Barbra Gago
Barbra Gago is the founder and CEO of Pando, where she’s democratizing career progression. Previously she worked as the Chief Marketing Officer and Global Head of Marketing at Miro, where she helped create an entirely new software category for the space, and also served as VP of Marketing at Greenhouse, where she led go-to-market strategy. Barbra discusses how she was able to rebrand Miro and launch a whole new category—and why her attempt to do that at Greenhouse failed.
Communication Skills
Internal alignment is as critical as external branding, especially in established companies where employees have deep emotional ties to the existing identity.
"A big part of rebranding also means that you have to bring the whole company along too and make sure they feel really good about the outcome. And that was probably one of my big takeaways, is just at..."
Treating a major rebrand like a product development cycle with agile sprints helps manage complexity and cross-functional involvement.
"With the rebrand at Miro, it was very much rebrand as a product approach. It was very much a product development process with sprint teams and agile, coming back, and you had owners for different part..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
Asking for a high volume of accomplishments reveals a candidate's balance between professional and personal values and their ability to think quantitatively.
"I like asking what someone's top 10 accomplishments are. They hate it because it's like, 'Oh, God. Ugh.' But it's really interesting to understand the level of quantitative versus qualitative in their..."
Company values should serve as the DNA that automatically guides brand manifestation across all customer touchpoints without constant training.
"I think really integrating the values can help with that and also, of course, make the brand itself human and authentic and something that people really feel emotional connection to. The best way to i..."
A structured workshop approach—brainstorming, grouping, and voting—is effective for surfacing and narrowing down core company values.
"What I have done in the past with values is we just did an exercise with my leadership team, for example, where we did a workshop format. We actually used Miro where everybody just brain dumped their..."
Marketing Skills
Category creation requires a blend of external validation from analysts and internal thought leadership that defines unique value and solves specific pain points.
"When you're building a category, you need to make sure that there is a category that's validated by analysts and directory sites and things like that. But also, you want to have a lot of traction in t..."
Effective positioning is derived directly from the language and problem-solving methods used by customers in real conversations.
"The main thing which we've talked a little bit about already is really understanding your customers and their pain points and how they talk about things. All of my best marketing and positioning liter..."
Content marketing in category creation serves as an educational tool to justify new budget allocations for buyers.
"And then tactically, it's a lot of content marketing and a lot of thought leadership. When you're building a category, you need to make sure that there is a category that's validated by analysts and d..."
Product Management Skills
Review sites and directory platforms are primary tools for understanding how the market currently categorizes products and features.
"When we talk about category, I think it's really what would be a good way to explore your space and your relevant categories would be to go to G2 Crowd or Software Advice or any of those type of revie..."
Involving core advocates in a rebranding process helps maintain loyalty while providing critical feedback on new visual directions.
"We did case studies throughout the process. We got feedback on logos. We got feedback on brand and designs, and there were plenty of people who were like, 'Oh, I like RealtimeBoard. It's straightforwa..."