The case for “always on” branding

And yet, ​“brand­ing” is still often treat­ed like a project with a neat begin­ning, mid­dle, and ta-da. It’s the sprint to deliv­er a new logo, the big reveal moment, and the han­dover of a set of guide­lines. Every­one applauds. And then… silence. The agency exits stage left.

That’s the qui­et tragedy of brand­ing-as-project: the most all-encom­pass­ing busi­ness asset you have gets reduced to a one-time cre­ative exercise.

When brand­ing real­ly begins

Brand­ing doesn’t end when the guide­lines are approved. That’s when it starts. What’s that phrase about ​“no plan sur­viv­ing first con­tact with the ene­my”? In brand­ing, the ​“ene­my” is the real world — messy, unpre­dictable, and utter­ly unin­ter­est­ed in your pris­tine brand deck.

It starts when a cus­tomer lands on your FAQ page and either hears the brand’s voice, or doesn’t. It starts when a prod­uct man­ag­er writes the first real-world brief and it doesn’t align. It starts when cul­ture, ser­vice, and prod­uct try to align and… don’t.

That’s the moment the brand stops being a pol­ished idea and starts being a liv­ing, breath­ing real­i­ty. It’s also the moment when sup­port mat­ters most, when teams need guid­ance, not just guidelines.

And yet, that’s when most agen­cies have already packed up their props and left the stage.

The case for ​“always on”

Adver­tis­ing cracked this years ago with retain­ers and the mea­sure­ment that ensures impact and val­ue. This has to be where brand­ing goes next.

Because when the rebrand ​“ends,” the job of liv­ing it usu­al­ly falls to in-house teams who are very pas­sion­ate, yes, but often not part of the jour­ney, over­loaded, siloed, and too far from the board­room to bake the brand into prod­uct, ser­vice, cul­ture, and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. So the brand gets stuck in the design depart­ment instead of steer­ing the busi­ness. That’s not lack of belief, it’s lack of sup­port. And inter­nal­ly, the brand itself can become siloed, with dif­fer­ent teams mak­ing their own inter­pre­ta­tions, each drift­ing a lit­tle fur­ther from the core idea.

At ODA, we cre­ate brands that don’t just look good in a pitch deck; they work in the wild. They dri­ve the busi­ness. They shape deci­sions in the board­room and the shop floor. And we stay with clients long after the ​“big reveal,” help­ing them apply, adapt, and embed the brand where it mat­ters most: prod­uct, ser­vice, cul­ture, and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Impor­tant­ly we also help clients by tak­ing their agen­cies on the jour­ney and ensur­ing it flows through every touchpoint.

We think like busi­ness part­ners. And we prove val­ue, by mea­sur­ing brand health, track­ing behav­iour change, and mak­ing sure the brand is actu­al­ly deliv­er­ing against com­mer­cial goals. Because a brand that can’t prove its val­ue doesn’t have any.

Where brand­ing gets real

At ODA, we see brand­ing as a strate­gic part­ner­ship, not a fixed-scope deliv­er­able. From the start, we explore how teams will bring the brand to life, what sup­port exists, and where we can step in to add val­ue, and clos­ing the gaps that stop the brand from becom­ing real in the everyday.

We design our work for impact, not just han­dover. We stick around beyond the reveal, help­ing clients bring the brand to life in prod­uct, ser­vice, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and cul­ture. Every six months, we run a ​“Real­i­ty Check”, a pulse on what’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket and how the brand should evolve to meet it.

We don’t stay for the sake of it. We stay to make sure the brand stays.

Final thought

The best brand­ing doesn’t live in guide­lines. It lives in deci­sions, tools, trade-offs, and ten­sions. That’s when you need your agency most, not at the start, but when things get real.

So maybe the ques­tion isn’t ​“Why do brand­ing projects have an end­ing?” Maybe it’s ​“Why do we still treat them like projects at all?”