Why smart agencies rebrand — and how better branding helps them grow
Lessons from founders who used a strategic rebrand to strengthen their positioning, secure better leads, and unlock their “secret sauce.”
To explore why agencies choose to undertake branding activities, I spent several weeks interviewing owners, partners, and solopreneurs who run different types of agencies, consultancies, and studios. Everyone I interviewed was an expert in their field, across various industries, ranging from professional services to graphic design, from coaches and advisors to web developers. I only spoke with teams who had refreshed their branding in the past three years: some were one-person shops, some had 10-20 staff, and one had 100+ employees. Some were newly launched, others decades old. About half of the interviewees were past clients of mine and half were peers I reached out to directly. I recorded the conversations, relistened to each, analyzed them and pulled out common themes.
The goal: Find out what triggers pushed these leaders to rebrand, what they learned from the branding process, and how their business changed afterward.
I undertook this study because the insights help me understand my audience. But I also wanted to share some key takeaways because I think it's useful for similar folk — other agency and consultancy owners — to see themselves in the answers and hopefully understand the value of branding from these perspectives.
Why branding matters
Branding is often treated like make-up or a fancy coat of paint. But in these interviews with real Canadian decision-makers, it came through as something far more consequential. (Obviously I already knew this, but it’s nice to receive validation.)
Good branding — both verbal branding and visual branding — makes your business better. It helps you nail down who you are, who you want to work with, and teaches you how to articulate your unique value at every touchpoint.
These agencies who recently undertook branding activities were worse-off beforehand, and better-off afterwards. The results were pretty clear. Companies skipping, delaying, or half-assing their branding are quietly costing themselves clients, hires, and credibility.
The results
Below are responses from the conversations I had with agency and consultancy owners in Ontario. Keeping reading to see what they had to say about:
Successes: The business benefits of a strategic rebrand
Triggers: The signals that tell experts it’s time to rebrand
Excuses: Common reasons agency leaders delayed a rebrand
Missing out: Challenges agencies face before refreshing their brand
Hidden cost: The price of ignoring your branding problems
Surprise: The unexpected benefits of working with branding professionals
Successes: The business benefits of a strategic rebrand
Across every conversation, the outcomes were consistent: agencies and consultancies that invested in branding came out stronger.
Leaders described clearer messaging, better-fit clients, improved internal alignment, and more confidence in how they started to speak and write about their business. Many said the rebrand helped them “become” the company they always knew they were — but finally in a way the market could see.
“We’re attracting better-fit clients because our messaging now speaks to the right audience.”
“It’s helped us secure big clients. We’ve had clients come to us and say they compared us to competitors, and our branding and messaging just made sense to them. They understood the value we could bring to them, before we even met them.”
“It’s improved internal team alignment, because we were all involved, and everyone now has a better understanding of our shared purpose and values.”
“We now have a proper through-line, so no matter what we talk about, our brand message comes through everything.”
“It’s improved our social media, with improved metrics and more engagement on our posts.”
“It’s made me more confident in myself and my business. It helped me feel really confident about what I’m selling. “
“We’ve kind of become the company we always knew we were. We just weren’t saying it in the right way.”
“It actually helped me refine what I do, what I enjoy doing, to niche down a bit and really narrow in on the types of clients I wanted to work with.”
“It helped us be much more intentional about how we were framing how we can help people. It really helped us get to where we needed to be – to move beyond ‘This is what we can offer’ to ‘This is how we can help you’.”
“Since we fixed up our messaging, we have been getting better quality of leads.”
Triggers: The signals that tell experts it’s time to rebrand
Most leaders don’t wake up one morning and decide to rebrand. It’s usually a decision that builds over time, with a final trigger moment.
The tipping points from agency and consultancy leaders are often the same: realizing their brand no longer reflects who they’ve become, getting tired of inconsistencies across channels, hitting a growth ceiling they couldn’t break through without clearer messaging.
“We had become something different over time and our branding no longer reflected who we were.”
“I didn’t have any brand consistency and I knew I needed that if I wanted to reach the right people.”
“We’d seen what good branding work had done for other businesses and we wanted that too.”
“It was the right time for me to take the next step. I reached a point in my business where I could afford to spend the money on this.”
“I realized that if I was in a room with potential clients, I could describe our magic. But that magic wasn’t written down anywhere. We were missing out because we weren’t articulating our difference, our personality, our unique factor in the market.”
“We wanted to grow. We wanted to attract a better type of client. And we needed new language to do that.”
“After about a year in business, we realized it [our branding] wasn't good. Our messaging was so complicated. We need people to actually understand what we do. We needed clarity.”
Excuses: Common reasons agency leaders delayed a rebrand
Even with the best intentions, branding often gets pushed down the list of agency priorities. In many cases, leaders admitting trying to do it themselves but realizing they weren’t equipped to describe themselves from the inside-out.
Many leaders admitted they underestimated the complexity or failed to do it well themselves, and some had formerly questioned the return on investment. Others delayed for cost reasons or assumed their existing brand was “good enough,” only to realize later it was holding them back.
“We thought we could do it ourselves. We thought it would be easy to describe ourselves, but it’s so difficult to properly define what you do well — to write the label on the jar while you’re busy inside the bottle.”
“We prioritized other business development. But I wish we’d done this first.”
“I thought we had decent branding. But looking back now it was so generic. It wasn’t unique to us at all. So it didn’t attract the work we wanted.”
“We just needed to weigh up the cost versus the value. And ultimately we wanted to do it right. And you have to pay for that.”
“We started to think we could do it with AI. But AI is only as good as your inputs, and we just weren’t good enough at feeding the AI. Ultimately, we need that external expertise.”
Missing out: Challenges agencies face before refreshing their brand
Before rebranding, most teams wrestled with the same frustrations: unclear positioning, generic messaging, and audiences that didn’t quite “get” what they offered.
Outdated visuals and language made them look smaller or less relevant than they really were, and some even struggled to attract the right talent because their brand no longer matched their culture or capabilities.
“Our clients didn’t always understand our value or our point of difference. Honestly, they didn’t even always understand what we do.”
“We had generic branding and messaging that could have belonged to any other agency.”
“We’d placed too much focus on ‘what we do’ and not enough focus on ‘how we can help’. Shifting that perspective changed a lot.”
“Our branding was so outdated, it stopped us from attracting the best job applicants to come work here.”
“We hadn’t changed things since we started. So the ways we were describing our work wasn’t even accurate anymore.”
Hidden cost: The price of ignoring your branding problems
Leaders were candid about the impact of inaction. They lost clients who didn’t understand their value, missed opportunities because their messaging fell flat, and struggled with inconsistency across platforms. Some even felt embarrassed by how their brand looked and sounded, knowing it didn’t reflect the quality of their work.
“We were embarrassed with our brand, knowing it was so out-of-style and weren’t presenting ourselves to clients in the best light.”
“We 100% missed out on a couple of big clients because they couldn’t see our value, and we weren’t illustrating it. We’re a pretty big fish in our industry but we presented ourselves online terribly.”
“My messaging was becoming diluted. I have a lot to say, but I wasn’t saying the right things in the right places. There was no consistency. And that set me back on social media.”
“Our clients didn’t understand everything that we did, or all of the ways we could help them. So even though we already worked with them, they were going to our competitors for services that were absolutely in our wheelhouse.”
Surprise: The unexpected benefits of working with branding professionals
While most agencies and consultancy leaders understood what the deliverables would be from a branding exercise — new brand language, sharper web copy, a polished logo and brand colours, etc — but what surprised many was how transformative the process itself was.
Having an external expert review, analyze, and support their positioning and messaging helped them articulate their “secret sauce,” gain clarity on their purpose, and feel renewed confidence in how they communicate their value.
“The process was so valuable to us. We didn’t know we needed that help to actually understand ourselves and what made us special.”
“Having someone to hold our hand through the process and guide us to this great place, that was critical.”
“I loved seeing my brand come to life. There's something about having an expert observer listen to you, bring in their perspective, and articulate who you are in a better way than you could ever do yourself.”
“You helped us explain our secret sauce.”
TL;DR: Key Takeaways
Across industries, company sizes, and business stages, the patterns were clear for agencies, consultancies, and other expertise-led firms: undertaking a brand refresh made their companies better.
In short, this is what these leaders explained:
Delaying branding work is costly.
Confusion, diluted messaging, and outdated visuals was quietly costing them clients, hires, and credibility.The process itself has value.
External guidance from branding experts helps agencies better understand their unique value, clarify their purpose, communicate their difference, and articulate their “secret sauce.”Strategic branding drives real business results.
Attracting better-fit clients, securing big opportunities, internal staff alignment, improved social media engagement, and greater personal confidence. Leaders report numerous benefits from rebrands.Timing matters.
Leaders take action when their brand no longer reflects who they are or the clients they want to attract. There will always be excuses to skip this work — but, when done right, branding work pays off.
