SONDO IS A FORWARD-THINKING BRAND STRATEGY AGENCY BASED IN MELBOURNE AND THE GOLD COAST.

As a branding agency specialising in creative work that grows businesses, we can develop a smart strategy from as little as our starting immersion session, where we gather facts directly from you. But then our knowledge will be limited to your knowledge and perceptions. 

By researching more extensively – studying your market and, especially, interviewing stakeholders such as staff and customers – we can gain a more objective perspective.

We learn the dynamics on the floor that you’re unaware of.  
We see strengths and weaknesses you underrate, or blind yourself to.
We find peers or competitors doing interesting things you can learn from.

Basically, deeper research gives you the invaluable benefit of seeing yourself the way an outsider does.

The scale of research is always a function of your budget. But the more research we do, the more nuanced our understanding (and your understanding) of your business will become, the more authentic your new brand story will be, and the more effective the brand strategy is likely to be at actually driving growth for your business.

When humans try to do too many things at once, we rarely do any of them well. Without focus, we allocate too few resources to any one thing to shift the needle, or we respond with actions so generalised they don’t do much to fix any single problem. And that’s exactly the same with your branding project.

There may be lots of issues in your business, but usually there will be a few root causes common to all of them. So once we’ve researched your business and got a sense of the various problems occurring, we ask why each one is happening. And when we’ve identified a cause, we ask why that’s happening. And so on, and so on.

Eventually we end up with one “core problem” that lies at the root of most of your problems. By focussing our brand strategy on overcoming that problem, the benefits will ripple out, fixing all the other things going wrong.

There’s a lot of complex thinking that goes on, and a lot of elements to the brand we’ll create for you, but it all starts by focussing on a clear, succinct mission for what we need to achieve.

With a bit of creative thinking and savvy engineering, we can develop an smart brand strategy that helps your business achieve effective results now and in the long-term. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

We say “problem” as shorthand, but you might see it as a “challenge” instead. Regardless of the word, there is some essential commercial goal you’re trying to achieve through the branding project – otherwise why are you doing it?

The best branding agencies start by clearly defining what you need your brand to achieve. We keep that need at the front of mind all through the brand development process, and measure our success against it when we’re done. That way, you’re getting a brand that is not just beautiful but actively helping you reach your business goals.

Confidentiality sometimes limits how widely you want to consult with staff, customers and other industry contacts. But whenever possible, engaging these stakeholders when devising a new brand identity design is invaluable.

In fact, while reports and desk research are great, we always gain the most from these face-to-face conversations.

There are two big reasons to engage stakeholders:

1. They know stuff. Your stakeholders bring years of industry experience, including working with or buying from competitors. And they also experience your business every single day from a perspective you don’t. This gives them insights into what you do well, where you fall short, what’s holding you back, and sometimes even smart ideas about the changes that would take you where you need to go.
   
   
2. You can make them the champions of your new vision. By making select stakeholders part or the branding project, you encourage them to emotionally buy in to the changes. They feel heard, and gain confidence that you’re really trying to improve things, rather than sell them some marketing B.S. And then they’ll take to other people in their teams, networks and friendship groups, spreading that positivity. In this way, including them in the research is the first step to a successful brand launch.

We know branding, but you know your business. We’ll learn a lot – fast – but we need your help to get there. So we see you as our essential partner every step of the way. We consult in depth with you to understand your business from the inside out. And we get your feedback regularly throughout the brand creation process to ensure our thinking makes sense to you, and that the evolving designs represent your ideal vision of your business.

At the end of the project, we’ll be handing the brand over to you to run with. So the way we see it, the long-term success of our work depends on you understanding the brand and feeling proud of it. And that can only come from a genuine collaboration between us.