What comes to mind when you hear the word 'brand'? A logo, perhaps? Packaging? Advertising? Needessentials, my favourite wetsuit company, is challenging these expectations by building a brand, a little differently.
Needessentials is a wetsuit & surf accessory company founded by Ryan Scanlon. They produce a huge range of top-end wetsuits and accessories, like fins, board bags and even apparel. What makes this brand different to its main competitors, like O'Neill, Reef, and Hurley, is that they have absolutely zero outwardly visible branding, and if you peek inside, you might catch a small label tucked away, out of sight.
Here's why I love this approach, and why Needessentials is successfully growing its business in a space that's dominated by huge marketing budgets & celebrity endorsements.
#1: Money Is Spent On Product Instead Of Marketing
Remember that iconic Dollar Shave Club launch video? 'Do you like spending $20 a month on brand name razors? 19 go to Roger Federer'.
By forgoing all non-essentials like branding, packaging, retail markups, middlemen and expensive marketing campaigns, Needessentials can produce a world-class wetsuit at a fraction of the cost of other premium brands. And it's true! My hooded wetsuit cost about 30% less than a name-brand alternative, and so far, it's done a great job at keeping me alive in frozen British winter swell. When function really matters more than form, I want every penny I spend to go into product quality.
#2: You Don't Have To Be A Walking Billboard
I've always had mixed feelings about this. I have no issue wearing branded products from companies that I love, like Patagonia. In fact, I prefer to have that logo on my coat. But with other brands, I wish I wasn't a walking billboard, especially if there's no artistic reason to have 'NIKE' across my back (sorry Nike, don't mean to pick on you).
What I love about Needessentials, is that they build loyalty by giving surfers an opportunity to stay brand anonymous. It's just a great, plain-black wetsuit, and a lot of people enjoy that - I certainly do.
#3: They Create Content That Aligns With Their Values
If you want to shift some wetsuits, you have to tell the world you exist - logo or not. Needessentials figured out a way to create content that drives traffic and builds a level of brand affinity, without contradicting the very thing they stand for.
On their Youtube channel, you'll find a series of surf movies created by Ishka Folkwell and Torren Martyn, a filmmaker-surfer duo based in Australia. These films revolve around travelling on a budget, bringing only the essentials and leaving everything else behind. In their latest trip, they convert a smashed up transit van with charity-shop furniture, and drive it from Scotland down to Morocco. These movies are easily some of the best surf films, ever, and they serve to ignite a sense of adventure and essentialism in the surfers that watch them.
Needessentials is doing everything right. Despite being 'brandless', they're absolutely building one of the strongest brands in surfing, with unbelievably high levels of loyalty and affinity. It just goes to show that, with extremely good products, and an intelligent marketing strategy that aligns closely with the company's values, it's possible to build a brand - even without a logo.