Your Agency Has a Trust Problem and My Local Gym Proves It

Why branding is the only differentiator in a crowded, chaotic market

I started going to a new gym recently. Within walking distance of the house, good equipment, and lots of powerlifting meatheads.

Standing around between sets, I scanned the slew of sponsor banners hanging from the walls. Most were clearly local mom-and-pops. How could I tell? Because their banners looked like they were built in Microsoft Paint sometime around 2004. Family photos. Clip art explosions. Logos with five different fonts. One even tried to get clever by slanting the A and X dramatically lower than the rest of the letters, like a Metallica tribute gone wrong. Only one, a national brand, was solid. It was painfully clear who had invested in real branding and who was winging it.

As a marketer, I notice things like this. I can’t not see it. What’s explicit to me is implicit to others ... we all see the same problems, but some can't identify exactly what's wrong or why. They just know something's not quite right with what they see in the positioning, marketing, and branding that surrounds us.

Lately I’ve been reading the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland, an Ogilvy strategist who talks about trust signals and how advertising works differently than we rationalize. We think reviews and testimonials are the big trust signals. They’re important of course, but branding is even more powerful. A proper brand communicates seriousness. It says someone invested money, time, and care. That alone creates trust, because cheap things feel risky and expensive things signal safety.

It’s the reason you buy a TV from Best Buy or Amazon instead of from a guy selling one out of the trunk of his car. It’s why you buy chicken from a grocery store instead of from someone with a cooler on the corner. The brand is a promise from the seller. Best Buy, Amazon, and the chain supermarket have invested enough that they can’t risk ruining their reputation. The guy on the corner … you’ll never see him again.

Agencies are no different. Most agency owners pick a name in isolation and quickly use ChatGPT to slap together a logo, pick some random colors, and suddenly think they have a brand. Sure, you have a brand — it just sucks. Sucks badly, and it shows. Then ask yourself: how are you different from the guy selling chicken out of a cooler on the corner?

How can you change your fate in business and in life?

Invest in a real brand. Translation: spend money for a legit branding agency to create a brand for you. I’m not talking about hiring someone on Fiverr to create a logo. I mean a full brand that encompasses who you are, why you’re in the business, who your ideal clients are, what clients can get from you and only from you, and your messaging architecture. Once that’s done, the logo and colors are easy. Don’t do a DIY job and skip straight to the logo. It will suck, and badly.

Once you have a brand, enforce it relentlessly. Consistency is the whole point. Stop reinventing things just because someone on your team gets “creative.” McDonald’s doesn’t reinvent the hamburger in each location. Neither should you. The term branding comes from putting a hot iron on the hide of cattle to sear the owner’s mark into the hide. Once applied, it never changes. That’s how you should treat your brand. Set it and enforce it.

Branding separates you from the sea of cheap, flaky, one-man agencies that vanish as quickly as they appear. Our industry is polluted with ripoff artists and hucksters. Be professional. Be different. Build something that lasts. Build something people trust. Or eventually fade off into the distance like the chicken peddler moving on to the next corner to find their next victim.

Now, take a hard look at your brand and do something about it. Until you do, you’re fighting a no-win battle.

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I hope that helps and gives you something to think about.

~ Erik