Eps. 07: What Does It Cost To Build A Brand Properly?

Brand strategy and the true cost of branding, explained honestly: what does it actually cost to build a brand properly — and what does it cost when you get it wrong? Donovan breaks down real cases (Fendi, Bud Light, Jaguar) on cost and risk, then tackles whether brand value actually pays off when you sell your business.

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BRAND:NEW is hosted by Donovan, Creative Head & Brand Champion, and author of the upcoming book ‘The Business Owner's Guide to Branding’.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Brand new. Welcome back to Brand New. I'm Donovan. Last episode we broke down what a brand audit actually is and why skipping one is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make before a rebrand. We also spoke about branding versus advertising. Remember, advertising is a utility bill. Stop renting your attention and start owning it. Today we tackled that big question. Actually we covered two big questions today. So settle in, this might be a slightly longer episode, I hope you don't mind. So let's start with the first big question. What does it actually cost to build a brand properly? Well, how long is a piece of string? I know nobody wants that answer, but it's the honest answer. Goes it depends entirely on what you're actually asking for. Are we talking basic old school identity, a logo, two colors, typeface, some printed stationery? Or a fully scalable system, a brand book, color palette, full type scale custom website, social guidelines, the works? Are you sitting across from a small boutique studio or an agency with brass letters on the wall and an overhead to match? Your designer in a converted garage in Texas or a glass tower in California? Cost scales with complexity. A few thousand gets a solid visual identity for a local business, where tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, buys a deep strategic positioning. Millions if you're rolling out globally. But here's the better question, or two. Not what does it cost to do this, but what does it cost not to, and what does it cost when you get it wrong? Let me tell you about a napkin. In 1965, Carl Lagerfeld sketched the Fendi double F monogram logo over lunch on a napkin. That million dollar scribble became one of the most recognizable luxury symbols on the planet. Sixty years later, it's on every bag, every storefront, every runway. Its value is basically incalculable. But here's what people always miss about that story. The napkin didn't build Fendi. It was a starting point. A great mark gives a brand somewhere to stand. What you build on top of that is everything. Fendi spent a lot of money, effort, and time to build an icon. Now you don't need to be an Italian fashion house to prove the principle. Innocent Smoothies launched in 99 at a music festival. And they asked festivalgoers to vote on their future. Should the founders quit their day jobs? You voted by dropping an empty bottle into a bin marked either yes or no. Yes, one, and a brand was born. That unique and slightly ridiculous piece of brand building eventually led to Coca-Cola snapping them up for roughly $750 million. Now, the other side of this, because cost isn't just what you spend building a brand, it's what you lose when you get it wrong. And that can be very, very expensive. Bud Light was America's best-selling beer for two decades. In 2023, an appeal to Spite triggered a backlash so fast it lost the number one spot almost overnight. $1.4 billion gone, along with 21 years of customer trust. Slow to learn, Jaguar stepped on the same rake just one year later. They abandoned their heritage, dropped the iconic leaping cat, and launched a campaign with zero cars in it. European sales cratered by 97.5%. And no, that's not a typo. Here's a lesson from both, and it's the one sentence from this whole episode that's worth writing down. Brand equity accumulates in drops, it empties in buckets. The bottom line, what does proper design cost? It's a complicated answer that varies from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But cheap design and poor decisions costs a whole lot more. Let's take a quick break from the show. Everything on brand new comes from somewhere. This podcast is an extension of a book I've spent the last year writing. It's called The Business Owner's Guide to Branding. 150 answers to the questions you're actually asking. Written for business owners, it's a book that finally translates what goes on inside a brand designer's head so you know exactly what you're paying for and why. Available soon on Amazon, in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. Now back to the show. Let me hit you with a bonus point. Today it's a big one. If I sell my business, does the branding actually have value? Let's backtrack just a little to something I hear all the time. I can't afford that. The truth is, if you're serious about your business, you cannot afford the cost of amateur design. Professional branding is a high yield investment because it creates brand equity. The commercial premium your business earns through trust, recognition, and reputation. It's the reason someone picks you over a near-identical competitor without fully knowing why. Think of it like a reputational bank account. Every piece of solid design, every strong decision, every positive customer experience, every recommendation, that's a deposit. Cheap design isn't cheap. It's a slow, invisible expense paid out in lost clients and missed opportunities. And when the day comes that you want to sell, which, let's be honest, is most business owners' actual end goal, a well-managed brand pays that investment back in multiples. Buyers pay a premium for a brand that doesn't need fixing. A great brand isn't just worth more than the competition, it's worth more than everything else in the building combined. In the late 90s, Burberry had become diluted, overexposed, borderline unfashionable. They rebuilt the whole thing, the visual identity, the product design, retail experience, brand control, all of it. The result? Global luxury powerhouse today worth billions. Or take the big one. 97. Apple is weeks away from bankruptcy, a confusing mess. Steve Jobs comes back and doesn't just fix the supply chain, he executes a full brand purge, streamlines everything, unifies the identity, and launches Think Different. That Apple stock you didn't buy in 99 is up more than 35,000% today. Design did that. So the real question was never whether you can afford professional design. It's whether your business can survive anything less. I'll leave you with this one from Joel Spolsky, the guy who created Trello. Design adds value faster than it adds cost. In the next episode, we finally get to the meat and potatoes. Logo design. Yes? It's time to talk about your logo. That's it for this episode of Brand New. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me. I don't take your time for granted. If this helps you, share it with the business owner who needs it. And if you've got 10 seconds, please leave a rating. It would really mean the world to me. I'm Donovan. This has been Brand New. See you in the next episode. Brand New