Building our brand 🏗

We named Nory after Tenzig Norgay –  the sherpa who guided Edmund Hillary to the summit of Mount Everest. Just as Norgay led Hillary, we envisioned Nory guiding our users to their peak. The metaphor works pretty well cause the restaurant biz can be as harsh as a Himalayan winter…

How did we get to Nory?

This time last year we ran a series of workshops in the search of our visual identity, name and tone of voice. The very first workshop I led when I joined Nory focused on finding our tone of voice. Inspired by Deliveroo‘s UX writers, we explored how we want Nory to sound to the outer world.

When choosing our voice and tone we kept our user base in mind. Restaurant workers are on their feet all day, under tonnes of pressure and always short on time. Our tone of voice had to be measured, no bull sh** and solution orientated! 

Brand as a differentiator

At the same time, we compiled a bunch of brands we loved and voted on what should inspire us during the design process (paying particular attention to content, product, UX and visual design).

These simple exercises laid the foundation of our brand that we’ve been building on top of ever since.

B2B is not known for the sexiest brands. I won’t point any fingers but most of the software in the back of a restaurant looks like it belongs in 1999…

Thankfully things are changing for the better. The likes of Intercom and Stripe are revolutionising how products are built by putting huge emphasis on design. We love to see it! Not only do they build kick-ass products but you should take a moment to appreciate their brands 🔥

What exactly is a brand? (TL;DR – it’s the gut feeling your product evokes)

What do you think of when you hear the word “brand”? Do you think of the logo? The website? The way the brand communicates via social channels?

The above examples are not wrong. They’re all part of the wider “brand”. Yet, what a brand really is, it’s the person’s gut feeling about your product, service or company. Your tone of voice or visual identity are ways in which you express your brand to the outer world. You as a designer can design a brand, yet, what your brand is, isn’t what you think it is. Your brand is what others say it is. You get me? 

Imagine using the most intuitive app in the world, with the slickest UI on the market. Then imagine you encounter a problem. You seek support and you reach a bot instead. The poor bot tries its hardest but you’re going in circles and your problem is nowhere near solved. How would you feel..? Annoyed? Frustrated? P***ed off?! I know I’d lose my mind..

Now think about how this would impact that “gut feeling” towards the brand. You now get flashbacks of that awful experience you had every time you use the product. The slick UI probably doesn’t matter as much anymore..

So your brand is only as good as others’ perception of it and this perception will be unique to everyone that interacts with your company. In today’s world we all have tonnes of interactions with companies via various channels. Your brand isn’t what you purposely market to the world. Your brand is the set of experiences your customers experience when interacting with you.

Brand building is a team sport

This means that your brand is highly influenced by user experience design. Yet, this doesn’t mean that it’s the role of the designers to work on the brand in isolation. Every single person in your company has the power to create, maintain and manifest your brand! You may have a beautiful landing page and a cool logo but a poor experience with your sales team could create a negative association with your brand. The unique experience you provide your customers with are the building blocks of your brand!

As I mentioned at the start, it’s been almost a year since our first sprint. Back then we laid the foundations of the Nory brand and today we continue on building on top of it 🏗.

Your brand, like product market-fit is not a fixed goal but a moving target. This is why we will continue to evolve and work hard on making Nory a kick-ass brand ⚡️

Check out our freshly updated website 👉  nory.ai