The branding of a brand consultancy
Last year marked 21 years of Propaganda. I’m proud (and slightly alarmed) to say I’ve been there to see 17 of them. As the older members of the team rejoiced in a trip down memory lane during the celebrations, we looked back fondly at the various visual identities we’ve had through the years. Each of them represented a different era of the agency – design hotshots in the 90s, Leeds agency-scene upstarts in the early 2000s to the creative consultancy offering of recent times. We’ve been blue, green and red. We’ve been a one-man band start-up to an internationally established branding business.
And today we find ourselves evolving again.
The Propaganda of today is incredibly strong. Over 81% of our annual income is through contracted relationships; we operate a fee-based margin model over 90% GP (paid for our thinking, rather than via hidden production margins); and have formal shareholding in more than 7 live clients. Eleven years since being accepted, we remain the only branding business to have Management Consultancies Association membership – despite many others attempting to join each year. The reason we are so proud of this? Our membership is based on the commercial results our consultancy delivers for our clients.
It is a business model that couldn’t be more different from the traditional agency scene. And our brand needs to reflect this.
Our position is a result of the unrivalled results our work drives and the fantastic client relationships we have. The latter are way beyond transactional – they are deeply embedded; developed over years and based on the fact that our work works. We provide the courage for our clients to act – an emotive state that results in phenomenal loyalty.
The new campaign at the heart of our rebrand is the embodiment of this courage.
Because it takes courage to invest in your business when performance is in decline. It takes courage to launch a new brand, or enter a new sector. And it takes courage to be challenged in new and uncomfortable ways.
We ask our clients to make huge emotional and financial commitments, and to stop what they’ve always done and try something different. These are brave decisions.
Propaganda Versus is the articulation of our unique approach to creative brand strategy.
It communicates how we stand shoulder to shoulder with our clients – that together we wage war on whatever is holding their brands back.
It’s Propaganda versus the seemingly impossible: the unknowable, unattainable and unconquerable.
For me, Versus perfectly reflects Propaganda as it is today – knowledgeable, straight-talking, confident, intelligently creative. And absolutely focussed on driving results for our clients. Our business, and now our brand, is stronger than ever and I’m delighted to share Versus with the world.