For me, the desire to create things is an itch that never really goes away. 

Ignoring it really isn’t an option; you have to scratch it.

That’s part of the reason why I’m excited today to launch Branded Background with my friend Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal on Product Hunt. I’ve known Mubs for years now and I’m stoked for our first build together. 🚀

COVID-19 Challenges

Like everyone else right now, Mubs and I are living with the realities of COVID-19; social distancing, tons of people working from home, and zillions of Zoom calls. 📽️

It was the last one that got us thinking: amidst all the uncertainty, are people really taking advantage of the current WFH environment? Are they able to and/or how could it be better?

I kept thinking about two words: marketing and branding.

You don’t need to be a marketing expert to put a great campaign together or have a great, engaging brand. You just need to have a clear consistent message and image, and an easy way to project it to your audience.

Great Marketing and Branding

Great marketing starts with brand uniformity. 📈

So we picked one pretty intriguing gap to fill: a better way to brand Zoom calls better.

One thing that stuck out immediately during our conversations was the sheer number of new people using Zoom, possibly for the first time ever, or for the first time in a professional way. I’ve seen this number increase massively for all sorts of companies amongst my circles on LinkedIn. 

But the thing that really struck me? Just how many of these professional calls I got on with people with unbranded backgrounds. Not everyone works at a huge company with a big budget for marketing, so how could we build something for the people who run small businesses or are just starting to get side-projects off the ground?

The answer: make it quick and easy for them to put their logo on their background for a Zoom call.

I wanted a tool that was dead-simple; a couple of clicks max. 🙌

Launching Branded Background

Thus Branded Background was born:

https://brandedbackground.com/ 

An easy tool that allows you to pick a stock image, put your company logo on it, move and resize as you like, and export to easily upload to Zoom. 

The whole project took just a couple of weeks for us to put together, with a couple extra days for early feedback from friends. Today we’re excited to launch it openly! 🔥

We’re on Product Hunt today and looking forward to all your feedback as we continue to improve our MVP:

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/branded-background

Let us know how we can make Branded Background even more valuable for your branding and marketing.

Feel free to tweet your newly created backgrounds to us at @Branded_BG and we’ll retweet them during launch!

Thanks all, happy branding!

😎 Continue to #LookForTheOrangeSunglasses!