Brand Strategy

Somebody is using the old logo right now.

Not out of malice. It is on a quote template saved to somebody's desktop in 2019, in an email signature nobody knows how to edit, and on the van that was wrapped the month before the last refresh. A brand project that ends with a PDF produces exactly this. The work here ends with a kit, a short set of rules that answer the question without anybody having to ask, and a list of every place the old one is still living.

What the work is

Six things, and what each one actually gets you.

Brand identity development

The system rather than the logo: how the marks, the colours and the type behave together, and what to do at the sizes and in the places nobody thought about. A logo with no rules around it becomes four logos within a year.

Market research and positioning

Who you are actually being compared to, taken from what your own customers said when they were deciding, not from a workshop. The answer is regularly a competitor you do not think about and a reason you have never put in writing.

Logo and visual design

Drawn at the sizes it will really be used: a van door, a 32px favicon, an invoice header, embroidered on a jacket. Marks that only work on a presentation slide are the ones that get quietly replaced by whoever needs one at 4pm.

Brand messaging and voice

Written as rules somebody can apply rather than adjectives they have to interpret. Three things you always say, three you never say, and the sentence that goes at the top of a quote. Adjectives on a slide are not a voice.

Digital branding solutions

The templates and components the team will actually reach for, in the tools they already have open. Everything above this line stays theory until the templates exist in the tools people already have open.

Rebranding services

Including the migration list, which is the part that decides whether it takes: every place the old brand appears, who owns each one, and the order to change them in. A rebrand without that list is a new logo and an old brand.

What it costs and how it runs

Scoped after week zero, because a refresh and a rebrand are not the same job.

Scope	Scoped after week zero. A mark refresh and a full rebrand are different projects and pretending otherwise helps nobody
Running	$0. A kit has no monthly cost
Us, after	$0. Source files, fonts and licences in your name, and the kit is yours to hand to any designer you like
Not included	Font licences you do not already hold, stock photography, and signage or vehicle wrapping. We will price all three before you choose anything

Week 0

We find where the brand already is

Every place it appears and every version in circulation, listed. The count is almost always higher than anybody in the room expects, and it is the list the work has to get through either way.

Weeks 1 to 4

The system before the mark

Positioning and voice come first, because a logo drawn before anybody agrees what the business is for is a decoration that will be argued about on taste. The marks are drawn once there is something for them to be right about.

Weeks 5 to 6

The kit, and the list

Files, templates and the rules, plus the migration list with an owner against each line. We would rather hand over something a bit smaller that the team actually uses than a sixty page document nobody opens twice.

Questions about this one

The ones that decide it.

Do we actually need a rebrand?

Usually not, and that is the more common finding. What most businesses need is a kit and some rules around the mark they already have, which costs a fraction and fixes the thing that was actually annoying them. A full rebrand earns its money when the name no longer describes what you sell, when you are being confused with somebody else, or when the mark cannot survive the places it now has to go. If none of those is true, keep it.

You measure everything else. How do you measure this?

Honestly, and less than we would like. Recognition and preference can be tested and it costs more than most businesses here will want to spend. What can be checked cheaply is whether the thing is being used: how many versions are in circulation this quarter against last, how long a new starter takes to produce a correct quote document, whether the kit is opened. Those are proxies and we will call them proxies rather than dress them up as proof.

What stops it drifting again in two years?

Drift happens when somebody needs an asset at four in the afternoon and cannot find the right one, so they make one. The defence is not a policy, it is that the correct file is easier to reach than making a new one: templates in the tools they already use, and the rules short enough to read. If our kit is harder to use than improvising, it will lose, and it should.

Why will you not put a number on it yet?

Because tidying the mark you have and replacing it outright differ by several multiples, and which one you need is what week zero establishes. Quoting before that means quoting the middle and being wrong in one direction for everybody. Asking costs nothing, and week zero ends with a fixed price against a scope you have agreed.

Tell us where the brand shows up today.

Describe the business, the places the mark appears, and what feels out of step. You will get a reply about where we would start, and whether it needs a project at all.

Talk to us about your brand