Many branding agencies and marketing agencies discuss the importance of buy-in. Successful branding is built on commitment by your organization to consistent use of the visual and verbal systems representing your brand, including your brand name, slogan or tagline, symbols, colours, images, and fonts. Branding Beyond Buy-In: Build-In Branding agencies, …
The Hidden Cost of Brand Strategy
Price vs. Cost In our last blog post, What Should You Pay for Branding? we gave a high level overview of the price tag you might find attached to a complete branding project: brand analysis, brand strategy, and brand systems. But beyond price, there is cost – the all-in accounting …
What Should You Pay for Branding?
[Updated December 2016] What Does Branding Cost? Before we get into the question, let’s take a second to remember the distinction between price and cost. Price is what branding consultants and agencies will charge you to do branding work. Branding cost is the price, plus all the time you spend internally …
HP’s Gerstein on Bad Branding Agency Attitude
Today’s Ad Age has a nice interview with Richard Gerstein, the new senior VP-strategy and worldwide marketing for the HP’s Personal Systems Group division. In it he gives some frank talk about the big branding agencies’ inability to think small.
Brand Scam: Buying Too Darn Much!
Updated for 2026: This scam is now Trap Three: Too Much, or Too Cheap in the free 2026 edition of How to Buy Branding, rewritten for a world where everyone has AI. Too many branding vendors bank on the fact that you are lost in the branding quagmire, so they …
Brand Scam: Buying Too Little.
Updated for 2026: This scam is now Trap Two: Buying Too Little in the free 2026 edition of How to Buy Branding, rewritten for a world where everyone has AI. By Axle Davids, CEO & Brand Technologist, Distility Branding This scam is by far the biggest of all Brand Scams …
Brand Scammed! Branding Agencies Exposed
Updated for 2026: Brand Scammed! is now How to Buy Branding, 2026 edition: free, no email required, and rewritten for a world where everyone has AI. Branding is so loveable when it fuses a team’s passion with a customer’s need. When it separates that team from the pack. When it …
The Problem with Branding Experts
In the world of brand marketing, experts are everywhere. Branding agencies build their businesses on their expertise, and create proprietary jargon and brand models to bolster their credibility. But experts are often the exact opposite of what you need when you want to find your authentic brand.
Revealed: Distility’s Biggest Brand Strategy Success Secret
A successful brand strategy tells your team how you want your brand to be known. It identifies a desired brand reputation – one that, by being achieved, will accelerate your overall business success. So why do so many Brand Strategies, and the Brand Marketing that follows, experience an inglorious lack …
Branding is Broken – A Call to Arms
Branding is ill-defined, usually vacuous, often expensive and totally unpredictable – Seth Godin in Seth’s Blog Incomprehensible Voodoo – Guy Kawasaki in The Art of the Start We are brand technologists. We love branding and believe in it. But we are here to say that branding is broken.