Facing a tough business challenge? Piece of cake. We’ve got a service package for that.
We’ve scrolled through a lot of agency websites in our day. A-lot. And most, if not all, have a services section. This section usually reads like a laundry list of their capabilities. They do brand foundations, they do research, and they do mission, vision, and values. They do branding and logo design and messages and collateral. And after a while, they all start to blend together because they offer slightly different shades of what seems to be the same thing.
Parliament is a brand foundation services agency that guides brands experiencing critical inflection points. Based on our experience, we can tune our services to address the changes your business is experiencing. Blanket services that can apply to any company or organization may work for some, but we like to deliver more customized, targeted solutions. We meet you where you are and help you get where you want to go. Over the years, we’ve worked with a wide range of clients, and we’ve noticed themes that come up time and time again. With these themes and common challenges in mind, we tailored our services to help get our clients the focused, foundational support they need to have a bulletproof brand, now and into the future.
Get nitty-gritty answers to the questions we most commonly hear from new and prospective clients about communication, paperwork, cadence, fit, accounting, and more.
If you bake it, they will come.
Let’s think of it like baking a cake to help explain how we think about services and brand foundation services. The cake is the finished result of our engagement—which may be an all-new brand and identity, a refreshed brand, or a smooth brand transition under a new CEO or management. While cakes are usually made to celebrate joyous occasions, in the case of this metaphor, we’re baking a cake because your company is facing a critical inflection point, and the only thing that will get you on the right path is delicious baked goods. Seems plausible, right? Ok, so it’s not a perfect metaphor, but stay with me. It will all make sense in the end. Read on, and we’ll explore common inflection points and the services we offer to help solve them.
New chef in the kitchen (aka CEO or ownership change).
So you’re baking a cake. You’ve been a baker for a while, you’ve got your poofy hat, and your flour, egg, and butter game is generally pretty tight. Now all of a sudden, a new head baker has been hired. This chef has a bigger poofy hat than you, wants you to use a different kind of flour, and insists that you frost from the top down instead of from the bottom up. Your world is in shambles. This new leadership and the culture they are working to establish in the bakery has you questioning everything you thought you knew to be true. This kind of disruption happens all the time in organizations. A new CEO is hired, or there is a change in ownership, and all of a sudden previous expectations, along with your business’s mission, vision, and values, are all unclear. This kind of shake-up is challenging, but with guidance and outside perspective from a brand foundation team like Parliament, we can take your kitchen from the brink of chaos back to copacetic.
Stale ingredients (aka brand awakening).
Marketing of brands, like a cake that sits under the glass for too long, can get stale. Let’s go on a little hypothetical journey. Imagine you make a delicious chocolate lava cake. Customers seem to like it, so you make more of it. You don’t focus on your other flavors (especially not spice cake, which is the worst kind of cake) because chocolate lava has become your bread and butter. But people’s tastebuds are fickle, and the buyers are growing tired of chocolate lava.
And on top of that, competitors have taken notice of your sales success and have started marketing their own versions of chocolate lava cake. Now everyone’s dessert palates are becoming overcrowded with gooey chocolate, and they yearn for something different. Perhaps something lighter like Angel food? When a scenario like this happens to companies, it’s time for a brand awakening. Parliament has offered this service to help many organizations transition from being a brand stuck under the glass to one with fresh new life that people are once again excited about.
Cakes, etc (aka portfolio definition).
Businesses that are great at businessing often start new businesses or expand their product line. Before they know it, they have a bunch of different brands—sometimes under a master brand, sometimes not—that often don’t have enough organization and marketing strategy to differentiate them. To stick with the cake analogy, your bakery may have five kinds of red velvet cake. Or maybe your bakery, in addition to cake, also sells real estate and printer ink. When this happens, the customers are thoroughly confused, and your similar sub-brands run the risk of competing with themselves. When a marketing team needs help making sense of their offerings and getting their house of brands in order, Parliament is here for them.
Cakes are out—cupcakes are in (aka total brand reset).
In the business world, this is often called a pivot. Circumstances have changed, and your business must change or die trying. This could be in response to a perceived opportunity (the sudden, inexplicable popularity of cupcakes), some competition you can’t compete with (like if Starbucks switched to selling cake), or an existential threat to your current business (like if frosting started turning people into zombies that terrorize the community). No matter what precipitates the need for a brand overhaul, Parliament has helped other brands create newer, better versions of themselves, and we can do the same for you and your team.
Perfecting your recipe (aka preparing to scale).
It starts wholesome enough. You love to bake cakes, and cake makes people happy, so you open a bakery. Then your mom tells everyone at your bridge club about your delicious cakes, so you bake a few more. Then a food blogger with 70k followers gets wind of your delectable desserts, raves about your cakes, and now you’re opening a second bakery and training new bakers. Before you know it, you’re talking about book deals, franchise opportunities, and international distribution. If your business is scaling up or preparing to scale, we can help provide the strategic brand planning it takes to minimize growing pains and maximize future success.
Serving up brand foundation services.
Come to think of it, this article itself is a lot like cake. It was pretty tasty initially, but you’re probably sick of it by now. We are. But brand foundations and business challenges, on the other hand, we can talk about all day. If you’d like to learn more about Parliament and our approach, let’s chat .
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