BRAND VS PRODUCT STRATEGY ISN’T A DEBATE. IT’S A PARTNERSHIP.
By Allison Henry Aver, Founder and Creative Director of Letter A and Katie Irving, Founder of Moonshot
This article first ran in THE BOARD BRIEFING, our weekly LinkedIn newsletter for founders, leaders, and operators building in the new economy.
In a recent LinkedIn live episode BOARD experts Allison Henry Aver, Founder and Creative Director of Letter A and Katie Irving, Founder of Moonshot, a fashion concept studio specializing in product innovation and strategy got together to discuss Brand vs Product strategy. As partners that collaborate across clients in apparel, beauty, and consumer goods, they shared one theme that comes up again and again:
Brand strategy and product strategy can’t live in separate rooms anymore. The brands winning today are the ones that build them together.
Katie put it perfectly when she described her work:
“I help brands figure out what to make, why it matters, and how it fits into people’s lives.”
My work focuses on the identity, voice, stories, and visual world that bring that product to life. When these two pieces aren’t in sync, brands drift—fast.
Today, we’re sharing a real example of why this alignment matters more than ever.
WHEN BRAND AND PRODUCT BREAK APART
Katie and I recently partnered on a heritage, family-run jewelry brand looking to scale from wholesale to global DTC. They came to me asking for a rebrand. They wanted to “look like” another successful jewelry brand they admired.
But it quickly became clear that the problem wasn’t visual identity.It was clarity.
Their product was high-quality, beautiful, ethically made—yet interchangeable with countless others in an oversaturated category. They couldn’t articulate what made them different. They had many lanes they could play in, yet no real clarity about which lane they should own.
I knew this wasn’t a design problem. It was a product strategy problem.
So I brought in Katie.
WHERE PRODUCT STRATEGY CHANGES THE STORY
Within one conversation, Katie surfaced what had been missing: a clear, differentiated product point of view rooted in what the founder had actually built his career on.
This wasn’t about trends or industry benchmarks. It was about owning the real product story that already existed—but hadn’t been articulated.
Once that foundation was set:
The founder finally understood his lane in the market
He stopped chasing competitors and reacting to trends
He gained confidence in creative, assortment, and messaging decisions
From there, my team could finally build an identity system tethered to something real:
distinctive symbolism, language, visual cues, and storytelling that all tied back to a product POV with substance.
That alignment changed everything.
The brand now shows up with clarity, cohesion, and purpose—not generic jewelry messaging.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BRAND IS THE WEAK LINK
From the product side, Katie sees the consequences immediately:
Product loses direction
Teams chase competitor moves instead of customer needs
Trend-chasing replaces a long-term vision
Stores and sites feel like collections of random “key items”
Photography and signage stop telling a cohesive story
In short?
Customers feel it. And they check out.
Product needs the brand to set guardrails, emotion, and context. Brand needs the product to root the vision in reality.
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW MORE THAN EVER
The last five years have pushed brands to the edge:
Performance marketing overshadowed storytelling
Rapid trend cycles created chaotic product decisions
Shifts in consumer behavior left brands scrambling to stay relevant
Many brands drifted away from their original identity
We’re in a moment of identity crisis across categories. But this is also a moment of enormous opportunity.In a crowded, fatigued market, the brands that will break through are the ones with:
Clarity
Consistency
A differentiated product story
Brand storytelling that actually means something
This is why companies like Puma—and earlier, Gap—are formally merging brand and product functions under unified leadership. The market is recognizing what many of us in the industry have felt for years:
Brand and product are not separate disciplines. They’re one continuous system.
SO WHICH COMES FIRST: BRAND OR PRODUCT?
The truth?
Neither. They must be built together.
When product and brand strategy work in tandem from day one, the result is a brand with:
Cohesion
Confidence
A clear point of view
Stronger creative and stronger product decisions
A foundation that scales
This partnership is where the real magic—and real growth—happens.
Katie and I now say the quiet part out loud: We don’t want to do this work without each other.
If this topic resonates—or if you're navigating misalignment between your brand story and your product direction—reach out to either of us. It's one of our favorite subjects and core to the work we do with founders and teams across the industry.
Brand and product are no longer separate.Your customers don’t experience them that way.
Your teams shouldn’t build them that way.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going…
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