You know your brand better than anyone, and even if you’re not a designer, you know enough about how your brand should look. What do you need a branding agency for, besides to execute your vision?
As Blake explains in this post, branding and design are disciplines that require much more expertise than you may realise. As much as you might back yourself to know what’s best, there are massive gains to be had if you let go a little and trust the experts.
As someone who has worked in the design industry since 2003, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the work of the greatest minds in the business: people like David Ogilvy, Neil French, Paul Rand and Bill Bernbach. The memo pictured here was sent by Bill Bernbach to the board of Avis Rent a Car in 1962. At the time, Avis had experienced 13 years of straight losses, and they were losing ground every year to Hertz, who had a newer fleet, more locations and lower prices.
Bernbach’s message in the memo was outrageous for the time. CEOs called the shots and were not often challenged. Essentially Bernbach said that he would deliver results provided he had full creative control. Within a year, Avis was back into profits, and the ‘We Try Harder’ tagline lasted half a century, eventually being replaced in 2012.
We understand that you are the creators and stewards of your brand and that you want creative control of the direction that your brand goes in. This is only natural. However, this can also be a major inhibitor of necessary change and, ultimately, the growth of your company. You may be too close to your brand to see problems with it or with its positioning. You will almost certainly be overvaluing your branding expertise. You will likely be letting your preferences determine your design, rather than what is best for your brand.
The most important factors in branding are consistency, differentiation and simplicity. When many different voices are directing a brand, it becomes inconsistent, uncertain and more complex, without exception.
In short, you need people with expertise who can smooth away the obstacles to the success of your brand, even when one of those obstacles is you! There are few agencies today who do this for their clients. With the exception of my first agency appointment, every one I’ve worked for would faithfully enact all client changes, even when they were detrimental. It is no coincidence that the best work was produced by that first agency.
We cannot (yet!) claim to be at the level of the great names I mentioned above, but Paperboat intends to follow in their footsteps and to serve our clients by doing what they need and not simply what they say.
We are not so arrogant as to think that our ideas will always best, and nor are we asking you to relinquish control of your brand to us. We value your knowledge of your brand and your feedback, and we will work within your parameters. However, we need the freedom to put our expertise to work for you, and when it comes to branding and design, trust us to do it better.
Let Paperboat help you define a stronger purpose and build a sharper image.
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