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Branding Strategy for Growth-Stage Leaders

2 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Take the growth-focused approach to Brand Leadership—with 20+ templates for getting buy-in, building campaigns, & proving your brand's value

This course is popular

3 people enrolled last week.

Course overview

Transform your brand org into one that leads, not follows

Brand operators, especially in growth-stage companies, are expected to ship new work and creative at the same time as developing the brand's core strategy and thinking on a long-term, strategic level. That's an extremely difficult balance—especially when alignment from the top and across the org is not a given.


The demands of your job mean coming up with winning creative, shipping brand campaigns, reporting on your results, and sourcing insights—all the while building a differentiated, consistent brand that can scale with the needs of the business... needs that are often changing all the time.


Building and growing respected tech brands—especially through the most challenging, up-and-down growth phases—is what I do best. I was Brex's #1 marketing hire and led Brex's successful rebrand. Most recently, I built out the global brand & campaigns team at Notion. I've coached hundreds of operators over my career, helping brands grow from $1B → $10B+ valuations and scaling from <50 employees to >1,000.


This cohort-based course is highly tactical, based on practical, real-life templates that you can use now to audit and 1) improve your brand org's communication, 2) revamp your internal processes, and 3) practically apply the hard-won methods of fast-growing, beloved tech brands—all of which will revitalize your leadership skills, over just a few weeks.


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Course material includes:


Self-paced course content, live 1:1 office hours, project critique and feedback from Kira, an always-on Q&A channel, and 20+ Notion templates & resources—for you to use and take with you long after the cohort is complete.

For Early & Growth-Stage Brand Leaders

01

Mid- to senior-level brand marketing ICs ready to find your path to leadership and up-level your org's Brand function

02

Heads of marketing at early & growth-stage startups building out or optimizing your brand strategy alongside founders & C-suite

03

Experienced marketing leaders seeking to refresh and deepen your tactical approach to modern brand strategy and campaigns

04

Senior leaders who are experts in other areas of marketing, like PMM or Growth, and want to get stronger in Brand

05

⚠️ This is not a Branding 101 course—we're going beyond the fundamentals and deep into daily operating rhythms (read on for 101 resources)

What you’ll get out of this course

20+ real-life templates for scaling a world class brand (that you can use right away) 

You'll get free access to my paid and unreleased Notion templates, created from the frameworks I've developed over 10+ years of operating brands at growing tech companies like Gusto, Brex, and Notion—plus my in-depth voiceover and context on how to get the most from them.

Create the buy-in & alignment you need to build a loved brand that drives growth

Apply actionable brand measurement strategies at all stages of growth, yielding results you can actually use. Proactively navigate conversations with senior leadership so they invest in brand, keeping the brand front and center throughout organizational shifts & planning cycles.

Build award-winning, recognizable brand campaigns that also boost morale—not drag it down

Analyze and level up your team's abilities in developing and executing global, brand-led growth campaigns that involve all key sub-functions of marketing: PMM, content & community, and growth marketing—with or without agency support.

Confidence in surviving—and piloting—critical moments like rebrands

Practice tactical approaches to leading through major moments of change, especially rebrands—that you can also apply in strategic pivots, brand refreshes, reorgs, or roadmap/audience changes. Change management is one of the critical skills we'll practice.

Course syllabus

2 live sessions • 8 modules • 35 lessons • 14 projects
Expand all modules

  • Week 1

    Jan 8—Jan 14

    Events

    • Jan

      10

      Optional: Office Hours (1/2)

      Wed, Jan 10, 8:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC

    Modules

    • Brand Opportunities

      How to Find the Gaps: Are you working on the right thing? Figure out your brand's biggest opportunities by diving into a case study from Brex on driving alignment through long-term brand work.

      Objectives:

      • Build confidence that you're focusing on the right areas

      • Better understand your brand's stakeholders

      • Identify the key blockers to your team's progress

      • Ensure you have a solid foundation to make decisions from

    • Brand Alignment

      How to Close the Gaps: You've heard that consistency builds a brand. What enables consistency? Alignment—everyone needs to be on the same page about what you're building. We'll continue the Brex case study that led to its successful rebrand.

      Objectives:

      • Succinctly position your brand in context of the competitive landscape, complementary landscape, and broader industry

      • Concisely visualize and organize your company's brand strategy in a way that drives alignment

  • Week 2

    Jan 15—Jan 21

    Events

    • Jan

      17

      Optional: Office Hours (2/2)

      Wed, Jan 17, 8:30 PM - 10:30 PM UTC

    Modules

    • Brand Resourcing

      How to Get Buy-In: The best ideas in the world don't matter without buy-in—or $ investment—from your leadership, your peers, or your team. That buy-in is much easier if building on the alignment you sought to build in previous lessons!

      Objectives:

      • Craft a more persuasive brand budget request

      • Strategize your org chart or future headcount requests

      • Benchmark how your brand's marketing & creative budgeting spreadsheet is organized

    • Brand Campaigns

      How to Build Winning Brand Campaigns: Improve how you manage brand-led campaigns, leveraging the entire GTM function, with Notion as a case study.

      Objectives:

      • Create your ultimate campaign playbook—the key to cross-functional role clarity and alignment

      • Upgrade your campaign brief—from stale doc to robust project-management database

      • Organize your thinking into strategy frameworks

      • Practice your skills in change management, through proactive communication and pre-mortem brainstorms

    • Brand Insights

      How to Get Actionable Brand Insights:

      There are a thousand ways to measure a brand's impact, not all of them useful or practical. This module emphasizes strategies to glean actionable insights about your brand that help quantify its impact and inform future investments.

      Objectives:

      • Assess what measurement strategies are practical for your company stage

      • Learn the modern approach to desk research—the best free tools

      • Build a long-term brand health survey based on best practices from Qualtrics & Merkle

  • Bonus

    Modules

    • 🔓 Bonus: Leading a Rebrand

    • 🔓 Bonus: Makeover Your Marketing Calendar

    • 🔓 Bonus: Access My Tech Vendor Roster

What people are saying

        Kira’s openness in sharing her thought process with vulnerability at work set her apart from other live event presenters. She didn’t just give a summary of what happened, but included what worked and what didn’t, which made her presentation the most relatable and compelling.
Leigh R.

Leigh R.

Brand Marketing Lead
        As Kira's former direct report, I can say that her brand strategy expertise and commitment to our team's growth were invaluable. Kira's mentorship was pivotal in shaping my career and fostering a culture of excellence.
Ryan P.

Ryan P.

Sr. Brand Manager
        Kira is a great presenter. She's honest and authentic, she talks in natural language that's easy to understand, and it was easy and interesting to follow her case examples.
Kseniya S.

Kseniya S.

Brand Marketing Manager

Meet your instructor

Kira Klaas

Kira Klaas

Former Head of Brand at Notion, Director of Brand at Brex, Brand Strategist at Gusto & Redbubble

Kira has over a decade of experience operating respected B2B & B2C tech brands and advising various early-stage startups. Her campaigns have been featured on AdWeek, Digiday, Business Insider, The Drum, and even ABC7 news.


She also partnered with Reforge to develop the 6-week Brand Marketing deep-dive course for early- to mid-career brand marketers, and serves as a mentor with First Round's Fast Track program.


Why this course:


"Leading brand orgs, teams, and project isn’t easy—most playbooks are out of date, don’t go deep enough, or don’t provide specific lived examples. I've been through it! Once I became a manager, I focused on taking what I’d learned over the years and turning it into scalable frameworks and playbooks that would help my team. Just like building a brand, nothing is ever "done"—it's an ever-changing landscape that we get to define together."

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Join an upcoming cohort

Branding Strategy for Growth-Stage Leaders

Cohort 2

$750 USD

Dates

Jan 8—21, 2024

Payment Deadline

Jan 9, 2024

|

Bulk purchases

Course schedule

4-6 hours per week

  • Self-paced lessons

    2-3 hours per week

    Each week features 2-3 lesson modules plus bonus content. Each module includes a mix of written lessons, recorded video content, and templates that you can copy and use right away.

  • Practical projects

    1-2 hours per week

    Each module pairs with a handful of practical, bite-sized projects, worksheets, or reflections to help bring the course content to life and provide opportunities for discussion and feedback from Kira.

  • Office hours

    2 hours per week

    Each week, join Kira for live, 1:1 office hours to ask questions about the course or get real-time feedback or advice. Kira will also respond to questions and provide feedback throughout the cohort async.


    🕛 Wednesdays at 12pm PT / 3pm ET

Free resource

Download my Strategy Frameworks Notion Template for free ($10 off)

I love this library—I wish I'd had something like this when I was earlier in my career as a brand marketer! I still reference these frameworks on a regular basis. When you need to communicate an idea, a strategy, or a goal, use one of these tried-and-true strategy and communications frameworks, easy to pop into any product launch doc, campaign brief, or other project where you need to get a point across. This template contains 9 pre-built strategy frameworks and examples for how to use them. I use these in conjunction with my Brand Campaign Framework.

Get this Notion Template

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Hands-on, personalized learning

Take advantage of personal, one-on-one office hours with the course instructor to dive deep into specific challenges you're facing

Live feedback on projects

Get real-time feedback on any project you submit—projects are designed to be applied to your real work, right now

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded leaders who want to learn and grow alongside you

Course FAQs

What happens if I can’t make a live session?
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A pattern of wavy dots
Join an upcoming cohort

Branding Strategy for Growth-Stage Leaders

Cohort 2

$750 USD

Dates

Jan 8—21, 2024

Payment Deadline

Jan 9, 2024

|

Bulk purchases

$750 USD

2 Weeks

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