Buyers price you before they meet you. A twenty-year-old logo, a mismatched truck wrap, and a proposal template from 2009 all say something about your standards, whether or not it is true.
The question is never whether you have a brand. It is whether the one you have is the one you meant. Most established Columbus businesses have accumulated one: a logo from the founding, colors nobody chose, and a website in a different palette entirely.
The cost shows up in places nobody attributes to branding. Losing a bid to a competitor with worse work. Struggling to recruit because your careers page looks unserious. Getting pushed on price because nothing signals that you are the premium option.
A brand system is not a logo. It is the set of decisions that makes every future thing you produce faster to make and consistent when it lands.
Scope is set during the audit. Not every client needs every line, and we will tell you which ones you can skip.
Order matters here. Doing these out of sequence is the most common reason this work underperforms.
Interviews with leadership, sales, and where useful your customers. A brand that does not match how you actually operate will not survive contact with your own team.
We map how every meaningful competitor looks and sounds. Half of positioning is knowing which visual territory is already crowded.
Positioning, personality, and messaging before any design. This is the part clients want to skip and the part that determines whether the design is right.
Marks, type, color, and application. You see the identity applied to real things, a truck, a proposal, a booth, not floating on a white slide.
Guidelines, asset library, and a sequenced rollout plan so the change lands as a deliberate move rather than a slow leak.
A full brand system runs 8 to 12 weeks. A refresh that keeps existing equity runs 4 to 6. Rollout across signage, vehicles, and collateral depends on your production schedule and usually extends a few months past design approval.
We never charge a percentage of ad spend. Recommending you cut a channel costs us nothing, so the advice stays honest.
No minimum, 30 days notice. You stay because it is working, not because of a termination clause.
Ad accounts, domain, CRM, analytics, creative files. During and after. You take all of it if we part ways.
On the pricing page, in public. No discovery call required to learn whether you can afford us.
The free marketing audit covers exactly this, benchmarked against three competitors you name. Written findings in 3 to 5 days, yours to keep either way.
Branding & Creative in Columbus, Ohio. A brand system that makes you look like the obvious choice before anyone reads a word. An Arch engagement covers brand discovery and stakeholder interviews, competitive and category visual audit, and positioning and messaging framework, among other work. A full brand system runs 8 to 12 weeks. Pick Your Channels starts at $500 per month, month to month, and every engagement begins with a free marketing audit.
