This 2025 Venturefest Panel Session was billed as an exploration of the importance of branding, design and market ‘fit’ in delivering successfully commercial products and services, and an opportunity to hear from businesses and creative experts that have led brand transformation exercises.
Panel experts included James Urquhart, the Founder at Rupert; Monique Farquhason, Founder of Matcha Yaad; Katerina Mouliadou, Founder of LIGNOO; Adam Concar, from RPL Brand Agency and Chris Evans, Head of Product Innovation at STEAMhouse, who also chaired the session.
Rebranding transformations
To kick the session off, the Chair asked the panel to explain how they had used rebranding and redesign to change consumer perceptions of products and services and how these kinds of processes had fed the commercial success of businesses.
Katriana highlighted how important design had been in being able to differentiate her product/service, how she had developed a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and iterated her offer through market and consumer testing. Monique explained a little of the back story of Matcha Yaad and her experiences of needing to adapt products and services to ‘fit’ different international markets and the importance of recognising cultural differences. This included having to adapt the branding, packaging etc.
Recognising the need for change
Adam explored the importance of understanding the rationale for a rebrand and being clear as to why the change was needed. Chris highlighted his experience that some entrepreneurs can sometimes be quite wedded to their old branding and sometimes finding it difficult to ‘let go’.
Monique recognised this challenge, describing her own experience as somewhat of an ‘emotional turmoil’, explaining she was very close to her old brand, but working with an amazing agency and business mentor, recognised there was a slight disconnect with their customers in the new markets she was entering, that necessitated a rebrand.
Adam highlighted that that moment of realisation is often very important and that entrepreneurs recognise that a rebrand should be viewed as a success, not a failure. His experience was that it was often harder in a larger business, as it can be an emotional process, that requires group alignment and the need for robust evidence to underpin the need for change. In this situation, he felt it was important to ask the right questions about needs, wants and hopes and actively listen to the feedback received.
Rapid iteration and building, measuring, and learning from customer feedback
Chris asked what the redesign journey felt like, for panel members and their teams and how the panellists managed the associated operational challenges?
The conversation moved to the importance of lean startup and scrum thinking. James explained his experience of the software design process, highlighting that his decisions to change were often driven by commercial imperatives, and that consumer testing, data, iteration and adaption were critical to developing software products that resonated with consumers.
Katarina highlighted the importance of continuous customer feedback and developing customer persona’s and securing good customer engagement was critically important to understanding the target market. In many cases, developing solid customer personas can be helpful in ensuring the targeting of the product or service is right.
Chis stressed the importance of developing a strong value proposition and understanding consumers core needs. James highlighted the need to manage the process carefully, particularly making sure that you have allocated sufficient resources to the process to enable you to draw in the necessary expertise. Monigue highlighted the importance of iterating her product to overcome customer pain points.
Katrina explained that she felt that some people can struggle knowing when to draw the iteration process to a close, and that in her experience, technology and business canvases can be useful in helping structure the process and that it’s important for decisions to be informed by data.
Some of the challenges of developing innovations and branding
James highlighted a particular challenge he had when developing Rupert which was that as an innovative product/service, it was quite challenging explaining what differentiated it from others, as there were no ‘me too’ products.
Monica felt that branding was often misunderstood, that she perceived that branding was all about consumer perception and if there was disconnect between product and brand three things were important – namely understanding how you are communicating; understanding what consumers service experience is like; and understanding how you are showing up.
The panel discussion expanded into the importance of brand connection and the importance of the customer experience matching the promise.
Marketing is asking someone to date, branding is the reason they say yes!
Katrina highlighted she felt it was important to understand marketing and branding are different issues. She recounted a former mentor who used to say marketing was like asking someone to go out on a date, and branding is the reason they say yes!
James suggested a brand is how a friend or family would explain what you do. Brands that do this well bring customers along the journey. When it comes to brand strategy, James felt it was really important to stand out – because many markets are highly competitive – and ensure you put the tools in place to manage effective, multi-channel communications (i.e., brand guidelines, tone of voice document etc).
Adam stressed the importance of brands needing to ‘connect, land and stick’ and the need to take your audience with you. James explained that he felt that branding was about what makes you unique, and that it was equally important to ‘find the way in and then open-up opportunities’ by thinking about how you can unlock other decisions makers once you have consumer purchase.
Following a Q&A session, the chair closed the session by thanking everyone for their inspiration and participation and reiterated that he felt the discussion had really reiterated the importance of understanding people’s needs and that getting that right was central to making a real difference.
Jim Sims, Senior Delivery Manager, West Midlands Combined Authority
Slingshot