The 20 Best Branding Agencies In Singapore

“I need to work on branding. I need to redesign my logo and improve how my website looks.”

This is a superficial understanding of branding and one that will get you nowhere. Sadly, that’s the mindset of many small-minded businesses and self-proclaimed marketing professionals in Singapore. 

What’s Branding

Branding has little to do with what can be seen, and everything to do with what can be perceived. It goes far beyond the superficial collection of images, colours, and sounds, to the first thing that comes to mind whenever someone mentions your brand name.

So, what exactly is a brand?

A brand is what a business, firm, organisation, institution, or products and services, stand for in the minds and hearts of its target audience. It can also be defined as a set of expectations, stories, and memories that, when taken together, are the main reason a consumer may choose one product or service over another.

What’s Brand Identity

Brand identity can be defined as the face of your brand. It’s the visual representation of your brand, and it includes things such as colours, logo, typography, messaging, and packaging.

It’s meant to attract customers to your business, while also making them feel at home. It’s both outward and inward-facing.

How to Create a Brand Identity

To create a brand identity that’s attractive, strong, and consistent, you need to work on the following seven key elements:

Determine Your Brand Purpose and Brand Positioning

The first step to creating a solid brand identity is defining your brand purpose. Brand purpose can be looked at as the main reason your business exists in the first place. Brand positioning defines your target audience and a list of all the things that make your products or services better than any other option on the market.

Thorough Market Research

Market research is what informs your brand’s purpose and mission. It’s by understanding your target market that you’ll be able to refine your purpose and position your brand better. Market research is usually conducted through interviews, face-to-face interaction with potential customers, surveys, and so on. 

Likeable Brand Personality

Think of your brand as a person. What personality does it have? It’s what defines the tone and voice you use to communicate your marketing message. An established brand personality means your customers will have an easy time connecting with your brand. Otherwise, you’ll be sending them mixed messages, which often leaves them confused.

Memorable Logo

A logo should match, enhance, and compliment your brand. This makes it an integral piece of your brand identity, one which the people that interact with your brand are exposed to the most. Your logo should be in synch with the rest of the visual elements that represent your brand, besides communicating the visual appeal of your brand. 

Attractive Colour Palette

Closely connected to your logo is the colour palette that you choose for your brand. It suggested that you at most use 3 colour palettes. Even more important, you want to understand the emotions conveyed by each colour you choose to make sure you’re sending the right message out there.

Professional Typography

Professional typography isn’t just about finding unique fonts but finding one that works in harmony with your colour palette and logo. Don’t be too pedantic, though.

Here are a few pointers to observe when deciding on the right typography:

• Avoid using fancy fonts, unless you’re an advanced graphic designer who understands the art and science behind fonts pretty well.
• Avoid using default fonts. Reason being they’re not a good way to stand out since they lack the unique factor.
• Never mix two or more font families at once. Stick to one, and if you must use them both, make sure it’s for two entirely different purposes.
• Avoid mixing contrasting fonts.
• It’s never a great idea to use all-calls to draw attention or emphasise your text
• Avoid using hyphenation. But that can be justified when the line text consists of more than 60 characters.

On-brand Supporting Graphics

The final step to creating a solid brand identity is working on the extended visual language of your brand, including photos, icons, and design assets.

Google has some interesting visual assets guidelines on icon designs. Here’s their take on everything:

• Use a reductive or flat approach when designing the icons
• Icons should face the front
• Standard background colours
• Straight hard shows, not curved and soft ones
• If you have to choose, go for geometric shapes
• Padding should be done according to the icon’s shape

Choosing a Branding Agency in Singapore

At its core, branding shouldn’t be outsourced. But there are core aspects of it that should be handled by a professional.

One example of a company that witnessed unprecedented success after rebranding is Netflix. Before that they were just a small company that was struggling to find its footing, and then they rebranded and they were transformed into a hundred billion-dollar company.

Keep in mind that not every company that outsources their branding services to an agency has a success story to tell. You have to make sure that you’re working with the right branding agency, and one way to go about it is by answering the following key questions:

How many Agencies should you interview before you find the right one?

There’s no ordinate number of agencies that you should interview before you find the right one. But simple logic demands that you interview as many of them as you possibly can. Don’t rush to choose any agency, not until you’ve interviewed at least ten of them.

How Big Should the Agency Be?

One of the reasons companies rebrand is to take advantage of the international market. This is a reserve of well-established agencies that smaller branding firms always struggle with. The point is to always go with a large branding firm that’s handled a similar task before.

What Clients has the Agency worked with

It helps to dig through the company’s portfolio to find out what types of clients they have had the opportunity of working with in the past. Are they from the same industry as you? Digging into a company’s portfolio to find out what type of clients they have served in the past will open your eyes to what the company is actually capable of doing.

What’s their Process?

Data analysis is the driving force of every successful business strategy. You have to figure out what your clients want and position your business accordingly. Speaking of which, a good branding agency is one that’s big on using a data-driven branding approach. Do their past clients feel like they invested a great deal of time researching?

What’s Their Reputation?

Branding is one aspect of your business that requires total transparency. There’s no room to second-guess any of the decisions you’re making. So how about you find out from their past clients how the agency handles their business. Check out the testimonials on their website and the quotes they’re getting from past clients. Is their reputation solid enough or can you spot some holes?

Top Branding Agencies in Singapore

Branding Services to Expect from an Agency

Finding an agency that offers branding services in Singapore is ridiculously easy.

Just Google it, and you’ll be presented with a long list of branding agencies in the country to choose from.

The only hurdle maybe your budget. But there are ways to go around it, and that’s part of what we’ll be exploring in this section of the post.

Here goes the list:

The Discovery Session

The most important part of branding your business is making sure that it can be found. You have to start by figuring out how to make it discoverable.

So, in a sense, every business needs a discovery session. Your business should be right there, in front of your target customers, where you can make sales.

Marketplace Research

Before you run with branding, you have to understand the marketplace. This demands that you begin by taking a comprehensive view of the market.

This has to be conducted on two levels:

The first one is by looking at the industry as a whole. What’s the general state of the industry you’re in? How big is the market? What’s trending at that particular point?

The second one is narrowing down to your specific geographical location.

Competitor Research

Part of the branding process is understanding the forces surrounding you. It’s through understanding the people you’re competing with that you’ll be able to carve your own niche.

At the end of the research process, your agency must be able to answer the following questions:

• What’s the list of businesses you’re competing with?
• What does each one of them excel at?
• What exactly are they doing wrong? Or which area are they performing poorly?
• Are you impressed by their look? What’s there to emulate about them?
• Which one of their offers rivals yours?
• What makes you unique? Why would any customer choose you over any one of them?

Remember, branding runs deeper than the visuals on your website. It runs deeper than your colour scheme and logo.

Brand Naming

People will remember your business by name. So, you need to be really strategical about how you choose a name for your business.

A new business needs a name; an existing one needs to look into the possibility of changing its name.

There’s no limit as to how you can name your business. You can even name it after yourself, or one of the ingredients in your products.

Brand Identity Design

This is the idea most people have about branding.

Sorry to hush your mellow, but this is just one segment of it.

It’s through brand identity design that your customers get to recognise you. It’s what your customers use to visualise your business.

Website Design and Development

Website design and development are also part of branding services.

Remember, your website is an online representation of your business. It’s, therefore, important that you would want it to be consistent with your overall brand identity.

You’re not just setting up a website for the sake of it. You want the website to carry everything that you represent as a brand.

Partnership and Relationship

You must establish a relationship with your branding agency.

A good agency is like an extension to your business. They’re like your second eye, a trusted resource partner you can count on in your time of need.

It’s a relationship you want to nurture. So, give yourself time to learn and understand each other, and eventually, you’ll be joined at the hip.

Branding Deliverables

The agency you hire to help you brand your business will be responsible for creating branding deliverables.

This refers to all the items that you’ll be taking home with you to help you out with marketing your business.

Here goes the list of branding deliverables that your agency must be able to facilitate.

Brand Strategy

This is where branding starts. Think of your branding strategy as the foundation of everything the agency will be doing.

If the strategy doesn’t feel right, you can be sure nothing will work.

Your agency shouldn’t keep you in the dark about their game plan or the intended course of action

Brand Identity Design

This should be the next item in your list of deliverables. It refers to all the things that customers will be using to identify you.

Brand identity design consists of brand name, brand logo, brand guidelines, colour scheme, typography, and logo usage.

You need a budget for this. You can come up with your business name, but you need a professional to help you out with your logo and the rest.

Stationary Branding and Design

Your branding activities aren’t restricted to online. You need to brand everything you’ll be working with, including stationary.

You can go all in and get the following items designed at once:

• Business cards
• Compliment slips
• Letterheads
• Invoices
• Contracts
• Receipt books
• Quotes
• Proposals

You can also hire an agency to do all this for you. You need all the items on the list, all designed to match your brand.

Marketing Materials

Marketing means putting your business or brand in front of potential customers. Not an easy feat for small businesses.

Your marketing budget could easily hit the roof. So, you need to be really smart with the decisions that you make on this one.

Printing Services

You need quality printing and not the cheapest option you stumble across.

Pick a company that does embossed edge paint printing for your cards. These companies are not cheap – typically, most of them tend to charge about $400 for 500 cards.

But you can bet your cards will look more professional.

Using Branding and Marketing Grants in Singapore

Singapore is a tech powerhouse in the Asia-pacific region, and that’s mostly because it enjoys the support of the government. This support comes in various converging forms. Among them are low tax rates on small businesses, a robust regulatory regime, a well-developed IT infrastructure, and, of course, grants.

And luckily for you, we just happen to know of a government grant for branding that you might want to take advantage of today.

EDG: Strategic Branding and Marketing

Interested in refreshing the image of your company? Or maybe you’re looking for a way to generate more engagements.

Enterprise Development Grant for Brand and Marketing Development may be the right project for you.

Any project that involves creating or redefining its brand values qualifies for the EDG.

Any new business is looking for a marketing strategy that it’ll be using to communicate its offering better and differentiate itself from the competition. The EDG project is a good start if you’re strapped for cash.

It’s even better because it also supports partnerships, overseas market research, and product diversification studies.

Eligibility

Companies that wish to apply for the EDG are required to meet the following criteria:

• Must be registered, in addition to operating in Singapore.
• Have at least 30% shares in the business.
• Be in a financial position to start and run the business.

Benefits

• For SME’s, the grant will be supporting up to 70% of the qualified branding cost.
• For non-SME’s, the project will be supporting up to 50 of the qualified branding cost.

Follow this link to apply

The Application rules and the procedure:

• Before you apply for the grant, you’re advised first to approach the SME centre to find out if your project qualifies. Your project will be evaluated for eligibility.
• The application you submit will be assessed and approved by Enterprise Singapore (ESG). Those assessing it will look at the scope of the project, projected outcomes, and the competency levels of those behind it.

The Application Process

To apply for the grant, you have to begin by signing up to the Singapore’s Business Grant Portal (BGP) with CorpPass (LINK: https://www.businessgrants.gov.sg/).

After that, you have to wait for 8 to 10 weeks for your application to be processed.

In case of anything, you’ll be contacted via the BGP to submit additional information or make necessary adjustments to your application.

Approval

Once your application has been approved, your company will be presented with a LOF (Letter of Offer).

Here’s what will be indicated in the letter:

• The conditions that come with the support
• The amount of grant your company has been awarded

You’ll be required to accept the conditions in the LOF within the specified timeline, and that’s it.

Author Bio

Tom Koh is widely recognised as a leading SEO consultant in Asia who has worked to transform the online visibility of the leading organisations such as SingTel, Capitaland, Maybank, P&G, WWF, etc. Recently he was instrumental in consulting for a New York-based US$30B fund in an US$4Bn acquisition. Tom is a Computational Science graduate of the National University of Singapore. In his free time he performs pro-bono community work and traveling.
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February 05, 2020

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