Finding your branding agency
Finding a branding agency can make or break your future business. It goes without saying that a brand can either propel your company forward or get lost in the woods. Let’s quickly establish why you need to concentrate on branding so much before we figure out how you find the all important partner in branding.
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.”
To put it politely, it’s a big deal.
Finding a creative partner that suits you
Choosing the right creative and branding partner is crucial for your business’s future. Your brand is your identity, and finding an agency that aligns with your values and is forward-thinking can make a significant difference in how you connect with your audience.
Your brand is an extension of your company’s values and vision. It’s essential to partner with a creative agency that not only understands but shares these same values. Aligning the stars, ensures that the agency will represent your brand authentically and compellingly.
Building a relationship based on trust and collaboration. During initial meetings, pay attention to how well they listen to your ideas and how willing they are to incorporate your input. A good agency will work with you, not just for you, fostering a partnership where creative ideas can flourish and evolve.
77% of B2C consumers are likely to make purchases based on a brand name, with 62% of consumers saying their purchase decisions are heavily influenced by a brand’s values*
Branding agency in London: Should I look locally?
At the basic level, if you were to just start Google searching it (please don’t) this might be where you’d start – Search: ‘[Your sector] branding agencies in [your location]’.
Let’s question some of those initial assumptions.
People can travel and there’s zoom, so distance isn’t really an insurmountable barrier. The idea that you will be popping over the road to the branding agency weekly for coffee and brainstorming is lovely, but possibly a sign that something’s not quite working.
Initially, the agency does need to ‘get’ you and your brand’s culture and the world in which you operate, and that will involve them coming to you for a time. Interviews and tissue meetings and presentations will build mutual understanding, a shorthand develops and the face to face gradually becomes more zoom to zoom and things get done faster. Bottom line, distance isn’t a problem, especially when things are working well.
Branding agencies within your industry: Stick to specialists?
If you are a bank, you’d look up bank branding agencies. That’s logical. You won’t have to explain the rules, the agency already knows your target market, the process should be smoother and quicker. Plus it makes it easier to judge their portfolio, it’ll have all the elements you need.
Your shortlist should definitely contain agencies with experience in your sector, however, you should also keep an open mind and look for agencies that may work with the same target market but in a different sector. A real estate branding agency may deal with the same financially savvy investors as the bank branding agency. They could bring fresh eyes and thinking to the pitch. Equally, if you simply fall in love with an agency’s work, there’s something to be said for finding a way to work at least one wild card onto your pitch lists.
Creative marketing services: Is it just branding that I want?
There’s creating a brand and there’s marketing the brand. It would be good to be thinking of marketing as you are creating.
Yes, marketing campaigns change and get tactical and pursue different goals, but they should always be ‘on brand’. When creating a brand you should always be judging it on how it attracts customers, clients, investors and prospective employees and differentiates from its competitors. The argument for separate brand and marketing agencies is that these are specialisations and you should get the specialist for each.
If you’ve got your brand sorted, get a marketing-only agency, absolutely. If you’re just working on your brand, get an agency that does the brand and marketing, please, or you could just end up with lots of pretty logos and fonts and tone of voice documents that look beautiful in the drawer you file them away in.
“Too many companies want their brands to reflect some idealised, perfected image of themselves. As a consequence, their brands acquire no texture, no character and no public trust.”
Boutique agency: Big or small agency?
Don’t look for an agency that is bigger than you. There is kudos in being the client of a household name, however, you are unlikely to get their best team, service or costs. Find a balanced match of size, but most importantly an agency that “gets it”.
Equally, if you are a multinational giant, the one-man-band outfit is unlikely to be able to satisfy all your many stakeholders’ meeting requests as well as do the actual work. That said, this is how small agencies grow, they land a client larger than they can service and hire more people.
Cost is a factor that is often glossed over. Big agencies have big overheads to cover, but you shouldn’t be looking at small agencies just because you want to save some money. This is your brand, reread those stats at the top, this is not the time to go for the lowest bidder or demand a free pitch or demand five ideas to ‘get your money’s worth’. This is less a cost, more an investment.
Creativity at the heart of an agency: What do I look for in a portfolio?
Honest answer: stuff you like. Put yourself in the consumer’s mindset and flip through the pretty pages of the website and whatever puts a smile on your face is good.
Read the case studies for what the brief was and how cleverly and beautifully they answered it. Are there any similarities in your brief? What ROIs can they point to? Any client testimonials to back up their claims?
You probably want to make up a shortlist of agencies that you can then talk to. Ask them whether they can provide the services you want, what their process is and how they might go about tackling a client like yourself. These are not magic questions that sort the good from the bad, it’s more just about getting to know the people behind the carefully honed website.
Here you can start to get a feel for the agency and if they are the sort of people you can work with. It’s the beginning of a “Chemistry meeting” (creepy name). Sometimes they don’t live up to their website, most of the time they will reveal themselves to be keen, smart and talented.
You should now be able to pick one, two or at most three that you feel happy to pitch to you and your team.
Now all you have to do is come up with the amazing brief.
“Whatever you do, don’t play it safe.”