because one can sometimes act like a clown, doesn't mean one needs to dress like one. If you don't believe me, ask Leslie Nielson.
They also discuss how to lead stakeholder engagement in a way that minimizes conflict or typical committee dysfunction and make sure feedback is heard and synthesized without fetishizing consensus.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast with Nori. I’m one of the co-founders of the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace, based in Seattle, Washington. Today I have with me Heidi Sloane, for her first podcast appearance in human history. That’s — that’s too broad of a time period. But it’s also true, I guess, technically. First ever in this life. First, first — in this life. Maybe that’s a little bit contained. Human scale. You are the senior marketing manager at Nori. You led our recent brand refinement efforts, which I think is safe to say was a very successful undertaking.
Heidi Sloane: It was a lot of fun. It went pretty smoothly, which doesn’t always happen, right?
Ross Kenyon: I feel like — I feel like there’s more turbulent ways of doing that.
Heidi Sloane: There are definitely more turbulent ways.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Have you — have you seen any? Or was that a “we just know this” option?
Heidi Sloane: I’ve only seen one that felt turbulent, which I guess is lucky. I think I’ve seen, like, now ten total, either building from scratch or rebrand or refinement, something in between. And the turbulent one can just mean it gets to the end of it and whatever was created doesn’t get used. And then it is very soul-sucking, because all the time and resources that went into, like, transforming it feel wasted. And, you know, if you’re just doing a brand refinement, it’s because you decided there’s something that you want to refine. So then to make a good decision, invest the money and the time in doing it, and get to the end and not like the result enough to adopt it.
Ross Kenyon: It’s a tricky thing, too. I’m going to ask you to define brand. It’s one of those things that I think people — because they’re consumers, and they experience so much of their life as consumers and experiencers of brand, interactors with brand — they think they know what makes a good one. It’s not something like, you don’t just dabble in software or something and you’re like, oh, I know a lot about that. Brand is something where maybe people feel entitled to opinions, and maybe they need to weaken those in certain cases. ’Cause I bet someone listening right now is hearing us say brand and is now trying to spotlight on what even is brand. What does this mean? Maybe I don’t know anything at all. What is life? So what is brand, Heidi?
Heidi Sloane: I think there’s a lot of answers for this, but I like the idea that brand is whatever people think of you — like, not you, but your company. So you can’t fully control it, what people are going to think. But you can. You can move the needle on things. So the way your brand appears visually, from, like, your logo to all the different elements, photo, illustration — that can influence the way people perceive your company. It could also be the content you put out. It can be the people who are on your team, showing up on panels, posting on LinkedIn. All these things contribute to the idea that people have and the feelings that your company generates in their brain.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it seems like those are all instrumental means of getting to something. Like, when I think about Lululemon, I think the clothing is going to be comfortable and supportive of an athletic lifestyle. Is that, like, a brand association? Is that an okay working —
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, it’s the perception you have of their brand. Also, like, reputation plays into it. So it’s not all something that a design agency can do for you. There’s a lot of the, like, it’s not just show but also do.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you can’t just be saying that we are the world’s most innovative X company and you have stock photos from 30 years ago that you never updated. You can’t just, like, wish that into existence.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, exactly.
Ross Kenyon: So then does your work with brand extend beyond the instrumental means that you describe, which is sort of the visual assets, the copy that’s written, the messaging, and the more, like, traditional marketing comms products? Is it also something like product innovation and what is being created? Because those also seemingly influence people a lot. And probably for the people who are paying closer attention, that presumably matters more than the adornments.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s hard to say what matters more. But if you have a beautiful visual brand and website, but then your products are junk, that’s a red flag. In the B2C world — like, I had a cold brew coffee company, and when we were thinking about the bottle design, we were like, okay, we need to make sure that the bottle design compels people to take it off the shelf. And so, like, in that case the visual brand was responsible for the person trying it for the first time. But then after that, if the cold brew isn’t good, people aren’t going to buy it again.
Ross Kenyon: Counterpoint: what is happening with Liquid Death? I do not understand how that is a successful brand.
Heidi Sloane: I think that’s a successful brand because it made drinking water, like, cool. It just took [unclear] to make it cool.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t really get it.
Heidi Sloane: Well, I think so. I don’t drink alcohol, and I guess at a party, having a can of Liquid Death kind of, like, slides in easier than a Poland Spring water bottle. Not that I would have that, because I bring my own water bottle, because I care about the climate.
Ross Kenyon: There’s so many levels to that. But yeah, I guess if I saw someone drinking Poland Spring, or — ’cause yeah, I guess a lot of the water brands, they tend to focus on the natural, like where the water comes from. Is it from Fiji? Is it from Switzerland? Or Evian is French. And I like the idea of just going as far from that as possible, as Liquid Death. I guess that’s sort of a hardcore counter to traditional water. I actually like it more now that you’ve explained that. Maybe I should get one.
Heidi Sloane: And I think some people will just, like, like it because it is kind of ridiculous. Like, for the right — they know who they’re trying to reach with that, and I think they’re doing it well. And if you want to look at sustainability of, like, single-use water options, the can is more sustainable than the bottle. So.
Ross Kenyon: But they haven’t gone boxed yet. I don’t know if the box is better.
Heidi Sloane: Oh, really? Outside my expertise. I know can is definitely better than bottle, because aluminum can be recycled again and again and again without degrading quality, and the plastic and glass can’t. The glass would be best if it was actually reused or returned, like the old-school system where the really thick Coke cans go back — Coke bottles go back to the factory to be washed and refilled. But that’s rare today.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve seen that in other parts of the world. I haven’t really seen that in the United States, but there’s certainly bottle deposits elsewhere, places you can bring them to, like the local convenience store, and get money back. I like your original example, though, where your brand identity for your cold brew company was responsible for catching someone’s attention and making them want to make that purchase. But if the interior product was not a hit, then it didn’t matter. It was only there to get someone on the hook, and then your actual work must be successful. Does that apply to something that is e-commerce related in this way? How is it like it, and how is it different?
Heidi Sloane: So e-commerce, I’d say yes too, because I’ve seen this work with other products that were e-commerce first, and it was just like, okay, when somebody sees it on their Instagram feed, like, having really attractive packaging makes them curious about it. And then even, like, in my pre-Nori life, I worked with Sophie, one of the designers that we work with here at Nori, on some packaging for superfood bars, and it got accepted into — I’m going to butcher the pronunciation — Erewhon, or Erewhon, but really trendy store in LA. I keep seeing pictures from it. It looks pretty cool. They wanted it before they even tasted it, based on the design and the ingredients.
So anyway, this feels like a big tangent. But with something like Nori, I don’t think it’s necessarily that anybody is going to be like, oh, I want to buy carbon removal credits from this company because their brand looks great. But I think it’s more —
Ross Kenyon: Right, I — surely it’s really — that’s part of it for some, maybe?
Heidi Sloane: Some, maybe. But I don’t think it’s the same type of consumerism, where I feel like, oh, I have to try this, it looks so good. But I think it’s more like, if they see us in their LinkedIn feed or at an event, or if they find out about Nori by talking to you or to Matt one-on-one, and then they go online and see us on the internet, the way, like, the aesthetic matches the quality of the company and could help move the needle forward, or at the very least won’t hold it back.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s sort of how I was thinking about it. Maybe it’s necessary but not sufficient. Because our old brand, when we first did it — this is prior to your time here, Heidi — but I think some of the words that I chose that would help guide the brand development were a little too located inside of my own personality, where I wanted things to be ecumenical and exploratory, creative and quirky. And that led to a lot of organic shapes and blobs and color. And that’s cool. That’s cool for my personal brand. Maybe that’s good for Reversing Climate Change as a podcast — that is what it is, basically just a reflection of my personality, for the most part.
But the company maybe took a little too strong of a hold of that, because I don’t know that it was always the most — companies are making B2B purchases, business-to-business purchases, for their own sake, companies buying offsets. I think one of the key things that they’re looking for probably is a company that’s not going to embarrass them publicly. Like, the downside risk is there. And so having something that signals quirkiness is not necessarily the best B2B identity. You want something — I’m sorry, I’ve said this so many times, but the example I come back to is banks and neoclassical architecture. Like, columns are there because everyone associates them with ruins or buildings that are still standing thousands of years later. Banks do that to say, we’re here to stay, we’re not going anywhere.
And our brand did kind of the opposite. We were like, we just noodle on ideas and we’re really fun people. I don’t think that was correct, and we learned that. Do you agree with that, by the way? You can poke at it any way you want.
Heidi Sloane: I agree. And I think it’s also — when that brand was created, I think one of the primary audiences in mind was, like, the crypto Web3 world, and maybe it was better calibrated for that. But it was looking at individuals. And I think when you’re looking at individuals, those — and things to want to be perky, approachable — can make sense. And there is a space for that in B2B too, maybe just a little bit more subtle and with the underpinning of trust.
But I think, knowing what the carbon removal market is like and knowing that buyers are looking to know that there is quality and trust behind their purchases, because that’s one of the biggest fears that needs to be addressed — or within the company and all the different stakeholders they have to get approval from — making sure the brand can uphold the vision, can uphold that this is a trustworthy source. Like you said, these, like, whatever I get from them, I can trust to be quality, and I won’t be embarrassed about this decision later when something goes wrong.
And I think, from a quality — like, when I was joining Nori, that was one of the things that attracted me to Nori. I was like, wow, this company seems like what they’re doing is very cool and legit. And I had heard one of the co-founders speak, and he was so smart, and everything he was saying made sense. But then I saw the brand — like, I actually heard about Nori before seeing Nori — and when I saw the brand, it felt disjointed. And I thought that that was an opportunity. Like, oh, I’d much rather join a company where I think what they’re doing is important and substantial and legit, and have the opportunity to improve the brand to match it, the visual brand, than join a company that looks so good and so sexy and so cool but has no substance behind that.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, that’s nice. I feel like I’ve recalled this from way back when, but it’s been so long since I’ve heard you talk about it in that way. Is there anything in particular that felt disjointed to you, or something that tonally just struck you as off when you were looking at our brand originally?
Heidi Sloane: It felt less mature, and it felt B2C in my understanding — like, selling directly to consumers, right? It felt like it was trying to appeal to consumers directly, who would be purchasing for themselves, and the aesthetics just didn’t seem as sophisticated as what would be required to have a decision maker at a company deciding to add it to their portfolio without knowing Nori. I can definitely, like — I don’t — I think there’s also the difference in the stage of the company, where when you’re going with friendlies and people that you have personal connections with, I don’t necessarily think that the brand was holding anything back. But then when you’re looking to scale and reach people who you might never have a personal connection with, then I think that’s where it becomes a bit more important.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, like, you’re going in for a job interview now. You don’t want to be wearing those pajama pants. That’s the time for the suit and tie kind of thing. Maybe for the friendlies, they’re like, oh, Nori, I know Nori, they’re smart people. They’re a little silly, but they mean well. They’re trying really hard and they’re smart. But I guess you probably don’t get a chance for people to know you if you’re wearing pajama pants. They’re probably just like, this person’s — yeah.
Heidi Sloane: Like, what about the people who are searching carbon removal credits online and finding us through Google search? Like, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: One kind of point I’ve heard for this, Heidi, is that B2C-style marketing can work even in a B2B context, because everyone is a person and everyone has a sort of consumer identity, and appealing to people individually rather than corporately can work. So you might be able to attract people to your brand as individuals who became advocates at their company. And if you are different from everyone else who’s doing more serious adult B2B marketing, maybe it helps you stand out. Is there any credibility to that argument, or do you think that’s false?
Heidi Sloane: I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah. There are people — like, if you’re doing B2B, business to business, the business on both sides has people.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. That’s okay. That’s the [unclear] argument, at least for now.
Heidi Sloane: I think that’s also, like — we don’t want Nori to look like a bank, right? We want Nori to look trustworthy, but we don’t want it to be completely boring.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, but we don’t want to look like a bank.
Heidi Sloane: But we still want to have, like, the foundational elements, the ones that make us come across as trustworthy, which we are. So having some foundational elements that establish those attributes enables you to layer on the quirky stuff in a way that doesn’t undermine the trust, if that makes sense. And we still have some illustrations — we didn’t totally do away with that part of our visual language.
Ross Kenyon: Kind of. By the way — illos? Sorry, illos, yeah, just for short.
Heidi Sloane: That’s a typed, not spoken.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, is that right? Oh, okay, my mistake. How do you — oh, go ahead. Sorry, sorry.
Heidi Sloane: No. It’s like, if you have a — you can accessorize. Or if you have, like, a trustworthy sweater on, then you can wear some funny earrings or something like that. And I think, too, it’s not all — not all the pressure’s on the visual brand, right? We still have Reversing Climate Change. We have the Meme Lab. These things are building the brand perception that people have of Nori. So we’re still doing the things that can make people love us from the unique, quirky, sometimes silly and very niche side of things.
Ross Kenyon: Which — that exists at least personally interior to Nori. That is a strong element that runs through the halls of this company, and that’s good.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, I remember when we were doing the branding process and we were questioning, like, where the right balance was, having a conversation about you and, like, you’re wearing a button-up shirt and, like, some regular nice but regular pants, but it doesn’t stop you from being funny.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t remember this conversation we were discussing.
Heidi Sloane: Yes. Like, that’s in my sense of humor. Like, how your appearance doesn’t limit your actions, if that makes sense.
Ross Kenyon: Like, so even if Nori’s visual identity ended up in a place that was more buttoned up, it wouldn’t limit us from doing things that establish us — have the personality we’re seeking to have. I like that. That’s a really coherent way of putting it. I wanted to ask you to unpack a little bit this idea of layering. And one of the things we heard too — and we also insist on this — is that trustworthy is the default for a B2B brand. Want to be trustworthy? Because if you don’t want that, then what are you doing? It’s like, I’d like to be a good company. You and everybody else who have a company. Who’s the one that intends to start a bad company, really? But you have to keep certain kinds of words or terms or concepts to layer. And how does that process work?
Heidi Sloane: So we did internally the brand workshop, I think, February of last year — is that right? Yeah, or January of last year. And we were talking about, like, what attributes we want people to think of when they think of Nori. We were thinking of, like, how do we want people to feel at different, like, touchpoints? Like, when they see us on their news feed for the first time, when they’re on our website, when they meet us at an event, whatever. When they see our different types of content, how do we want to make them feel?
But the funny thing is, in that workshop the attributes that we were singling out as being important to us were things like trustworthy and approachable, and I think friendly, optimistic. Then when we met with our design partners, Odi, one of the first things I remember hearing from them is like, yeah, we’re not going to let you use trustworthy or approachable as the things you’re striving for, because those are just kind of table stakes, or what’s expected from any modern B2B company now. So we had to go a little bit deeper and think, okay, what is it that we want behind the trustworthiness?
And I think where we landed was this idea of enduring — that Nori’s been here for seven years, which in carbon removal industry is actually a long time, and we’re building and adapting and intend to be here for many more years to come. And that’s important because people are buying carbon removal credits from us and we have, like, contractual agreements that the farmers are storing that soil for — storing that carbon in the soil for ten years. Newer products have longer storage. So having a company that’s enduring behind the products that you also want to be enduring seemed important. And then we also went with optimistic.
And so then throughout the design process, we were going back to make sure that the work that was being produced was hitting those three elements. As in, does it look trustworthy, does it look optimistic, does it look science-based? And not every individual piece of the whole hits all of those notes, but the collective hits it pretty well.
Ross Kenyon: Those attributes feel like they could apply to many carbon removal marketplaces. Is there a risk of collision with other brand identities, since those are common things marketplaces want to convey? Or are there ways of making sure that you can hit these notes but do it in your idiosyncratic, valuable way?
Heidi Sloane: I think both. I think there’s, like, we can definitely do it in our own way, and now it feels like we are. And then also I think that it’s fair that any carbon or sustainability company would want to hit those notes. I don’t know, I think some of them are hitting more notes than others, or doing it in varying degrees.
Ross Kenyon: Interesting.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, we did some early, like, comparison work — and it wasn’t us, it was Odi. They kind of graded what was being hit and to what degree by the people that we wanted to stand apart from, or the companies we wanted to stand apart from, while also fitting in alongside.
Ross Kenyon: It sounds like something you just made up, Heidi, but it really doesn’t.
Heidi Sloane: Well, I guess, like, if somebody’s considering their options, they’re going to look at multiple companies. And, you know, we’re all united by the goal of ultimately reversing climate change, at least mitigating it. And so, yeah, we’re peers with other companies in the space, but we also want to have our way to stand out. And there are things we’re doing that are similar that we’ve also taken our own approach to. Like, so many companies have made the decision to use photos of the world we’re looking to protect in their visual language, and we have too. But we were really intentional about only using photos that look kind of familiar and not too utopian, applying a filter that made it look like it could be taken by anybody, instead of the super high-def, super bright, fake-looking type of treatment.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I see what you mean there. It’s tough to figure out the right balance there, because Nori is fairly idiosyncratic and we’ve made choices about how we’re constructing our marketplace, the types of assets that we focus on, that are not always the same as what others in carbon removal are doing. For better, for worse — I think for better, I hope for better. That’s the intention, at least. Of course, we’re respectful of people who’ve made different decisions within the industry. That’s their prerogative and they should be doing that. But you want to signal that we’re credible: hey, we’re part of this thing too. But also at the same time, we’ve gone our own way and are not just followers. We’re not just one of a pack.
That’s — I can say those words and I can understand those words, but it also seems really hard to pick out how you do both of those things at the same time. Are you able to help me with it?
Heidi Sloane: Yeah. Something that came to mind when you were saying it was an idea that I had, like, I don’t know, week six into week nine of the process, and it was definitely too late. And I don’t even know that it was a good idea — probably wasn’t. But if it is a good idea, now it’s a free idea that anybody out there can just take and run with. If we’re so concerned about making sure that we’re offering products that, you know, companies can buy with confidence and not worry about greenwashing, and help guide their claims so they know, like, if they claim to do what the product actually does, they don’t have to worry about greenwashing — what if we just make it so our brand has no green anywhere in it, and, like, make that a thing?
And then, I don’t know, I thought it was either brilliant or silly, and I don’t know, because I haven’t tested the waters with it. But that would be a way to do it. With us, I think we didn’t do that. With us, I think it’s about the action and then what we do, less so than, like, here’s our visual brand that’s achieving that. We don’t need to wear a clown suit to make a joke and juggle.
Ross Kenyon: I remember that part. I feel like that was directed at me personally.
Heidi Sloane: No, that was the part that was related back to your outfits.
Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah, I know that’s a piece of that. Wow. No green, so no greenwashing. Yeah, we didn’t do that. Let’s see that. Wow, that’s kind of a fun idea. I wonder, like, does stuff like that read? Do people at least subconsciously make that connection, or is that one of those cerebral things that comes in that just reads as wise? There’s nothing green on this.
Heidi Sloane: I don’t know, I really don’t know. And also it is very attractive to have green and, like, nature imagery when your company is focused on those things.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think it’s almost pleasing for its own sake too. I think people associate green with — what? — intelligence and calm, and there are good associations with that color, at least for, like, Global North eyes or people of certain cultures. That makes sense. These subliminal hues, like — that were, for instance — I could see a site that was using really strong primary colors without any differences in hue or gradients, so that it was just like, hmm, color block, color block. And that signals, like, we’re confident and decisive, but also kind of too binary. Depends on how you look at it, right? Like, it’s either a really good thing or a really bad thing. Or you could have these gradients which show there’s a lot of nuance here, like we’re trying to be thoughtful and find the exact right balance. That can also look wishy-washy, like you don’t actually — like, are these things inherently good? Or, like, what are you trying to signal into? Boom. This is really hard.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah. Within our brand library, we’ve got some gradients and we’ve got not-gradients, solid colors, as they’re called. And we were recently working on some materials, and we originally had some gradients, but we knew that we wanted these particular materials to read more enduring than optimistic. And so we replaced the colorful gradient parts with solid pine, and it really made a difference. So it’s nice having elements in your toolbox that allow you to lean into the different things you’re trying to hit, depending on the assets or materials.
Ross Kenyon: Given how qualitative all these things are, it’s hard to know that it all adds up to the impression that — because you’re not your customer, so how do you know this adds up in their brain to something that is what you feel when you experience it?
Heidi Sloane: Yeah. And that’s something I think — through our process and having so many stakeholders giving feedback on the weekly deliverables that we received, having the attributes that you were trying to hit, or the thing that you wanted — I think our single most important thing was the science-based optimism. Even though you’re in a really challenging situation, to not say sanguine. I love that word. Dang it. But yeah, okay. And being able to put aside people’s personal opinions, where, like, okay, I don’t like it, but then, okay, does it achieve this? And that was a really helpful tool.
So we don’t know. We don’t know. We know what we want this brand to achieve and we can do our best. But ultimately the test will be: what do people think of Nori and the brand? The visual brand influences that, but it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Ross Kenyon: One of the aspects of this that I thought you handled very well was the stakeholder management component of it. Because, as the old joke goes, a camel is a horse built by a committee. And someone’s like, oh, it should have some humps. Well, it should have — oh, it should, it should have a super long neck, and so on. Then it has everything in it and it basically appeals to no one, pleases no one, but everyone got their little thing that they wanted in it. And that’s not the right outcome.
And the fact that it went smoothly — one of my experiences from working on projects and working in film was that if you do your job well as a producer, it mostly just works and no one even knows that you did anything, because the system just worked, and you can sometimes look like less of a leader. It works well. But if it goes badly and you’re able to thread the needle at that point, then it looks like you’re leading. But if you avoid that entire process through skillful structural management, then your role is in some ways invisible. I feel like you were much closer to that invisibility aspect of it, which I thought was a really skillful thing. Because the possibilities here for someone to have really strong opinions and derail things are super high, right? For any property. Basically, like, the wrong types of permissions, the wrong types of expectations, the wrong people in the room at the wrong time — it could lead to chaos, and you avoided it.
Heidi Sloane: Thank you. I feel like there were some bumps along the way, but we were proactive in, like, going to, okay, so what’s the problem-solving side of it, instead of letting it spiral.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Well, how do you — how do you, for something that is creative, and people have strong feelings about qualitative aesthetic choices like this — they care about the company, therefore they want it to reflect their values. Like, I sort of maybe took us on a wrong turn on our first go at this several years ago. How did you do it, or how did you try to think about setting it up, for maybe a company that is going through a similar kind of multi-team thing, involving all of leadership and others, trying to make this work at their company? What advice might you have for them?
Heidi Sloane: I think the strategy that we did before we even started with our design agency was important. And even though there was quite a lag between that internal workshop and us starting to work on it, having had it, and having had the space where people were sharing what they wanted the brand to feel like — even if we didn’t take every piece of that, creating the space for people to express it, I think, is important. And knowing what the role of the stakeholders is in the process.
And with Odi, our design partner, they had a nice process where we would be forced to present unified feedback. They didn’t want the collection of all the feedback everybody gave. So we would have to, as a project team — me, you, and Christy — go through it, consider what this feedback was, decide whether it was something that we wanted to incorporate into our overall feedback that we were going to submit unified, to steer us in one direction, versus presenting everything. Or if it was something that we’re saying, okay, we hear this feedback, but we think it’s going to be most successful if we carry on this way anyway.
So having to go through on our side and give unified feedback, I think, was a helpful step to make sure the feedback we were giving the design partners was productive, and that each week felt like it was advancing. And I think also knowing, like, when is feedback feedback, where you can consider it, or is it something where — this is, like, if a top decision maker is going to feel like it can’t move forward unless this changes, that’s important to know too. Because it’s valid that those moments happen, but it’s being prepared for it and adapting quickly.
Ross Kenyon: But that was a thing too, where Matt, our new CEO, was newer at the time, and we hadn’t all figured out when a suggestion is but a suggestion, and when a suggestion is a nice way of issuing an edict, essentially, and trying to figure out, like, okay, are you vetoing this, or is this just a thing that you feel should be on equal playing field with all the other feedback? And sometimes it was. Most of the time it was the latter, but there were times when it was the former, and we needed to know that. We actually didn’t communicate well enough to know that, because we didn’t have the experience. That’s just a new person, that you don’t have that with necessarily.
Heidi Sloane: Well, up front we did check in to see what the expectation was, and it was, like, just one of the people giving feedback, part of the group. And I think it’s one of those things where it’s very valid that a CEO would want to overrule a decision or move something in a different way. It is their job, by the way — it is their right to do that in really important matters. So I think it’s one of those things where maybe he didn’t know that he would want or need veto power until it came up. And so, like, I remember that specifically, there was one color that some people liked, some people didn’t like. He was in the camp of people who didn’t like it, but we decided to move forward with it. Had that color never been part of our palette, maybe he would never have used veto power, you know? Maybe. So it’s hard to know ahead of time.
Ross Kenyon: Yes. But yeah, [unclear] he would have just chosen some other place to exert authority. It might have just been, I can’t live with this color, I really think it harms the brand, it stands out, or I’ve heard comments about it, or you know.
Heidi Sloane: But it’s also fair, ’cause if he’s going to, like — if he’s going to have merch or business cards, or be looking at the website, or be standing in front of a booth one day that has our colors and the color you hate. Yeah. We can’t accommodate everybody, but I think we can accommodate the CEO on that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. But for the rest of the people that were involved — it was mostly Nori’s leadership team and a few others that wanted to weigh in on this, [unclear] their opinions too. And there’s also a strong anti-consensus mentality here. There’s no expectation that we were all going to agree, and that’s okay, right? So it was your job, because you led this, so everyone would give this feedback, it would come to Christy, you, and I, as marketing and creative and marketing here, and then we would figure out — you know, feedback does not necessarily mean consensus. We’re determining what is actually important that we want to carry on. Is that your understanding? It was like, so what feedback do we move forward?
Heidi Sloane: And a lot of times — I mean, we had our own individual feedback too. So it wasn’t just that we were looking for the feedback from the group. A lot of it was feedback that we ourselves had and had to also, you know, measure and see if it was super subjective or if it was something that we could pass on as functional feedback. One thing I think was really helpful for me is we engaged Sophie, who is our, like, on-retainer, ongoing designer at Nori. And I’ve worked with her so many times before and really trust her on design and stuff. So having her included in this process and contributing to the feedback — whenever I had a doubt about something, I would kind of go to her for her expert opinion before advancing further. Or if I wasn’t sure of something, I was thinking, was it off or valid, I’d kind of check in with her to gut check.
Ross Kenyon: It’s nice to have people in your pocket like that that maybe have a little bit more distance. I think there’s almost a bias of people who are inside of a company weighing — ’cause obviously they care about the company the most, ’cause they work there, maybe they’ve co-founded it.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, it’s more emotional for people who are in the company. And also, you know, I still have the sticker from our previous Nori brand on my laptop, and I’ll still use the hat. There’s love for the previous brand too. It’s not just good riddance. So I think to go through a — like, going back to what I said at the beginning — to go through a brand refinement, or in this case it started as a brand refinement and kind of ended up as a rebrand, to go through that process you have to, like, whatever is being created, like it more than your previous brand. And you’re constantly comparing it to the brand that you’re already familiar and comfortable with. And for an outsider there, it’s very objective, whereas for an insider, it’s got a lot more tied up in it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think it’s good to check those impulses too, or make space for people who have a bit more distance. Also, they have their own biases too. They might advocate for things that do not reflect the company’s values or vision in the right kind of way, ’cause they just don’t have that perspective. So it seems wise to find ways to balance the two. Do you think there’s anything with regard to rebrands, or just brand in general — do you think there is anything specific that people who work at climate tech or carbon removal companies might want to make note of? Or does what we’ve discussed today broadly apply at companies generally?
Heidi Sloane: I think it applies to companies generally, including the climate space. Yeah, I’m trying to think, is there anything specific that would apply to a climate company?
Ross Kenyon: Tell us we’re special. I don’t want to be told we’re just like everybody else who’s selling widgets.
Heidi Sloane: Well, I think we are special, and not necessarily from a brand perspective. But I was talking to a friend — I was talking to two friends, one who was at a sustainability conference recently, and she’s a sustainability manager and she was mainly interacting with other sustainability roles. And another friend works in AI, and he was at a recent AI event talking to other people in that world. And she was saying how her experience was, everybody is just like, hey, how did you do that? Like, I want to try and figure out that thing too. And they’re just, like, sharing advice and really trying to help each other advance, because they’ve got the common goal of mitigating climate change, of making their companies more sustainable.
Whereas the friend in AI — in earlier years, when he’d go to these conferences, it kind of had a similar vibe where people were sharing more information, and people were publishing more research. And now he says it’s almost like an arms race, where people don’t want to share, because from one company to another, what they’re working on — like, everybody’s just competing to do the next thing. Maybe not an answer to your question, but I think what the climate space has that’s unique is even with our competition, like, there’s this idea of we all want each other to succeed because we have a common goal.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Heidi Sloane: Well, I guess just one thing that we ended up doing when we started this: we didn’t want to change our logo. Like, we all liked our logo that we had before. And all the designers and design agencies we spoke to wanted to include it in their scope, a logo redesign. And it got to the point where it’s like, okay, if all these designers and design agencies are wanting to improve our logo, let’s at least, like, open the door for them to present options. We don’t have to take it. We can see what they bring up. And in our process, logo was one of the first things that they started working on. And I think it was a point of friction for us, because it was the only thing that we had to anchor in, and we already liked our logo. Looking at these ideas for new logos that we didn’t like as much felt challenging.
But then when we shifted gears and worked on the visual language — like photos, data visualizations, illustrations, the arrow element, and those things — that made it easier to come back to the logo and feel like, okay, our new logo — our old logo doesn’t feel harmonious with this new world that we’re trying to build out visually. And I think it made it easier for us to embrace the idea of a new logo and find a logo that would work in our new playground.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think it would have looked somewhat strange to have everything else changed but the logo remained the same. I’m not even sure — I think we probably would have collectively realized that that was an error before we concluded the process. But I do think it was easier to look at the logo after everything else was in place, because we had a clearer idea of what we were going for.
Heidi Sloane: Well, I think that’s right.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. I think that that decision was well made. I’m glad we did it that way. Ultimately that was you, that you were just like, we’ve got to pause this and focus on the typefaces and the visual grammar and stuff like that, right?
Heidi Sloane: Yeah. Well, and ’cause it was a scoped project, so if we got to the end of those weeks and all we had was a new logo and we didn’t have the things that we originally went there for, that would have been disappointing. But then, another Sophie reference: when we were working on the packaging — like, we were doing a brand from scratch for a snack bar line — the logo was the last thing we thought about. Because we’re like, okay, what do we want the packaging to look like? What do we want everything else to look like? Because the logo is just this little piece on a bigger surface area. I don’t know.
People maybe unduly focus on it as the most important thing, but I don’t know that I feel the same about logos in general after this process. I see them more as a nice little adornment at the end, and not the main part of the brand work.
Ross Kenyon: I think maybe laypeople, or people with a little more distance, think that it’s mostly getting to that logo, getting to that sweet, sweet logo. I don’t really — I think that’s the lesser portion of this.
Heidi Sloane: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, maybe the logo matters more in B2B and in tech than it would in other industries, because, like, what you’ll see in the profile image across any — like, the avatar, the logo. There is no bottle or wrapper for a bar that you see. So, like, the business card will have the logo. I don’t know. I can see where it matters more here, but from a process perspective it felt easier to address after.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Heidi, thanks for being here. Thanks for allowing us to be your first podcast ever.
Heidi Sloane: That’s really — really good. Doesn’t even feel like a podcast. Just feels like a Zoom.
Ross Kenyon: That’s the ultimate goal, I think, at least for some of these. Yeah, nice and natural. Hopefully it’s useful if you’re listening and you’re at a climate tech company or some other company. This is at least how one climate tech company thinks about brand. And thanks for leading that process, Heidi. I think it came out really successfully. Nice feather in your cap, so good for you.
Heidi Sloane: Thank you. Thanks for trusting me with the rebrand, and I guess thanks to Nori for wanting to do this process. Exciting to feel like the brand is of a similar caliber as what the company does and what products we have.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s a good point too. I think sometimes there’s a counter-signaling desire where people focus on the hardware or the actual products. And if you’re in carbon removal, you care about the actual process of removing it. But there’s an importance and a dignity to just the visual identity of a — maybe it’s necessary but not sufficient. Obviously if your hardware doesn’t work, nothing else really matters. But yeah. Well, thank you, Heidi.
Heidi Sloane: Thanks, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com, follow us on social media, and we will catch you next time.
