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Category: Notes

The Wiggles: We All Start Somewhere…

We have preschoolers in our house, so The Wiggles are huge around here. I probably know more song lyrics than I should…but I digress.

Wiggles and branding…what’s the connection? We all see how polished their marketing is today, but this article isn’t about that. It’s about where they started.

We see a lot of start-up businesses get disheartened that their first go isn’t an overnight success. We generally look at the success stories, at what is currently working well – but not at the journey that got a business to that spot. The Wiggles is a good example to look at. Their “brand” we all recognise came later – they simply started by doing mini-concerts, playing kids songs in kindergartens.

Turn back to 1991. The Wiggles released their first album, and it looked like this:

Can you see the branded shirts? Can you see the colour coding? Nope. Look at those PATTERNS!!! (And the extra Wiggle, but you can Google the backstory of that). If you find old Wiggles videos on YouTube, you will see a variety of styles of tops – including other 90s cringe-worthy patterns, and Anthony wearing a green t-shirt.

So they didn’t start with a perfect brand, and from all I’ve seen (thanks to our kids wanting to watch every version of The Wiggles, 1991–today), they didn’t have their “brand” really set in concrete until around 1997-1998. That’s at least 5 years in.

But what did they do? They jumped into honing their skills and their product – in their situation, their product is their music. The brand evolved slowly as their reputation started to grow, and eventually evolved into The Wiggles we know today:

So if you’re a start-up and find a business that you aspire to be like, go back and research how they started. See what their brand and products first looked like. See how long it took them to reach their current success. In some cases, they may have tried out multiple businesses before running the successful one that you connect with today. And most of all: keep working at it. Don’t be ashamed of where you are, we all start somewhere and you have a really exciting journey ahead of you.

If you ever need a pep-up, just look at the first Wiggles CD cover again to remind you that no business starts with a perfect brand.