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Finding the right team to guide you through a rebrand journey is paramount to your success but often feels like a daunting task. There are many different shapes and sizes when it comes to agencies, with different capabilities, budgets and service offerings. So, where do you begin?

Firstly, you want to make sure that the agencies you are looking at have a strong focus on strategic branding. But that alone is not enough – the level of rigor and approach to branding can vary significantly across agencies.

Here are some simple steps to help you narrow down what you need from a branding agency and how to navigate choosing the right one for your business.

PREPARE FOR THE SEARCH

Preparation is key to success for most things – and it’s no different with this. Before you venture out on your search for the perfect branding partner, first sit down and think about what you want from an agency.

Ask yourself these questions

What kind of support do you need? Are you a new business looking to establish a presence, or an older business wanting to refresh your existing brand? Do you have internal creative resources who will take implementation in house, or do you need an agency that can partner with you longer term to realise your brand?

Some agencies are experts when it comes to rebranding a long-standing business but may not have processes that are agile (or budget-friendly) for a start-up to develop their brand from scratch. Others have an incredible design team that will create a beautiful identity, but they don’t have the strategic capabilities to ensure it’s the RIGHT identity for how you need to be positioned. Then there are agencies that are highly strategic but don’t have the calibre of design in-house to deliver on that creatively. Some agencies do the initial brand identity, but don’t roll it out across critical touchpoints such as your packaging, website and collateral.

Think about what you need, now and into the future, so you can assess agencies based on their prior work and existing client relationships to assess fit.

Write a clear brief

In order to get off on the front foot, you’re going to want to hone in on what you’re expecting from a branding experience and write a clear brief. This is especially important if you are getting agencies to provide proposals and you want to make sure you are comparing apples to apples (it can get confusing). Not sure exactly what you need? That is ok too, but it means you need a strategic agency that can help co-create a brief with you that is focused on delivering value to the business. In this case, it’s important that the agencies you contact are asking you a lot of the important questions – questions about your business goals, challenges, opportunities, customers and competitors.

BUILD A SHORT LIST

Once you know what’s important to you, it’s time to start the research.

Finding agencies

A good place to start is with a Google search. Very quickly you will get a sense of the variety of agencies out there, the varying calibre of work, and perhaps which ones you feel more drawn to. What is their home page like? Do they have a strong portfolio? Do you find their ‘about page’ and team compelling and approachable? Do they have an active blog or social channels where you can learn more about how they think? Do they specialise in branding?

Other than searching, it can be worthwhile asking other businesses you know if they have any recommendations or experiences you can learn from.

Find examples of great branding that you love

If you admire your competition, or brands in other industries, it’s helpful information to give context on what you are looking for. Collecting brands you like (or don’t like) with reasons why, will help shape your own knowledge of what you are looking for and assist the agency you work with when you do get the project underway. If there is a project you really love you can search to try and find out which agency actually did that work and reach out to them also.

GET TO KNOW THEM

Once you have found some agencies that may be aligned to what you are looking for here there are some ways you can stress test the fit:

Is there a world-class portfolio?

Even if you’ve already looked at some of their work, ask to see more. Ask about the process behind each branding piece and get to know how they arrived at that particular creative decision, for that particular brand. This way you can begin to see if your thought processes will align creatively – which is important because you want to know you can communicate about the project on the same frequency. But most importantly, does the work they’ve done for others inspire you? Does it get you excited about what they can do for your own brand? If not, then that’ll probably help you shorten your short-list.

Do they have measurable results?

It’s always nice to see that an agency you’re considering has created beautiful work, and possibly even won a slew of awards, but was it effective for that client? Ask what the results were following a brand development or a rebrand. Another great indicator of results is whether they have long-term relationships with their clients. Agencies that do great work, and are invested in their clients’ success, have clients that stick around.

How old are they?

It may be a ‘taboo’ question to ask in a social setting, but not when it comes to selecting your branding agency. You’re very welcome to ask how long they’ve been at this for, who they’ve worked with before and when, and what their general experience level is when it comes to branding specifically. The barrier to entry has become low and anyone with a laptop and Adobe Creative suite can call themselves an ‘agency’. And many different types of agencies also do branding – but do they live and breathe it? Are they a branding agency, or just an agency that does branding?

What supporting evidence is there?

Of course, agencies will say great things about themselves, and in many cases they will have excellent work to share. But what other evidence is there about their calibre of work? And we don’t just mean the tangible work, but also the approach and experience in getting to the desired outcome. Ways of working and the level of collaboration are a huge part of what the experience will be like for you. A great way to dig into this is to review any client testimonials and reviews. What are prior clients saying? How many clients have been with the agency long term? Go even further and ask if you can call one of their clients and have a chat. You will learn so much about how the relationship has contributed to their business by doing this.

What size is the agency?

You need to consider the size of the agency and/or team you’re working with. Bigger isn’t necessarily better.

If you’re a multinational corporation with millions to spend on your next brand campaign, then a giant global agency is probably a good fit for you. They’ll have huge creative teams who are used to working with this kind of clientele, an endless stream of account service people ready to deal with your every tiny request.

However, if you’re a small to medium sized business – perhaps family-run or founder-led – and this is your life-long work, then you may not get the care you’re after from a giant agency. There won’t be that human touch you’re probably hoping for given the size of your account compared to others. In this instance, an established, independent agency that specialises in branding is going to be a better fit for you. You’ll have the same team member probably every time you call or email about your project, they’ll know it (and you) inside out. You’ll get senior team members working directly on your business. Everything that leaves that agency is going to be cared for, quality tested and they’ll genuinely care about YOUR project. You’ll most likely develop strong personal relationships with each team member you work with and this will not only benefit the overall experience, and work delivered, but it’ll also open you up to having the trust and confidence to consider new ideas, things you hadn’t thought of yet but that your agency knows will work well for your brand.

SELECT YOUR BRANDING AGENCY

Reach out to your final shortlist of agencies and take note of the initial experience in dealing with them…Were they responsive and approachable? What questions did they ask? Did they really listen to you and tailor their responses? The experience alone may be enough to reduce your shortlist, but for any contenders, there are other areas to consider:

Is there budget alignment?

This is where your clear brief comes in handy. Though it may have changed or been fine-tuned during your discovery process, if it’s the same across all the agencies quoting – then you’ll be able to compare costs fairly. You will start getting a feeling for the different agencies based on how they respond to this brief. Do they just flick you a generic quote? Are they asking intelligent questions that really make you think? This initial phase should already be giving you some ‘ah ha’ and perspective shifting moments just from the conversations you have.

What is the dynamic?

We look for it in our personal relationships, and despite what some agencies or companies may believe, we look for it in our business dealings too. Branding is such a personal experience, especially if it’s for a business you’ve built with passion. So, wouldn’t you want the team behind your brand to feel just as passionate about what you do too? Don’t you want to feel supported when having uncomfortable conversations? We all know the age-old saying ‘don’t mix business with pleasure’, but we disagree – your brand will become your baby so whether you want it to be or not, it is personal. You’ll want a team behind you that you trust, respect, care for and whose values align with yours… trust us.

Who will you actually work with?

If the stars still align after this point, then you’re almost there. Well done. Just a few more things to consider. You’ll want to meet your team. Not just the team that quoted and serenaded you, but the actual team that will be behind the desk, working on your project. A lot of the time, larger agencies will pitch for work using senior members of their team, who you love and tick all these boxes – only to hand your account over to a totally different and perhaps more junior team upon acceptance of the work. This isn’t always a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of, and worth asking upfront, so you can make the decision around whether you’re ok with that or not.

READY, SET, GO

Working on your brand with an agency you trust is an exciting time and should be transformative for your business. It’s the beginning of what can be a significant growth phase with increased sales, improved customer engagement and an enhanced employee experience.

Written by: Jo Whelan
Published: August 28, 2024