Brand… a Product job now?
A lot of PMs won't like this.
Brand isn’t a marketing exercise anymore. It’s a product responsibility.
A lot of product teams hate hearing that because it means they can’t hide behind feature roadmaps and velocity charts. They have to care about how the product makes people feel.
Yes, feelings. The stuff product managers tend to roll their eyes at. The stuff that historically got delegated to “brand” and “design” while product stayed focused on utility and speed.
That world is gone.
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It disappeared with the collapse of software development costs, which puts every product in the world at risk of being replaced.
So, how do you keep users attached to your product?
People don’t trust marketing claims. They trust the experience. The product is the first touchpoint, the daily interaction, the thing that either creates emotional attachment or zero attachment at all. The product is the brand.
And just to be clear, because this always gets confused: When I say “brand,” I don’t mean campaigns or taglines.
Brand is a product’s personality. It’s a feeling or perception. The thing that makes someone say, “This is so them.”
Branding is the visual and verbal system that reinforces that feeling.
Brand marketing is how you amplify it through marketing channels.
Marketing can attract by making a brand promise, but only the product can deliver it. You can’t position your way into being loved. You have to earn the emotional response. And the emotional response happens inside the product itself.
And yet product teams still ship like the goal is to be functional, correct, and passable. They’ll prioritize shaving 0.2 seconds off a load time over adding something memorable. They’ll optimize funnels while ignoring the emotional arc of the experience. They’ll say, “We’re solving real problems, that’s enough.”
It’s not enough. Utility gets usage. Emotion gets loyalty.
Look at the companies people love, not just use:
Notion feels calm and thoughtful. That’s not from the homepage tagline. It’s from the actual product environment.
Linear feels like a tool made by people with taste. The brand was born in the smoothness, the typography, the motion.
Lovable feels… well lovable :)
None of these were created by marketing campaigns or budgets. The product broadcasted the brand.
If your product feels generic, no brand campaign will save it.
If your product feels mechanical and joyless, no mascot will fix it.
If your product has no opinion, no amount of storytelling will give it one.
So yes: brand is a product job now. It always should have been.
Which shouldn’t be a complete surprise to anyone who understands PLG - after all, self-serve always requires the product to be memorable and shareable. But the stakes are higher now. And it’s not just that we’re all facing way more competition from faster, AI-powered startups. We all need to revisit our growth models, because the traditional distribution channels are increasingly f****ed - too crowded, too expensive, or changing to the point of being unrecognizable.
Let’s look at Search. AI models are now ranking brands based on user-generated sentiment - Reddit threads, community chatter, reviews - not the marketing claims you make on your site or in your ads.
User-generated content and reviews now outweigh traditional SEO in determining brand visibility rankings across AI search. Let that sink in.
The Semrush AI Visibility Index report predicts that AI search traffic will surpass traditional search by 2028, meaning your product reputation is going to be surfaced before any of your brand marketing campaigns. So please… start investing into your product brand NOW.
What does that actually mean for product teams?
Stop designing only for efficiency and effectiveness. Start thinking: how does the product make the user feel about themselves while using it? That’s the real unlock.
Create signature product moments. Not features. Moments. The things users remember, show to others, and talk about.
Care about taste. Taste isn’t decoration. Taste is how a product earns trust. If it looks and feels like everything else, it gets forgotten like everything else.
Measure more than conversion. Pay attention to delight. Revisit frustration. Ask what emotion the experience leaves behind.
And this isn’t some fluffy design philosophy. It’s a core piece of any growth strategy. As other channels collapse, word of mouth and referrals are the only ones left standing. It’s the primary engine for breakout products. People don’t talk about products that are merely useful. They talk about products that feel different.
If you’re in product, brand is now part of your job. Whether you accept it or not. You’re already shaping what people say about you. You’re already defining how the product is remembered. You just may not be doing it intentionally.
Marketing can shout. Product has to deserve to be talked about.
That’s the shift.
Sincerely,
Elena, your newly established brand marketer.
Edited by Jonathan Yagel.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Intuit rolled out the Design for Delight program. With Scott Cook’s customer centric innovation at its core, we lived and breathed deep customer empathy, go broad to go narrow (fall in love with the problem not the solution) and iterate early and often with customers. I couldn’t agree more how important that is at this moment and yes, product leads that experience. Always insightful Elena.
Couldn't agree more! I see this first-hand while rebranding our product and marketing.
I feel there’s still this stereotype that product and marketing are separate worlds. In reality, the best outcomes happen when both teams build the story together.