Branding: Start Early but Think Long-Term

·36 min·2 clips

Meg says visual decisions come from a three-prong chair: the company story, user associations, and competitors.

Chris Conner opens the conversation by introducing Meg Schlabs as co-founder and creative director of Wizardly. He starts with books and ChatGPT, then shifts into branding and design work for science clients. Meg explains how branding workshops often begin with people expecting the exercise to be too basic. She says that early discomfort is part of the process, and that warning people up front can help clear the room. The goal is to get everyone aligned around a shared ideal before moving forward. She explains that the team uses simple prompts to surface what an audience needs. Those prompts help people move past jargon and into basic human expectations. Meg describes a list of about 300 needs and feelings words that teams sort through together. The exercise is meant to get people thinking about what visitors bring with them when they arrive at a website, and what they need to feel when they step into the brand experience. She says the best conversations happen when people start tossing ideas around and comparing how different audience groups might respond. Much of the work happens with heads of marketing and other people who already think about user journeys, which makes the room comfortable enough for open discussion. Chris connects her approach to Chris Voss and the idea of naming the awkward part up front. Meg agrees that saying the exercise may feel silly can help set the tone. The conversation keeps returning to practical empathy rather than polished theory. Branding is framed as something that has to work across strategy and design. Meg emphasizes that the work matters because it helps clients understand why choices are being made. The episode closes with appreciation for the way she links branding decisions to clear communication. The listener comes away with a sense that good branding is less about decoration and more about shared understanding.

As heard by us

Branding is treated as a long-term alignment problem, not a logo exercise.

Branding here is treated less as a logo exercise than as the slower work of getting smart people to agree on what they mean. Meg Schlabs describes workshop exercises that feel awkward at first by design, then uses that discomfort to build consensus, audience empathy, and…

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