Over time, your brand can become pigeon-holed, or famous for just one thing, when in fact you’ve moved on. Your products, teams and company culture are different – they’ve evolved. The scenario is a common one. The next step is to review, assess and refine your offer to better reflect the business, engage with its customers and align with its objectives.
Of course, your in-house marketing department can do a great job of creating, curating and protecting a brand. Sometimes, though, it takes a team of creatives who are one step removed from the corporate day-to-day to come up with something different. Compared to our in-house counterparts we have the space to test ideas, and respectfully challenge conventional wisdom though always with the goal of coming up with the best solution for your business.
For smaller firms, an agency provides the expertise and creative direction you need to develop and elevate your brand, even if you don’t have a huge marketing team and budget. It’s all about growth and if you want to appear professional and credible, an agency can help to transform your brand while you focus on new and existing customers. Behind the scenes, you have an expert and experienced creative team to do the heavy lifting, with vast experience of what works well.
Brand strategy
A lack of clarity around your branding leads to a lack of trust in a business and ultimately, a confused offer. That means any marketing activities that follow are unlikely to deliver the results you’re looking for.
Even if you don’t want to employ an agency on a retainer basis, working with one to develop a new brand, or take an existing one in another direction, can help you to avoid costly mistakes. A powerful and consistent brand is more than just colours and logos. It’s about your purpose, values, how you want to be seen and represented. The best brands are recognised – and trusted – by their target audience. An agency can ask questions to spark ideas and has a clear process for formulating the strategy, based on years of experience working with other clients in your sector and beyond.
Strategy into brand activation
Because every brand is different, developing a strategy is always an interesting process for both us and our clients, not least because it marks the start of a new chapter. The next stage – activation – is the culmination of weeks of behind-the-scenes planning, and just as rewarding.
This is when clients, and their customers, see the strategy brought to life on their website, office, digital content, advertising and other channels. Depending on your in-house marketing resources, you may choose to manage this entirely in-house or outsource at least some of the work to an agency. We find a collaborative approach between your teams and ours works best and, having been there since the start, we both want to see the brand successfully launch into the real world.
Working with an agency helps to ensure all your assets for web, social media, banners, interiors and so on are lined up and ready to go. Your agency might also offer wider services to support brand activation, such as PR, content creation, events planning and digital marketing. Having all the team under one roof speeds up communication and promotes collaboration, while helping to ensure that brand guidelines are followed and protected.
Brand identity – or brand communications?
Warbox isn’t just a brand identity agency. Do we ‘do’ brand identity work on behalf of our clients – yes, absobloodylutely. However, it goes deeper than the visual aesthetics of an identity. Careful consideration must also be given to how you position the brand through its name, title, narrative, and how this subsequently informs your brand architecture.
Fundamentally, at Warbox, we do brands. We unpick and refine the strategy behind it, and help to establish its purpose, its reason for existing, and its tone and positioning within the sector in which it operates. Language is just as important as visual identity – one cannot exist without the other. That’s why a good brand communications agency will align the two to develop a clear and consistent vision, story and messaging.