Turning a developer product into a memorable brand
Summary
Aleo gave developers a new way to build applications that keep user data private. The platform was still emerging, and people needed more than product documentation to understand why it mattered and feel motivated to build early. I built a brand around privacy, ran social and event campaigns, and introduced Leo, a mascot who made product education feel more approachable. During that period, Aleo's audience grew from 40K to 253K followers and developer activity grew 163%.
- Developer activity grew 163% in 2023, according to Electric Capital
- The audience grew from 40K to 253K followers while the brand gave privacy-minded developers more reasons to return and share the work
- I built a privacy-led brand system spanning social, use-case content, Leo, and events that made the platform easier to remember
Make an emerging platform worth joining early
Aleo was asking developers to learn a new platform and build private applications on a network that was still emerging. Release notes, docs, benchmarks, and tutorials showed how the product worked. We also had to answer a different question: why should an early developer care enough to return and feel connected to this community?
As Head of Social, I focused on how Aleo showed up in public. I translated the brand's point of view into social content, events, use-case stories, and recurring moments that made Aleo easier to recognize and gave builders something to take part in before shipping their first application.
That work supported product education. Social posts, events, Leo, and use-case stories helped people understand the platform while giving developers more reasons to remember and share Aleo.
Give privacy a sharper point of view
Privacy was Aleo's defining belief. On most public blockchains, transaction and application data are exposed by default. We used that reality to show how the default limited the kinds of applications developers could build, especially in identity, finance, gaming, and other areas where people expect information to remain private.
That gave the brand something to push against. Public-by-default systems were the status quo, and Aleo stood for an internet where privacy could be built into the application from the beginning.
Our privacy video expressed that belief in plain language. It gave developers a reason to care about Aleo's existence before they encountered every feature of the platform.
Give early builders a story to enter
Early developers are joining while a platform is still being built. We used Aleo's history to show that they were stepping into a longer effort shaped by years of research, technical milestones, and community growth.
The timeline film brought that history into one place. It gave existing community members a way to recognize their role in Aleo's progress and gave new developers enough context to understand why the next launch mattered.
Over time, people learned the references and recognized the milestones. That made the community feel more connected to the people and work that had brought Aleo to that point.
Give technical education a familiar face
The building blocks developers use to create applications can be difficult to explain repeatedly without making every post feel like documentation. We introduced Leo, Aleo's mascot, as a guide who could walk builders through the platform and give educational content a familiar face.
Leo made technical explanations warmer and easier to recognize, while giving the community a character it could adopt. The same character could appear in tutorials, announcements, and social posts, so each piece of content felt connected to the larger Aleo world.
In the developer-primitives series, Leo gave the audience a simple way into each explanation. People could learn something useful while building a stronger association with Aleo over time.
Show the world developers can build
Developers need to be able to picture the products they could make before an emerging platform starts to feel relevant. We created a use-case series around the applications privacy could unlock, showing how the product could matter beyond its underlying infrastructure.
A developer interested in identity, finance, gaming, or consumer applications could see how privacy changed the product experience in their own field. That gave different kinds of builders an easier way into the platform.
The series taught the product through examples people could imagine building. It gave developers a clearer sense of what Aleo could make possible and why they might want to be part of it.
Let the online audience see the community
People in the room could experience the Aleo community directly, while people watching online were forming their own view of whether it was a group they wanted to join. Event marketing had to work for both audiences.
We captured the human side of the developer ecosystem: builders meeting each other, sharing ideas, and forming relationships around the product. Those moments made the network feel less abstract and showed online audiences that real people were building together.
Photos, video, and social storytelling carried the event beyond the room. The content gave people who were not there a window into the community and a clearer sense of what participating in Aleo could feel like.
What made the brand work
The privacy point of view, company history, Leo, use-case stories, and events each gave the audience a reason to return. Some content made Aleo's belief clearer, some helped developers understand the product, and some made the community feel more human and visible.
During this work, Aleo's audience grew from 40K to 253K followers and the content generated millions of impressions. Developer activity also increased by 163%, according to Electric Capital's 2023 reporting. Those outcomes reflected the work of the broader Aleo team, while the brand made the product, community, and developer education easier to remember and share.
At Aleo, I wanted the brand to make product education easier to remember and help developers see what the company stood for. People could then understand what they could build and why joining early might be worthwhile.