Collaborating with a Brand Strategy Agency

For leaders of fast-evolving B2B companies, success depends on leaving no strategic advantage on the table. Whether you’re navigating a merger, expanding into new markets or seeking to accelerate growth, each business move represents both risk and opportunity—particularly in how your key audiences perceive and respond to the change. 

Brand is a powerful strategic lever across these circumstances and challenges. A revitalized B2B brand strategy aligns the people who matter most—employees, customers and investors—with leadership’s new vision. Just when they are most likely to feel unsure or have questions, your brand can instead create clarity and momentum. 

This is when collaborating with the right brand strategy agency can be game-changing.  

These partners excel at researching your audiences’ perceptions and needs, then transforming these insights into meaningful brand experiences that support the business evolution.  

The partnership’s success stems from something uniquely valuable: the agency’s ability to recognize and challenge key obstacles to progress that internal teams—even leadership—can struggle to see clearly. 

The Value of an External Perspective 

Successful rebrands (and strategic brand refreshes) start with honest self-assessment—understanding where you are in the minds of your audiences, where you want to go, and the gaps in brand communication and experience that it will take to get there.  

Within a large company or entrenched corporate culture, however, frank self-assessments can be hard to come by. Established patterns of thinking or proximity to specific challenges can easily cloud leadership’s view, making it understandably difficult to evaluate their business’s strengths and weaknesses objectively. They may overlook certain dynamics while overemphasizing others. From within the company, they’re in poor position to see its bigger picture. 

In these circumstances, enlisting the aid of an outside brand strategist agency can help, providing a clear-eyed view of emerging opportunities and offering fresh strategic guidance that can take the business’s transformation further. 

That said, the partnership between a B2B brand strategy agency and their client must be built on shared objectives and clear communication to succeed. Recognizing when your organization truly needs this partnership is the crucial first step. 

How Do You Know You Need a Brand Strategy Agency?

There are several tell-tale signs.

Your in-house team is already at capacity

Leaders must continually assess their current marketing talent, along with their bandwidth or capacity to stretch.

Sometimes they have who they need, but that talent is already underwater. At other times, they may discover they lack the strategic expertise to take on something as significant as a rebrand. 

The benefits of partnership go beyond expanding the team for a one-time initiative. Taking on an outside partner who brings fresh perspectives and activation strategies can be invigorating and empowering for the marketing group that remains. 

Your previous marketing efforts aren’t producing results

Is your company a startup? If so, it may not have the internal marketing acumen to develop its own cohesive brand strategy for accelerating early-stage growth.  

Author Karen Tiber Leland speaks from experience in her book, The Brand Mapping Strategy: 

“One software startup I’ve worked with was trying to create a brand,” Leland recalls. “They just kept throwing money at it. ‘Let’s try a Facebook ad.’ And, well, that didn’t work. Then, ‘Let’s do a Twitter campaign.” And, no, that didn’t work. Then, ‘Okay, let’s advertise on these sites.’ Okay, that didn’t work. 

“The problem was it was all based on a reactive model,” the passage in Leland’s book continues. “But that’s not the same as a carefully researched project where you actually test your assumptions, look at them, hold them up against the market, and see what’s actually going on. 

“A brand strategy agency can be really helpful if you tried a bunch of stuff and none of it has really produced what you want.” 

You need someone to speak truth to leadership

Another indicator that you need a brand strategist agency: you know you need branding help, but the decision makers at the top don’t see it that way. 

Salah Hassan, professor of global marketing and brand management at the George Washington University School of Business (who also led the development of GWUSB’s Graduate Certificate in Marketing & Brand management program), once recalled the time a CMO approached him to talk about his company’s branding ambitions. 

“He told me, ‘I’d like to bring you over and tell this to our CEO,’” Hassan said. “I said, ‘Why don’t you say that to your CEO?’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t dare say that. He’s the type who just wants us to march to his orders. And please don’t mention my name.’” 

Hassan did meet with the CEO, at one point asking him, “‘Who are your competitors?’ He gave me the dirtiest look. He said, ‘We have no competitors.’” Presented with ads from companies providing the same service, the CEO told him, “That’s why we don’t do ads.” 

Hassan then explained to the CEO, “‘If you don’t control and manage your brand, you’re letting somebody else do it for you.’” And that, Hassan insists, is why companies need brand consulting agencies. 

“They’ll say what needs to be said in the right way.” 

Overcoming Common Internal Barriers

Even when a strategic partnership with a branding agency looks like a very good idea, internal obstacles can delay or even prevent the decision to start a search process.

The “we’ve always done it this way” mentality

Bringing in an outside brand strategist agency may be seen as a rebuke to the status quo. So it’s important for everyone to understand why the agency has been engaged—and why it has not.  

The “we’ve always done it this way” stance is a remarkably common response to the introduction of an outside partner. This mentality, as Leland defines it, “is the certainty on the client’s part that they know who their customer is, what they want, and what the brand is”—and therefore have no reason to change their approach. 

“At this point, I generally ask them, ‘Well, has it been working?’” says Leland. “‘Has it been producing the results you want?’ And if their answer is ‘No,’ I say, ‘Okay, we might want to try something else.’” 

Lack of C-Suite understanding and alignment

The brand strategist agency needs the C-suite to be involved in—and understand—the branding process.  

“A lot of leadership teams don’t even understand what brand strategy is,” Wheeler says. “The CMO does. But you’ve got all those other leadership people who don’t.” 

A good brand strategist can educate the C-suite, ensuring that they are engaged and on board with the new brand strategy. 

“The best brand strategy agencies bring a tremendous amount of business acumen and creative prowess,” says Wheeler. “But more than anything, they give the leadership team the courage to make changes.” 

How to Choose the Right Brand Strategy Partner

It’s easy for anyone to launch a website declaring themselves experts in B2B brand strategy. Even established agencies may assign you junior or misaligned talent rather than the perfect-fit strategists you need. 

Our recommendations for choosing the right agency partner: 

• Take the time to research and meet with several recommended agencies 
• Consider agencies with experience beyond your industry or even your category, as a fresh perspective can often lead to thoughtful, creative work 
• Don’t be afraid to ask to meet the team members who would be assigned to partner with you 

Setting the Agency Partnership Up for Success

Once you’ve selected the right brand strategy partner, thoughtful implementation becomes the focus—and it’s vital to establish clear parameters from day one. 

Establish clear expectations and deliverables

Begin by articulating both what your organization needs and what the brand strategy process can and will deliver.  

“The brand strategy is the bridge-builder,” Hassan says. “It’s the connector between corporate strategy and marketing action programs. Without the brand strategy, you are shooting in the dark.” 

“The agency brings a disciplined process to the table,” notes Alina Wheeler, a branding consultant, speaker, and author of the book Designing Brand Identity. “They bring process with key benchmarks, and can help the organization imagine success.” 

You’ll also need to picture the endgame. “All brand strategies should begin with clear goals,” Wheeler says. “I can’t tell you how many start without them. Know what success will look like.” 

Expect the agency to: 

• Conduct research to understand what matters most to the people who matter most to your business 
• Assess your current brand positioning relative to competitors and market needs 
• Develop brand strategy aligned with your business objectives 
• Create a cohesive brand experience that delivers on your promise across interactions and channels 
• Build activation plans that drive meaningful engagement across audiences 

The brand strategy agency, meanwhile, also has expectations. 

“I ask, ‘What’s your budget?’” says Leland. “And they may say, ‘We don’t know’—I run into this a lot. And I say, ‘I can give you branding for a $4 million budget. And I can give you branding for $100,000. There’s always a gold, silver, and bronze version of a branding strategy.”  

Provide access to people and information

As the agency gets to work, you will need to provide the B2B brand strategists all the information they need to get the job done—along with access to the people who have it. 

That list of internal resources may include: 

• Sales  
• Account management 
• IT 
• HR  

In addition—if possible—the agency will want to interview (or at least survey) your clients to get their frank assessments and perspectives. 

Keeping the Project on Track

Once you bring in the agency, establish some ground rules to keep the process moving forward seamlessly. 

Agree on deliverables and process

You will need to define how your organization will support the process and make decisions. That means deciding which players will be on the ground—working directly with your agency partner at all times—and which will weigh in at regular intervals on the path to specific milestones.  

Keep the C-suite informed and involved

“You don’t want to have a situation where everyone decides, then brings the final results to the CEO,” Wheeler says. Because by that point, the CEO may just want to tear up the strategy and send everyone back to the drawing board. 

Expect the agency to create and keep to a timeline

For everything from processes to benchmarks, the agency should provide clarity on timing. Both partners will need to stick to the agreed-upon timeframe for completing the work. 

That said, keep in mind that, “No matter how buttoned up of the process is, something is going to happen that no one anticipates,” Wheeler says. “It always does.” 

Realizing the Full Value of Partnership

As your B2B brand strategy develops, tensions may naturally arise. Difficult questions get asked. Comfortable assumptions get challenged. Your organization may occasionally feel the pull to revert to familiar patterns or “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” thinking. 

In these moments, remember the strategic intent behind engaging an outside perspective. The most successful partnerships balance the agency’s independent expertise with your organization’s deep industry knowledge. 

“I tell clients, ‘I am your off-premises CMO,’” says Hassan. “They better listen to me—or why have me?” 

The best client-agency relationships thrive when both sides embrace their complementary roles. This collaborative approach transforms brand from a marketing function into a powerful business driver—creating the clarity, confidence, and momentum that turn leaps like M&A or spinoffs into sustainable value creation. 

Want a fresh perspective on your B2B brand strategy? Let’s talk.