# Grey Software Branding Content Brainstorming

###### tags: `Branding` `Marketing` `Brainstorming`

## Notes

Branding is a company’s effort to build lasting value by delighting customers.

A Unique Buying Tribe has natural affinity for the company’s products or services. News in a tribe spread quickly. This is about pulling people into a tribe they can trust. Identity. “If I buy this product, what will that make me?”

Don’t offer more, offer different. What people want today are trustworthy brands. What they don’t want is more intrusiveness, more empty claims, more clutter.

## Branding Questions

### Who are you?

Grey Software is a not-for-profit organization on a mission to democratize software education.

### Where does your passion lie?

The founding team members have seen where the current education system falls short, and are passionate about giving the next generation a better experience.

### What do you do?

*What business are you in? Decide what your core purpose is beyond selling a product or service.*

#### Open Software

We’re creating open source software that people can trust, love and learn from.

#### Open Education

We’re making openly accessible educational content for learners around the world.

#### Open Collaboration

We allow students worldwide to practice by collaborating remotely with other open source developers.

### What does 'Grey' Software mean?

Grey software is software that people can trust, love, and learn from.

#### Software you can Trust

We don't create software to maximize profits, and we don't hide our code from the public.

That is why we are registered as a not-for-profit in Ontario, Canada and why we develop transparently with open source software.

#### Software you can Love

Creating software experiences that people can love and enjoy gives us meaning.

Software is a part of our human ecology now, and we think it's important to create Software that leads to more peaceful and prosperous lives.

#### Software you can Learn From

To empower the next generation to continue our mission, we write our code to be easily understood, and couple it with educational resources and documentation.

### What’s your vision statement?

*True vision leads to shared purpose, passion, and commitment from people. The leader’s job is to share and articulate that vision, making it clear, memorable, inspiring.*

We envision a world where anyone learning software development can learn from or participate in creating useful products and services with the latest technologies.

We envision a future where students and professionals work together to create software that we can all trust, love, and learn from.

### Outline your vivid vision for the company!

### Where do you have the most experience?

We have a unique amount of transparently documented experience with teaching students how to create

### Where do you have the most credibility?

### What wave are you riding?

*What trends can you ride? Make a list of trends that will power your success.*

### Who shares the brandscape?

*Who else competes in your category? Who comes first, second, and third in customers’ minds? Find out how your brand ranks with customers, and design a strategy to increase that rank.*

Currently, Mozilla, Khan Academy, and Free code camp are the biggest names in free online software education that our brand is similar to.

### What makes your brand both different and compelling?

*Your brand is the only ___ that ___.*

Our brand is the only software education company that transparently competes in the software marketplace to build credibility.

### Who loves you?

*Every brand is built by a community of people inside the company and outside the company including partners, suppliers, customers, investors, even competitors.*

- People who are passionate about open source technology
- People who are passionate about education technology
- Students who have worked with us and come away with a massively upgraded skillset compared to what they were paying for at University

### Who’s the enemy?

*Don’t try to please everyone. Identify the true biggest competition and pick a fight. Sometimes the competition is an old way of doing something not necessarily a specific company.*

*Which competitor can you paint as the bad guy? Tell your customers what you’re not, in no uncertain terms.*

### How do you explain yourself?

#### What’s the one true statement you can make about your brand?

#### What’s your value proposition, the reason your brand matters to customers?

### What is your TrueLine?

*Craft a trueline that tells why you brand is compelling. This is your trueline, for example: Audi: “Never follow”, or Nike “Just Do It”*

### How do you spread the word?

*Now that you have a name, trueline and a tagline you now need to unpack the meaning hidden within those assets and deploy it across a series of touchpoints – places where customers will encounter your brand.*

*Think about how to use the same content across multiple touchpoints. Only engage in touchpoints where you can win.*

### How do people engage with you?

*Define what your selling and how you’re going to sell it. Cost-benefit analysis. Try to find uncluttered market space opposed to areas of bloody competition. You may end up giving away items or services that your competition is beating each other up over.*

*When comparing against competition be sure to always be cognizant of best practices that are really just common practices. Map value proposition against your competition.*

### What do they experience?

*The strategy you’ve created now must be operationalized into an execution plan. Be very specific about how the customer will interact at the touchpoints. Map out the customers’ journey from awareness to brand loyalty.*

#### How will they learn about you?

#### How can you help them “enroll” in your brand?

#### Who are you competing with at each touch point?

#### Where should you put and where should you not put marketing resources?

### How do you earn loyalty?

*Loyalty is earned by companies being loyal to customers which results in customers feeling the company has earned the loyalty they are receiving.*

### Will you be a House of brands or a Branded House?

*House of brands benefits from each brand being free to grow on its own without having to battle with the parent company brand, however, each brand must then be funded, built, and managed separately.*

*Branded House benefits from all products and services can share the same resources, but they struggle with keeping the brand relevant across different product and service offering.*