Will it fit: Do I need a marketing or branding agency? A small or a big one?

Do you want to increase sales? Maybe you want to reposition yourself? Maybe you’re having trouble reaching the right audience. Or you feel like your brand could use a ‘revamp’. Usually, you start looking for a marketing agency, a branding agency, or something along the lines of ‘a full-service agency’.

After years of experience in dealing with entrepreneurs and their businesses, there are a few myths that I’d like to debunk about branding. This is just one of the articles on branding myths by entrepreneurs that will follow. If you’re interested in what else I talk about, look here.

In this article, I want to give you some tips & tricks to decide what type of agency you need to look for, depending on the challenge at hand. Because let’s face it, the land of agencies is vast and often confusing.

1. Marketing vs Branding

The main difference between branding and marketing agencies is how they approach your company. While branding agencies/studios usually take into account the full-on brand of your company, marketing agencies focus more on driving sales, traffic or engagement. Both have their pros and cons.

Let’s start off with branding agencies. They — the good ones — will start at the essence of the brand and construct a narrative about the emotional values and purpose of the brand.

Pick a branding agency if you want to:

• Launch a new brand
• Define your story
• Rebrand your current company

Look at this article if you want to find out if you really need a rebrand. Because there are also a lot of risks involved and it might not be the best option for you.

A marketing agency, in general, will try to drive more traffic or sales to your current strategy by optimizing, creating and messages, strategies for the right channels. If you have a well-defined brand, but you want to grow it, then marketing is the way forward.

So choose a marketing agency if:

• Your brand is well defined
• You want to grow the reach of your brand
• You want to maximize your message or campaign

2. Scale & specialization

There is a huge spectrum of agencies out there, going from big-ass agencies with hundreds of people in different countries (like Base or Pentagram), or small ones, with 4 people (like Ollie or Snask). Usually, smaller studios are more specialized in one area, while bigger studios are ‘full-service’.

A small but very dedicated team: Snask.

Benefits of a small, specialized studio

• A small, dedicated team, usually with senior people
• The whole team is working on your project
• No bureaucracy, just passionate people
• Challenger mentality
• Direct access to the team
• Specialized focus, for example, Identity design or SEO/SEA
• Can work together with in-house teams
• It looks like I’m biased toward working with smaller teams, right? 😅

Risks of working with smaller studios

• They might go bottoms up (although that depends on their longevity if it’s only been a few years) quicker.
• They can only work at a certain pace because of scale limitations.
• You might need to combine different studios to get the full scope, for example, a branding studio and a marketing studio working together. Good small studios will help you organize this (as we do).

Benefits of working with a big, full-service studio

• Lots of different profiles with different types of knowledge
• The scale allows handling big scope project across multiple countries
• The scale also allows for multiple projects running simultaneously
• The international network can come in handy in big international projects
• The agency can help you with ‘everything’, so you don’t need to get to different partners for different aspects of the project

Possible risks of working with a big studio

• Bureaucracy might stifle creativity
• Big doesn’t always mean fast or ‘agile’
• You pay for a lot of people that are not directly related to ‘the work’ (managers, HR, marketing, sales, project managers, …) so budgets will probably be a lot higher.
• Full-service also means no specialization. That means everyone ‘needs’ to work on a project because the bills need to get paid.

3. Portfolio

Of course, the agency’s work is a key factor when deciding who to go for. Looking at their previous work is essential, here are some things to look out for when deciding who to go with:

• How are the cases built? Are they well thought of? Do they have a rationale?
• What type of clients is in the portfolio? Are they closely related to your industry?
• How diverse is the work? If they have a certain style, don’t expect your project to be ‘completely’ something else. If it’s too diverse and just all over the place, then maybe it’s just not focused enough.

4. In-house/out-house

If you have creative staff in-house, it might be a good idea to use those resources to its maximum potential. What are the driving factors to hire work outhouse then?

• You want to challenge the status quo
• Your in-house department is understaffed
• You want an unbiased team
• You want a rebrand

Usually, in-house teams are better at incremental work, optimizing and creating assets within the lines of the strategy. This is, in my eyes of the most important work, because it’s long-term brand-building. There are of course exceptions to these rules, with inhouse agencies become more and more prolific. Take a look at Chobani’s achievements for example.

5. Pricing model

How do they price the assignment? Do they work with hourly billing? This might mean trouble once the project scope starts creeping. What if this wasn’t the right approach? Or do they assess the business value they can create? This means they are focused on solving bigger problems, your business problem. They might even go as far as tying their fees to actual results, that sounds like a good deal right?

To learn more about the different pricing models and how they affect your choice, check out this article.

6. Does it fit?

Whether you go for a small specialized marketing studio or a big-ass branding studio, there must be a good fit. Never decide on ‘prestige’ or ‘portfolio’ or ‘awards’ alone, if you, the leader of the company (or CMO) do not feel confident that this team is trustworthy, things will go sideways. Trust your gut feeling. Here’s a checklist of things you need to be able to answer ‘yes’ to in order to decide if it’s a good fit:

• Do I want to have a beer with these people at night?
• Do they ask honest, deeper questions?
• Do they question my assumptions?
• Do I trust these people with my business?
• Do they try to understand my customer?
• Do they understand the real business value of this project?

Ollie is a branding studio based in Ghent, Belgium. We create brand experiences that attract raving fans and we’re firm believers of a strategy first approach. Interested in our work? Check out our Instagram, LinkedIn, Dribbble and Behance. And of course, feel free to check out our website.

Until the next one! 👋