Branding Agency

We help your customers identify with your brand.

Get in touch with your inner self.

So what is a brand and why do I need one?

Creating a well defined brand identity for your business ensures that the day to day interactions with your brand are simple and effective for your employees and your clients. The foundation of your brand is your logo, and each of your public platforms (websites, social media, print collateral, and other promotional material) should consistently incorporate your logo and other brand elements. Simply put, your logo and your branding is your promise to your audience, serving to remind them of what they can expect from you in each and every encounter.

In order to design and implement successful long term brand strategy, we’ll go through all of your current content, background, platforms and ideas in order to inform what will soon become your brand identity. If you don’t already have a solid start on this, we would ambassador the defining of your current brand identity (including colors, logo, and historical messaging) to help us to better understand what legacy elements to include in the creation of a visual identity.

Brand Framework

Layer by layer, we uncover your identity through an intensive 2-day workshop.

We dive deep into the heart and soul of your company to clarify your brand and capture it for partners, stakeholders and employees. We start with an intensive workshop that brings your core voices (typically 2-6 people) around the table. Your workshop spans two days ( 4 hrs per day) and can be conducted in Bend at our offices or held via video chat. We’ll lead you through conversations and exercises to uncover key aspects of your brand—your company’s story, audiences, character, archetypes, mission/vision/values, pitch, and value propositions. We’ll capture this valuable information in a detailed, professionally-printed Brand Book that also documents the graphic elements of your brand in a visual-based Brand Reference Guide.

Take a look at what a workshop will do for your team

Here’s the financial impact that this work has on company culture and operational health:

4X more successful than “like” companies or competitors who have no clarity in messaging, positioning, and brand identity
Employees are 40% less likely to be absent
Employees are 24% less likely to leave their job (high-turnover industries)
Employees are 59% less likely to leave their job (low-turnover industries)
Employees have 28% lower impact on shrinkage (inventory loss or damage)
Employees are 70% less likely to have a safety incident
40% better overall quality of work
10% better overall customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty
17% increase in productivity
20% increase in sales
21% increase in profitability

But, how do we determine company cultures that are filled with “engaged employees” or “disengaged employees?” Forbes defines the engaged employee as one who is passionate about the brand, believes in its mission, and shares its values. If a brand has no published internal clarity or understanding on brand positions, vision, mission, values, etc., than it’s dangerous to assume that the employees in that environment are truly “engaged.” Belief in the mission and alignment in values are necessary for employee engagement – so, if those are things that we don’t have clearly defined for our employees to engage directly with and become passionate about; then we are directly contributing to our own employee disengagement.

Brand Messaging

The core elements of your brand, gleaned from your comments and refined with our expertise.

People align with companies who have a clear sense of purpose and identity. We help refine and define your identity in a process that marries your insight and our expertise. We start by sending you a series of in-depth questionnaires to uncover key aspects of your brand identity and message. Our questions will prompt you to consider: Who are you are in the world? Who are you not? What do you do and why do you do it? Who do you exist for? We’ll take your responses and use our branding expertise to clarify and define your brand in a multi-page document—your Brand Messaging. We may suggest some minor tweaks to your logo, slogan, or other messaging along the way. We’ll also detail the visuals of your brand in a Brand Reference Guide.

Brand Voice

A carefully curated view of your brand, brought into sharp focus by our discerning experts

This option provides a handy snapshot of your current brand. We record key elements of your existing brand in a 4-page Brand Reference Guide. The guide documents your current logo, color palette (by RGB, CMYK and PMS if applicable), slogan, signature fonts, and image styles. This does not include new creative work.

Pricing

Brand Voice

$1350

We record your brand elements in a 4-page document that brings together your current logo, color palette, lexicon, typography, and imagery. As we distill your brand voice, we may recommend new fonts, colors and slight tweaks to your logo to better support your brand.

Brand Messaging

$3900

Through conversations and questionnaires, our team digs deep into your brand. We tease out your voice, core messaging, key audiences, and value propositions. We also capture your brand visuals by documenting your brand’s color palette, logo, typography and style of imagery. (12 pages)

Brand Framework

$9900

The Brand Framework kicks off with an intensive workshop spread over two half-days. The workshop (typically held in our offices in Bend) uses group participation to discover the facets of your brand. We distill your company’s story, audiences, character, archetypes, mission/vision/values, pitch, and value propositions. We also pull together your brand visuals by documenting your brand’s color palette, logo, typography and style of imagery. At the end, you receive a professionally-printed Brand Book—an invaluable tool to guide you, your staff, and your design team, and your partners. (30-40 pages)

Brand Maintenance

Creating a brand is just the beginning. Employees need to be educated and inspired. Marketing needs to be aligned. Rails need to be put in place. Otherwise your brand can be clouded by internal confusion or suffer from dreaded “brand drift.”

Whether you’ve just created a new brand (congratulations!) or you have an established brand in play, these services can help you keep your brand strong for your employees and your customers.

Brand Audit

($250/hr)

We’ll audit every single brand expression (e.g. – advertisements, marketing collateral, website, swag, etc.) to ensure these elements are in full alignment with your new brand. For the things that need updating or revision, we’ll prioritize and organize all items based on their level of importance, and provide timelines and budgets.

(Audit done by Creative Director)

Brand Oversight

($250/hr)

For any materials your staff produce internally, we can offer an immediate review to correct any design or messaging deviations from your brand. Continual brand oversight catches brand drift before it starts.

(Review done by Creative Director)

Brand Reference Materials for Staff

$1200

We’ll design and distribute an invaluable Brand Reference document for employees to use in their workspaces. We’ll also design and install a Brand Poster on a main internal wall of each company location. These visuals provide staff with a constant reminder of how your brand looks and what your brand stands for. Simple but effective, these visuals are essential for building brand culture and preventing brand drift.

(Performed by zo team)

Cultivating your brand for employees

Brand + Culture Training

($1400/Location)

We’ll present your brand to your staff at a single company location. We’ll facilitate a discussion among employees about your brand and what this new, clear sense of identity means to them.

(Training done by Brand Strategist)

Employee Manuals & Handbooks

($185/hr)

Ensure your brand lives in everything you provide to your employees. We’ll update your internal Training Manuals and Employee Handbook to better represent the language and visual expression of your brand.

(Done by zo team)

Brand-Driven Employee Review Forms

($185/hr)

We’ll collaborate with your managers to create position-specific quarterly review forms. Review forms will be tailored for both new and existing employees. These forms will focus on progress made in the realms of job responsibility, job performance, and brand understanding.

(Performed by zo team)

Need logo help?

We are creative experts with decades of graphic design experience, which we use to create your unique logo that accurately and visually delivers on the promise of your brand. We generally follow a multi round logo design process. So, we will go through a logo questionnaire series to dig into feedback and history right from the start. Next we go through multiple steps depending on the depth of the project (basic logo all the way to brand messaging framework and guide). We are extremely hands on with the development of each logo and pride ourselves in providing everything you need to absolutely adore the logo that embodies your brand.

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”

Seth Godin