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Code to Market · Wednesday · 12 min

Get Weird Early: Brand Marketing for Devtools

A short one. Two objects and one argument. 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 "explanation swag", 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 "taste" 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's Snoo would never survive a brand review today. Browserbase being red is the same move.The otter: Cognition's Devin-the-otter video for Devin Voice, which is silly on purpose, and why that is the right call. Gonto's bigger take: tutorial video is dying, because developers now say "I don't watch YouTube to learn, Claude watches it for me." So developer video has to entertain, and the education that is left is about how to work with your agent, not your codebase. Hank's version: Twilio's old "Ask your developer" billboards are now "ask your agent."Plus the plushies, MotherDuck's different rubber duck at every conference, and Laracon'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

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A short one. Two objects and one argument.


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 "explanation swag", 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 "taste" 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's Snoo would never survive a brand review today. Browserbase being red is the same move.The otter: Cognition's Devin-the-otter video for Devin Voice, which is silly on purpose, and why that is the right call. Gonto's bigger take: tutorial video is dying, because developers now say "I don't watch YouTube to learn, Claude watches it for me." So developer video has to entertain, and the education that is left is about how to work with your agent, not your codebase. Hank's version: Twilio's old "Ask your developer" billboards are now "ask your agent."Plus the plushies, MotherDuck's different rubber duck at every conference, and Laracon'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

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