Physical products are easily copied. While patents help, brand is the most durable competitive moat. A strong brand lowers acquisition costs, increases lifetime value, and commands premium pricing—advantages that copycats cannot replicate, even if they perfectly clone the product.

The ultimate PLG companies are consumer brands like shampoo, which sell on brand affinity, not commoditized features. As software becomes more commoditized, B2B companies must similarly build a strong brand theme that inspires users to associate with them, creating a more durable moat than features alone.

While product differentiation is beneficial, it's not always possible. A brand's most critical job is to be distinctive and instantly recognizable. This mental availability, achieved through consistent creative, logo, and tone, is more crucial for cutting through market noise than having a marginally different feature set.

Pricing power allows a brand to raise prices without losing customers, effectively fighting the economic principle that demand falls as price rises. This is achieved by creating a brand perception so strong that consumers believe there is no viable substitute.

When competing with incumbents, a social tool's brand is a critical differentiator that cannot be easily cloned. An invitation from Partiful signals a specific vibe and energy for an event, which is part of the product experience. A technically identical feature from a company like Apple fails to replicate this brand-driven expectation.

Brand is becoming a key moat in AI infrastructure, a sector where it was previously irrelevant. In rapidly growing and confusing markets, education can't keep pace with adoption. As a result, customers default to the brands they recognize, creating powerful monopolies for early leaders. This mirrors the early internet era when Netscape dominated through brand recognition.

To get buy-in from financial stakeholders, translate the 'soft' concept of brand love into hard metrics. Loved brands can command higher prices, maximize customer lifetime value, and reduce customer acquisition costs through organic advocacy, proving brand is a tangible asset.

In a crowded market, brand is defined by the product experience, not marketing campaigns. Every interaction must evoke the intended brand feeling (e.g., "lovable"). This transforms brand into a core product responsibility and creates a powerful, defensible moat that activates word-of-mouth and differentiates you from competitors.

Sustainable scale isn't just about a better product; it's about defensibility. The three key moats are brand (a trusted reputation that makes you the default choice), network (leveraged relationships for partnerships and talent), and data (an information advantage that competitors can't easily replicate).