How Brand Building Leads to Business Success
Casper is a sleep company – designing products and experiences that help the world sleep better. I lead the company’s end-to-end development and design for customer experience. One of the main drivers for our huge success has been a keen focus on brand building which reaches past marketing. Branding is who you are.
About five years ago, our founders noticed that everyone was obsessed with nutrition and exercise, but they neglected sleep. Many complained about not getting enough sleep. At the time, the sleep industry was very tired (!) and focused only on mattress sales. The environment was antagonistic and aggressive, and there was a great need for renewal.
Make It Fresh Again
Our response to this need was to focus on reinventing the mattress first. We also redesigned the experience of shopping through the bedroom setup. Now, people could shop online and get their mattress delivered the next day. The entire retail store experience was bypassed.
From there, our brand building extended into other areas and products, such as bed frames, bedding, sheets, pillows and nightlights that gradually dim and lull you to sleep. We began to consider the entire sleep ecosystem to elevate the bedtime routine. The company quickly grew from digital-only to having an entire fleet of retail outlets and global partnerships worldwide.
During all of this, the brand was at the center.
What Makes a Brand
One of the most notable things about Casper’s success has been the brand. We’ve worked very hard and passionately to nurture this. It’s important to establish brand building at every customer touchpoint. This includes products, packaging, retail stores and our website. We even drove a nap-mobile all over the country offering free naps for all.
Along the way, the company created a following that raves about the brand. People absolutely love our mattresses and are even willing to tweet about it.
More Than Marketing
Don’t think about your brand as just marketing. Instead, it’s the values that you communicate through your offer. For Casper, our offer is product + experience. The product is like sleeping on a cloud. The experience disrupts the way we shop for sleep. These are the two pillars of our success.
Our values are:
- Innovative
- Wondrous
- Joyful
- Authentically human
- Democratic
- Zing
Brand building makes these values recognizable and palpable in everything Caspar does. It’s part of our personality. Great brands are like people you want to be around since they have values that attract you. Most tech brands these days are dilute. They are pleasing, palatable, functional but not memorable.