2. Buying corporate identity services

Very few clients are experienced when it comes to hiring consultants and designers to work on their brand and their corporate identity. It is simply not work that is commonplace in very many businesses, and therefore there are often a great many misconceptions surrounding this type of work.

2.1 The importance of the brand
One major misconception is that the corporate identity of an organization – be it big or small – is not very important. This is simply not true – a brand is a very valuable commodity. Building and enhancing the brand is a core business activity and a fundamental principle of strategic marketing. Investing in the brand is an investment in the future marketing success of your company. A weak or inconsistent brand will be a liability in any marketing campaign and may even sabotage the ROI of your marketing budgets.

2.2 Costs vs results
So, how much you can expect to pay for the creation of your brand? The answer is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, but it certainly can be, depending on who you decide to do business with. It can cost you in terms of actual money, or it can cost you in terms of the inadequacy of the results.

In developing a brand, you usually get what you pay for. You may know a talented amateur working out of a basement who can create a name and shape it into a logo for $500. Or you can choose to pay an established identity and branding agency $100,000. Ideally, you would think that $100,000 should get you a higher quality design and quite a lot of brand theory and marketing analysis to back it up. But whether the result was actually worth the money depends on your requirements, and what kind of results you’re expecting.

Next: Part 2.3. “How to choose the right agency”