Louis Grenier

ISN'T THIS FIRST SLIDE ENTICING ENOUGH?? Go oooonnnnn. Swipe.

We audited 100 B2B SaaS and AI companies against 8 distinctive brand assets. It wasn't pretty.

🐔 10 B2B BRANDS THAT AREN'T BEIGE AS F*CK 🐔 I scored 100 B2B companies on how distinctive their brand actually is. 8 assets each (logo, colour, a mascot or face, a sound, a tagline, and so on), 0 to 3, by hand. Which gives us a top possible score of 24. To be "ownable" you need 19+. Exactly ONE company out of a hundred got there: Wiz 🐔 QUICK CAVEAT 🐔 I want to be clear about what the leaderboard is... and isn’t. It is not an award ceremony… Wiz beating Mutiny by a point doesn’t make Wiz a “better brand.” Score it with a slightly different system, and the order may shift. In short, this is for your inspiration. So, don’t read too much into it. 🐔 THE PODIUM 🐔 Here's who made the podium. #1 - Wiz (19/24). The only truly ownable one. A logo you'd know, a whole cast of little cartoon characters, a recurring cloud-cluster thing, "Build and Run" stitched through everything, and a colour system holding everything together. And it's everywhere. Site, product, ads, sales deck. Same world every time. Me likey. #2 - Mutiny (18/24). They have a raccoon. A raccoon. To lead a mutiny. Add "Be the one buyers remember" and a soft pastel palette and suddenly you cannot mistake them for anyone else. Absolute chef's kiss. #3 - Linear (16/24). The dark-mode, wireframe-sphere, "everything looks like the future" crowd. And a founder, Karri Saarinen, who's constantly out there with his face on, which quietly scores them on the one asset almost nobody else even attempts: a recognisable human. 🐔 MY ANALYSIS 🐔 None of these three won on one perfect thing. Not one killer logo. Not one clever line. They won on breadth... Meaning that they use a consistent set of assets EVERYWHERE. Landing pages, LinkedIn Ads, social media profiles... In other words, the people "at the top" are not necessarily smarter or more talented than you. They just commit with sheer intensity. No half-measures. No dilution. ALL-IN. ALL-THE-F*CK-IN. Full study in the comments.

We audited 100 B2B SaaS and AI companies on 8 distinctive brand assets. One of them was... 🎶sound🎶. You know, the thing you can recognise with your eyes shut. That one. Like a jingle. Not one company had it. ZEROOOOOOO. The average score across all 100: 0.08 out of 3. I spent FIVE hours I'll never get back. Explainer videos, product ads, conference recordings, keynote intros. And it was almost funny how identical they all sounded. If beige was a sound, that's what it would sound like. The same atmospheric, "we're-about-to-change-the-world" trailer music. Like they'd all licensed it from the same sad royalty-free folder. Sound is one of the fastest, stickiest ways to fit a brand in someone's memory, and B2B hasn't touched it with a 780-foot pole. 🐔 THE OBJECTION 🐔 And I already know the objection, because I've heard it a hundred times: "Louis, we sell to [insert an audience like, software developers]. They watch everything on mute. What is a security company supposed to sound like?" Here's exactly where a consistent sonic device could be added: - Your own podcast intro. - The ads you run inside other people's podcasts. - The walk-on music at your conference. - The song you play inside your next booth. - The videos your C-suite posts on LinkedIn. - The ads you run on social. - The webinar open. Shall I continue? Anyway, this is the one that gets me most excited out of the whole study. Every other asset, someone's at least trying. When are we going to see a B2B brand really develop a sonic device that stands the f*ck out and find clever ways to use it everywhere they can?? 🐔 THE FULL RESEARCH 🐔 You can find the full study in my "Featured" section, in the comments, and on stfo(.)io

IT'S HEEEEEERE. Our first ever ORIGINAL research, and I feel like a proper grown-up now.  🐔 THE STORY 🐔 I spent the better part of May auditing 100 B2B SaaS and AI brands, such as Linear, Notion, Gong, Ramp, or Vanta. (Rest assured, I didn't just do it for fun.) I had a point to prove, because, for more than a decade, I've argued that B2B tech brands neglect distinctiveness. I've watched companies spend months sharpening their positioning, nailing their ICP, finding a true differentiation that would give the right people a compelling reason to pick them, and then ship a website, a campaign, an identity that's just… beeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiige as f*ck. But it was a gut feeling. I had 0 data to prove it. Until now... We audited 100 B2B SaaS and AI companies against 8 distinctive-brand assets. Scored every single one 0 to 3 by hand. 🐔 THE KEY FINDING 🐔 Out of 100 companies, exactly ONE is truly ownable. One. Une. Une seule. 80% blend the f*ck in. I've been thinking of running a study like this for years and never had the firepower (aka lazy). But then I trained Claude Code to pull the raw material, a second set scored the first pass, I reviewed every score myself, and what should've been a six-month slog took two weeks. A two-person shop just shipped real research. That still blows my freaking mind. 🐔 THE FULL RESEARCH 🐔 You can find the full study in my "Featured" section, in the comments, and on stfo(.)io Feel free to share far and wide 🧡