Branding for start-ups: Why new business owners shouldn’t spend thousands on branding

You’re just starting up, and you’re super excited to tell the world! So of course, you wanna make like Nike and - Just do it! ™

STOP! Before you go head-first into any crazy, (and costly) decisions. Let me tell you this…

The Nike Logo cost founder, Phil Knight, just $35. Yeah. You read that right. $35 U.S. dollars.

Skip 59 years to today, and Nike has built an uber-successful global brand. And these days their annual advertising and promotion spend is estimated at a whopping $3.85 billion USD. 1 Bear in mind though, that at the time of writing this article, Nike has an estimated worth of $174.59 billion USD. 2

But Phil didn’t spend thousands on branding as a start-up. Case in point.

So, if you’ve literally just jacked in your FT gig, and you don’t have a pot to piss in – by that I mean, cash to invest in your business – now is NOT the time to spend thousands on branding. Yeah. You read that right. Don’t do it. 

Why? I’ll tell you why. Because right now, as a start-up, you have nothing to go on. No intel.

By that I mean, no history, customer experience, reviews, data, or feedback. Although you may already have formed a team, with some great values – even a mission, to save people money, save people’s skins, or even to save the planet – as a start-up, you don’t yet have a company culture.

You might have the most arse-kicking benefits to offer your customers,  - but they haven’t experienced them. Yet…

You might not know who your real competitors are - because you haven’t begun to compete in the market. Hell, you might not even have a business plan.

Brand strategy –  the foundation for brand identity – is built on experience, understanding, and evidence. And it costs serious money. You might be ready for that one day. But today isn’t that day, my friend.

So, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say something that my fellow creatives will hate. Brand strategy is for established businesses. Those who have history, and a track record.

So, for now... Spend time on your offer.

What are you selling?

Think about your target audience.

Who are you selling to? Who is your audience?

How does your product or service help them?

What are the benefits they get from using it?

And most importantly of all, what’s your difference?

What makes what you do, or sell, different to others? If you had to sum up your company’s ‘difference’ in a single sentence, what would it say?

Let’s face it. Unless you’re a bloody genius who’s come up with something genuinely new, chances are, there are loads of other companies out there doing what you’re doing. So, working out what makes you different from all those others is essential. You don’t need a big, long list. You just need to focus on a single difference – the one that’s most important to your audience.

So... your offer, your audience, your difference. These are the things that will help you to craft a solid proposition for your new business. Which is what you need now.

Once you have a clear idea of who you’re selling to, how your service or product helps them, and, of course, what you want to achieve with your business, THAT’S when you need some branding.

What branding does a start-up need? 

Unless you don’t want to come across as a professional outfit, branding will give you stand out from the competition. So as a start-up, you’ll need a brand identity.

What is a brand identity?

A brand identity is the essential components of a brand. This typically includes:

• Name - If you don’t already have one.­­ It needs to be memorable – and a thorough due diligence process and domain search will make sure you’re not directly competing with anyone, and that your domain is perfect for your brand.

• Logo – This will give you stand out from the competition. Particularly if the competition has put little time or money into theirs.

• Colours – Colour is a powerful and emotive way to connect your brand with your audience. There’s good reason brands choose particular colours. So, yours should be no exception.

• Strapline – Nike’s Just do it ™ is a perfect example of what a strapline is.

• Image style – Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past two decades, you’ll know that images are a vital ingredient for digital media – at the least, for your social media accounts. And your website, if you’re planning to have one. A consistent style for images will help build brand awareness (people recognising and ‘knowing’ your brand) in the digital world.

• Graphics – Supporting graphics that work hand-in-hand with your logo and your message to build a bigger picture of your brand.

• Fonts and Typography – It’s always best to have 1 or 2 fonts and stick to them for a recognisable brand. How they are then used, consistently, will make your brand memorable.

 How much does branding cost?

To give you a bit of perspective, larger companies pay anywhere between £10k - £50k for a rebrand.

Why so much?

Because a rebranding project for an established business involves a great deal more work, which includes brand discovery, brand strategy, brand identity, brand roll-out, brand guidelines, and implementation.

If you're a new business just starting up, a good benchmark is to spend no more than 20% of your budget on branding. Unless you’re going to go cheap – and, of course, there are millions of options for a ‘cheap’ logo design – a basic branding project in the UK can cost anywhere from £1,000 to £5,000.

So, if you wanna start up as you mean to go on, you’re gonna need to invest a bit more than Phil Knight paid for the Nike logo.

As a brand designer of 27 years, I don’t design logos for 27 quid, (today’s UK equivalent of $35). But I do help people who have two things:

1.      Buckets of passion for their business.

2.      Cash - £3,000 will get you a decent brand identity for your start-up. With all the essentials.

So, if you’re passionate, and you’re not pot-less, give me a shout.

Let's talk about kicking some competitor ass

1 From the Google Gods. Estimated spend for 2022

2 FTSE 06.2023