So here it is: brndmrk. Because the world clearly needed one more brand consultancy?
I would say yes.
To explain why, I need to zoom out for a moment. What follows is the thread that has run through my work for nearly twenty years and why it now takes shape in this offer.
When I joined Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux in 2004, the agency was already in transition. Its founder, Jörg Zintzmeyer, was a branding legend. The stories that came out of that era all pointed to the same kind of character: someone willing to fight hard for the strongest solution, whether that meant pushing a decision further than the client had planned or holding the line until it was right.
By the time of his death, and with Interbrand fully absorbed into the global group, I began to sense a broader shift toward a more process-driven kind of consulting. For me, that experience stands in for a wider industry tendency. Instead of fighting relentlessly for the best possible solution, agencies increasingly present as many possible solutions as the client needs in order to feel comfortable choosing one.
Not convinced by magenta? Then let us explore yellow, blue, green, red.
That does not improve the result. It just makes the process more profitable. For the agency.
In a world that moves faster, is fully digitized, and constantly generates new communication challenges, agencies have had to keep expanding their offer. Services have become broader, smaller in pieces, and harder to compare. Over the past years, the dominant logic has been increasingly fragmented service models. Excellence is no longer primarily associated with deep problem-solving ability in a few areas. More often, it is equated with the ability to build and manage broad interdisciplinary service portfolios.
In that environment, brand development increasingly gets treated as a vehicle, something that happens along the way. Sometimes out of necessity because the foundations are missing. Sometimes because people assume the brand will somehow emerge from the creative work itself. That is how we ended up with studios for design, development, and brand building, agencies for digital brand building and UX, and shops for PR, events, and brand strategy. Everyone thinks strategically. Everyone can do brand.
When the Solution Becomes the Problem
The startup and innovation boom of the past years has produced a huge number of brands that look good and feel completely interchangeable. A logo for a friendly fee. A website template. The rest postponed until after the next funding round. Growth at all costs. Revenue first.
For someone aiming for a fast and profitable exit, investing in identity and distinction may not seem essential. Branding has become shorthand for make it look nice quickly. Even founders with long-term ambitions often seem unable to resist that pattern.
The result is predictable. The brand contributes nothing to differentiation and creates no real added value. Brand building stops being an active, value-generating discipline. New challenges, a growing portfolio, new competitors, new markets, new media, cultural shifts, are handled reactively, without first defining course and position.
That costs time, energy, nerves, and money.
Sooner or later, the pattern catches up. The fifth competitor shows up with the same offer. Product advantages stop carrying the full load. Team turnover becomes economically absurd. At that point, it becomes easier to see that the issue is not tactical, but structural.
And the irony is that the actual problem is often neither mysterious nor particularly hard to solve.
The market is full of services for every visible symptom. Weak profile? New website. High employee churn? Better incentives. Poor shop sales? Increase social spend. All of those things may have their place. None of them address the underlying issue.
We live in a world of simultaneity and excess. That applies to products as much as to employers. The question of why has overtaken the question of what. A clear position in both economic and social terms is no longer a nice-to-have. It is demanded, all the time.
If a company is not clear about its own identity, if it cannot state what it stands for in a way that others can understand, then why should customers or future team members commit to it?
Brands are a bit like friendships. Before we decide whether we want to be close to someone, we need a sense of their values, goals, attitude, and interests. If there is a basis for connection, identification becomes possible. Clarity creates confidence. Confidence creates the ability to decide. Including the ability to decide which partners, services, and measures are actually right for your development.
Getting there is not rocket science. It can be done in a structured and purposeful process. The alternative is not really an alternative, unless you enjoy operating in the dark and spending time and money over and over again trying to persuade people from scratch.
Honest service creates lasting value. That requires mutual respect, real expertise, and efficient collaboration. It works best when agencies focus less on the offers that generate the most revenue and more on the ones that create the most impact.
At the center should be one simple question: can we solve the other party’s problem in a way that is effective and appropriate, and in doing so contribute to lasting economic, emotional, and social growth?
If the answer is yes, you have a match, not just a lead.