Applying Lean To Marketing And Brand Strategy | Jessica Korthuis

Lean Startup

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Jessica Korthuis, Founder and Chief Brand Strategist at SOHUIS, and Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, to discuss how you can incorporate lean into your marketing and brand strategy. In Jessica and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - What companies should do before making the decision to rebrand. - Tools and exercises that can help you execute a successful brand strategy. - How to validate the brand strategy you implemented actually worked. And much, much more… Jessica Korthuis started her first company with her husband after her corporate dream job was eliminated. She didn’t have a ton of experience helping entrepreneurs brand themselves but she had a lot of experience in marketing communications and a can-do spirit. “We built this super-crappy website and then poof, we just started our first agency,” Jessica said. The agency grew organically to include such clients as TED Women, Red Bull and Stanford University, but was completely bootstrapped. “It was this absolutely scrappy thing,” Jessica said. Through the local business ecosystem in Orlando, Florida she learned about Lean Startup, which is where she got involved in helping entrepreneurs brand themselves using Lean Startup tools. Jessica admitted that she was naive at that early stage of her business, but that was both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, she said, it helped not to know how much work was in front of them, but it was also scary. Her biggest takeaway from starting with so little knowledge is that sometimes the best thing to do is to, “Just start.” Once she was deeper into the process, Jessica saw the value in Lean Startup methods and began to use it, suggesting founders should learn who your early adopters are going to be and determine your minimum viable product (MVP) as early as possible, but “Don’t try to slay the dragon all at once,” she said. Email us: [e-mail] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education