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How To Brand Your Ad Agency

Maybe You Have a Brand Problem

Ad agency branding

Most ad agencies are operating against a gray background without any strong positioning other than a hazy label. It’s the exceptional marketing firm that knows how to stand out!

How long has it been since you gave your agency’s brand a real wring out? Maybe you have been operating under the same brand for years without giving it much consideration. If that’s the case, maybe your agency’s brand has been passed by in light of all the changes going on within the industry. Maybe the agency’s brand needs to be repositioned or maybe the firm needs to be re-branded.

A clear agency brand provides focus for new business, how to describe your firm, what services to offer and even what organizational structure works best. If you understand who and what you are, a clear agency brand provides discipline for the agency’s new business program; Which prospects to go after and which prospects to pass on.
A clear agency brand attracts prospects and aids new business:
  • Shows what you stand for
  • Shows your view of what’s important
  • Lets a prospect know quickly whether or not you are in step with their view of the way things work
A clear brand provides a center point for all your new business activities:
  • Agency graphics package
  • Social media focus
  • Agency décor
  • Agency stationery
  • Holiday/seasonal cards
  • Invitations
  • Nudge articles
  • Web site
  • Agency listing on search sites
  • Description in directories
  • Door opener mailers
  • Send-me-something brochure

The agency brand is important, but how to do it?

ad agency branding

"Time and again your agency’s brand is the key decider on whether or not your agency gets invited into a pitch. And whether or not clients see you as a communication vendor or agency partner." Bob Sanders President, Sanders Consulting Group

The process isn’t difficult or painful.  At Sanders Consulting Group, we specialize in helping agencies of all types and sizes find the best way to grow.  And often the first step is a hard look at the agency’s brand.

The process can be a major learning experience for your staff because it opens up the entire language of branding.  We usually recommend using input from clients and prospects about key benefits you offer and which are most important.  We look at the agency’s personality and what that means in terms of fit to clients and prospects.  We’ll help you gather both sets of data.
Then we pull all this information together and review it at an agency Brand Retreat, usually held off site where the agency brand is reviewed from top to bottom.  We help the team work through the firm’s Brand Triangle, what a new energy line might look like, and why the positioning should exclude some prospects that don’t fit and might betray your brands new purpose.
There’s a whole new enthusiasm unleashed when everyone at the firm understands the brand, wears it proudly and supports it fully because they helped build it.
For more information on finding out about your agency’s brand, give Sanders Consulting Group a call at 800.899.1538 or email us at info@sandersconsulting.com
Of course, you could try to brand yourself, and that’s certainly possible. Just as it’s medically possible to take out your own appendix.  But that’s not a smart move either.



Typical Brand Retreat Subjects:

1. What did our clients say about us? And what does that mean?
2. What impact should their comments have on our brand planning?
3. Creating our brand based on who we are or who we want to be.
4. The brand building process.
5. The agency core values.
6. The agency key attributes.
7. The agency personality.
8. The agency’s brand competency story.
9. How to introduce the agency brand.
10. How to train the staff on the agency brand.
11. How to get brand congruence on our side.
12. How to describe ourselves to prospects.
13. New business time-line and calendar.
14. Who will do what?
15. What support materials to produce and what they will look like?
16. Who to go after.
17. A List of prospects vs. B List of prospects.
18. Who can do outreach for our firm?
19. Who will go on first visits?
20. Develop a publicity plan?
21. Supplier/media rep open house?
22. Projected economic impact of new business program?
23. New business payout analysis?
24. What to tell the staff?
25. What to tell clients?
26. Positioning us against competition.
27. Positioning us with search consultants.
28. Sustaining the new positioning.
29. Building proof.
30. Developing reasons to believe.