Submitted by: Joseph Hedges

The typical branding agency from the past (or at least a more professional branding agency) have focused on the standard mission, vision and values approach. And yes, this works well as it understands what a company stands for and aligns the brand around this. However in practice over the years, I have noticed a few things that happen, firstly, the client starts to feel engaged in the process, they get excited and start to get more involved (all good), however, in some cases I see that as they start to get to understand our processes and get more involved, they stop focusing on the end result and start to refer back to the work, aligning to what are they are today, or what they want to achieve, and the client gets more and more drawn into the process. And while it is good to get the clients attention and involvement in the branding process, it isn’t so good for the branding agency to loose grip of the end result.

It’s interesting when I look more holistically at the results of the bigger and more established branding agency – I wont mention names, you start to see that once they become well known for what they do, they start to be trusted by companies and brand managers, who acknowledge that they don’t actually need to sculpt the end result for themselves, they trust the branding agency to make recommendations, and then from here reap the rewards of this. The result from these branding companies is more arresting, vibrant and produces braver brands, and once these brands are out there in the world, they start to grow and form new brand leaders, brands that others can only hope to follow.

Over the years I have managed to collect a small amount of vintage packaging, I suppose its a bit of a hobby, all be it not a totally serious one, but I certainly enjoy nostalgic moments or reflection.

Have a look through and please write in if you have any of your own nostalgic or vintage type packaging or brands youd like to share with us. In fact if this blog interests you, have a read of a thought piece on the subject of brand nostalgia in our Soapbox.

So, to be a really great branding agency, the answer is in the branding process, making sure that you educate the client in how brands work, how his brand works and how his demographic will be inspired by a new brand. The branding agency I work for today, Garden, a London and Dubai based branding agency, in my opinion, has been educating companies in this way for many years now, it’s in recent years that clients have seen us as a more conceptual branding agency, with strong strategic anchors. In fact one of my brand strategists often refers to us as being creatively driven and strategically anchored, and I like this description as it is accurate and what I would suggest other branding agencies should aim for, after all, you should never be different for the sake of being different, or so strategically aligned and ‘safe’ that you loose any brand personality.

About the Author: Joseph Hedges is associated with Branding by Garden, branding agency London provides brand consulting, brand strategy, corporate identity and naming.For more information please visit :

brandingbygarden.com

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