Choose a branding agency on three things: whether it has solved a problem like yours before, who will do the thinking on your account, and what you will own when the project ends. The portfolio matters less than you would expect. Almost every agency’s work looks good on its own website.
A search for “branding agency Philippines” returns network agencies with offices in BGC, ten-person studios in Makati, freelancers, and a few printers who also design logos. They all use the same words. This guide is about telling them apart before you sign.
Decide what kind of branding project you have
The right agency depends on the size of the problem. Most branding projects are one of three kinds.
A new brand. The company or product has never had a real identity. You need a name, or a check on the one you have, then a visual identity and the first set of materials. Laserly, a new skin studio we worked with, started at the name.
An evolution. The brand is known and trusted, but it looks dated or falls apart on a phone screen. You keep what people recognise and rebuild the system around it. That was the job at InLife Benefits: progress without losing the credibility the name already carried. More on that in how to rebrand a business in the Philippines.
A restructure. A merger, a new holding company, or a group with six business units that each made their own logo. This is corporate branding, and most of the work is deciding how the brands relate to each other before anyone draws anything. It needs people who have sat in a boardroom while two subsidiaries argued over whose blue survives.
The four kinds of branding agency in the Philippines
Freelance designers. One person, working with you directly. Right for a new small business that needs a clean logo and a few applications. The limit is capacity: one person cannot run a leadership workshop, design the identity and produce forty templates in the same month.
Design studios. Small teams that are strong on craft. Ask how much time goes into positioning before the design starts. In some studios the answer is one meeting.
Independent branding agencies. Strategy and design under one roof, with a team small enough that you will know everyone working on your brand. designblue is one of these, so read our opinion with that in mind.
Network agencies and consultancies. The local offices of global groups. They have the largest teams and the most process, and suit a conglomerate or a consumer brand launching in several countries. For a mid-size company, the risk is being the smallest account in the building.
None of these is a bad choice in itself. The bad choice is a mismatch of size: a network agency for a clinic with two branches, or a freelancer for a bank.
What branding services should include
Branding services differ between agencies more than the proposals suggest. A complete engagement has four parts.
Strategy. Interviews with your leadership and some of your customers, a look at competitors, and a written positioning: who you are for, what you offer them, and why you instead of the alternative. For a group of companies, it also covers the brand architecture.
Identity. The logo and its variants, colour, typography, imagery, and usually tone of voice.
Guidelines. The rules, written so that someone who was not in the room can follow them. The identity plus these rules is a brand identity system.
Applications. The first real things: business cards, a presentation template, social media templates, signage, sometimes the website.
Often quoted separately or left out: naming, trademark search and registration, photography, printing and signage production, the website, and the internal launch. None of these has to be in the scope. You need to know which ones are not.
A brand strategy agency that delivers a deck and no identity, or a studio that delivers an identity with no strategy behind it, is selling half of this. Sometimes half is all you need — as long as you know which half you bought.
What a “top branding agencies in the Philippines” list is good for
Names, and not much else. Many of those lists are paid placements, or they are published by one of the agencies on the list. They cannot tell you who is right for a 60-person logistics company in Pasig.
Use a list to collect five or six names. Then ignore the ranking and read each agency’s case studies, looking for a company of your size with a problem like yours.
Seven questions to ask a branding company before you sign
1. Who does the strategy, and will we work with them directly? In larger agencies the senior people often pitch and a junior team does the work. Ask for the names of the people on your project.
2. Can you show us a decision a client made because of your strategy? Real strategy changes something: a product line dropped, three names merged into one, an audience given up. If the only result of the strategy phase was a mood board, it was a design brief with a longer name.
3. How many concepts will we see, and what happens if none of them is right? Two or three directions, each with a reason behind it, is normal. Know how many rounds of revision are included. “Unlimited revisions” usually means nobody has planned for the project to end.
4. Who owns the copyright, and when does it pass to us? Under the Philippine Intellectual Property Code (RA 8293), when you commission a work you own the work itself, but the copyright stays with the creator unless a written agreement says otherwise. Your contract should assign the copyright in the final identity to your company, usually on full payment.
5. Do you check names and logos against existing trademarks before you present them? As a rule, the right to a mark in the Philippines comes from registering it with the Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL), not from using it first. A DTI business name or an SEC registration is not a trademark. An agency should at least search the IPOPHL database before it lets you fall for a name. The registration itself is a job for a trademark lawyer or agent.
6. What exactly do we receive at the end? Editable source files, not only PDFs and PNGs. Templates your team can open in the software it already uses. And the font licences: a typeface the agency has licensed for itself is not licensed to you.
7. How will our own people learn to use it? Most of your brand will be made by your in-house designer, your HR team and your printer, not by the agency. Ask who the guidelines are written for and whether there is a handover session. At InLife Benefits we wrote the brand manual for their in-house designers, because they would be the ones using it.
If you only have time for one question, ask the last one. A brand your own people cannot use is a brand you are renting.
How to compare branding proposals
Your procurement team will probably ask for three quotes. The trouble starts when the three describe different projects and get compared on the total.
Ask each agency to split its fee into the four parts above. Then check each proposal for the same things:
- How many people will be interviewed in the strategy phase, and are any of them customers?
- How many concepts, and how many rounds of revision?
- How many applications will be designed, and which ones?
- Who is on the team, and how senior are they?
- How long will it take? If it is much shorter than the usual eight to sixteen weeks, find out what was left out.
- When are payments due? They should follow milestones, not the calendar.
A lower total usually means fewer interviews, fewer applications or a more junior team. That can be the right trade. It should be one you chose.
On pitching: asking five agencies to design your logo for free tells you who guesses well. A written approach and a conversation tell you more. Give every agency the same brief. We wrote a practical guide to briefing a branding agency for that step.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a branding agency do?
It defines what a company stands for and builds the system that expresses it: positioning, naming where needed, visual identity, tone of voice, and the guidelines that keep all of it consistent. An advertising agency then takes that brand to a wide audience. We compared the two, and creative agencies, in branding agency, creative agency or ad agency.
How long does a branding project take?
Eight to sixteen weeks for a brand identity, from a clear brief to final files. Add time for naming, for a long approval chain, or for a group with several business units.
How much does a branding agency cost in the Philippines?
There is no standard rate, and two quotes for what sounds like the same project can be far apart. Four things move the fee: how many people must be interviewed and aligned, how many brands or business units are involved, how many applications are designed, and how senior the team is.
What is corporate branding, and how is it different from product branding?
Corporate branding is the brand of the company itself: what investors, regulators, partners and future employees see. Product branding is for one thing you sell. A corporate branding agency spends more time on brand architecture and internal agreement, because the hard part is getting a group of businesses to look like one company.
Does a branding agency need to be in Manila?
No. Most branding agencies in the Philippines are in Metro Manila, but reviews and presentations work on a video call if you are in Cebu or Davao. The strategy workshops are the exception: ask whether the agency will travel for those, and whether that cost is in the quote.
Where designblue fits
We are a boutique branding and web studio in Makati, working with Philippine and regional brands since 2007. Our brand experience design work covers strategy, identity, guidelines and applications, and the same team then builds the website that carries the brand. Our branding work includes InLife Benefits, Laserly and Digital Alchemy.
We are not the right agency for everyone. We do not buy media, and a new business that only needs a logo is better served by a good freelancer. If your brand has to end up as a working website and not only a brand manual, that is the kind of project we are set up for. Talk to us. The first consultation is free.
