Get Weird Early: Brand Marketing for Devtools

<p>A short one. Two objects and one argument.</p><p><br></p><p>The spoon: Granola mailed someone a very good spoon with a little note, and it got tweeted. Hank thinks that is what great swag looks like: send the accessory, not the namesake, and make it the thing someone photographs. Gonto calls it &quot;explanation swag&quot;, and then, as a Granola user, says he does not buy the love-and-care story unless it shows up in the product. Hank discovers mid-take that he has a Granola affiliate link. It is below. He will split it with Gonto.The argument: what is brand marketing at a startup, and should you hire a brand marketer? Hank gets asked this more than anything else this year (the year &quot;taste&quot; was everywhere). Both of us land in the same place: not until you are hundreds of people. Early on, brand is what every customer-facing person does, in the ads, the swag, the billboards. The real job is getting the weird stuff in early, before a serious designer can delete it. The Octocat and Reddit&#39;s Snoo would never survive a brand review today. Browserbase being red is the same move.The otter: Cognition&#39;s Devin-the-otter video for Devin Voice, which is silly on purpose, and why that is the right call. Gonto&#39;s bigger take: tutorial video is dying, because developers now say &quot;I don&#39;t watch YouTube to learn, Claude watches it for me.&quot; So developer video has to entertain, and the education that is left is about how to work with your agent, not your codebase. Hank&#39;s version: Twilio&#39;s old &quot;Ask your developer&quot; billboards are now &quot;ask your agent.&quot;Plus the plushies, MotherDuck&#39;s different rubber duck at every conference, and Laracon&#39;s patches.We are in San Francisco September 30 to October 2. Come to at least one of these:Code to Market meetup, Sep 30: https://ctm.fm/meetup-2026Supabase Select and Unprompted, same week. Say hi.Links:Granola: https://go.granola.ai/ctmThe Devin Voice video from Cognition: https://x.com/cognition/status/2098142686486356185Claude Code for Marketers workshop: https://codetomarket.aiAll episodes + newsletter signup: https://codetomarket.fm</p>