What is like to work with Sparkco?
From the first chat to the final deliverables, what we strive for is to deliver a great client experience based on honesty, accountability, and commitment to deliver amazing work. Our collaborative approach ensures that your brand truly represents your business. We will guide you through a clear, step-by-step process, ensuring you're involved every step of the way. We maintain open and proactive communication so you'll always know where we stand, the project timeline, and key milestones. We also guide and share our knowledge about the branding process so you and your teams can manage and grow your brand independently going forward. Partnering with Sparkco means embarking on a process designed to revitalize and strengthen your business now and into the future. Your success is our success, and we're here to help you achieve it.
What types of companies do you work with?
Again, the answer is, “It depends.” The range of time to craft your brand system can vary widely. Factors include the scope of work and complexity of the logo design, color schemes, typography, imagery, etc. The deliverable timeline is also influenced by the speed of your team's decision-making, our turnaround, and the number of revisions.
Do you have expertise in my industry?
It’s natural to wonder if we have experience in a specific industry. Industry-specific expertise is no doubt valuable for technical knowledge, but when it relates to branding, we've seen deep familiarity with an industry constrain companies from seeing new possibilities and restrain the work necessary to truly transform your brand. Our superpower lies in pattern recognition. Decades of working across diverse industries and roles have honed our ability to solve brand challenges by identifying common patterns and applying our experience and insights to new scenarios. Regardless of your industry, we can confidently tackle your specific challenges, drawing on our rich history of problem-solving and innovation.
Do you work with startups and small businesses?
We understand that you might not always have enough brand work to reflect a full month’s retainer and that is where pausing the plan might be a budget-friendly option. Our billing cycle is pre-paid monthly, so for example, if you informed us that you would like to pause your subscription on March 12th, your plan would pause after March 31st. To resume your plan, just get in touch with us to coordinate a date for resumption.
Couldn’t I hire a marketing agency or a freelancer for rebranding?
Of course. Marketing agencies and freelancers will always tell you they do “branding.” However, most people wouldn’t hire an interior designer to architect a changes to a home? Brand experts are in many ways the architects that craft the foundational values, visuals, and voice that sets the tone for all other marketing activities. What separates the really good brand agencies is their ability to think, plan and act both strategically and creatively to craft a brand “aura” that goes beyond mere identity work. They understand that every team member, every channel, every touch point is an opportunity to influence consumer perception and get people to remember what makes your brand unique. Therefore, their job is to think holistically about Marketing agencies are typically focused on promoting and selling your products or services, which is essential but doesn’t address foundational brand issues. Freelancers are often seen as an affordable alternative and many offer specialized skills, like graphic design or copywriting, but lack the comprehensive approach needed for a full brand overhaul.
Do you do web design and other creative work?
Unlike graphic design subscription services that cater to companies that need high-volume design at scale, our Brand Expressions service is focused solely on brand-specific work. Our value lies in the level of quality of the concepts and ideas we generate around how to best activate and differentiate your brand. Examples of these are creative assets with a long-term time horizon and appeal like websites, brand campaigns, digital experiences, packaging, in-store displays, and content across various media. In short, it is a subscription that is tied to the long-term nature of building out a strong brand over time.
Our focus is on building client relationships based on aligning the economic incentives for both parties. That’s why we’ve moved away from the antiquated model of billable hours and staffing. Unlike promotional advertising, branding is a long-term investment and should be measured with the right metrics over an appropriate time frame. We always start by aligning on the vision for your business, defining how effectiveness will be measured, and understanding any financial goals. From there, we detail the scope of the project, reflecting the problems we propose to solve and the value we expect to create for your business. As long as the project stays within its original scope, we take full responsibility for managing the resources needed to produce the agreed-upon work on-time and on-budget. At the end of the day, our goal is to provide more value than we charge. And we think that’s a win-win for everyone.