Top 15 Branding Agencies in the UK
Choosing the right branding agency for your project is an essential investment to help you build a strong brand identity that will serve as a solid foundation for business growth in 2024. Limeup experts listed the best 15 companies in the United Kingdom for you to facilitate your research.
If you Google branding agencies, you will be overwhelmed by over 7000 potential partners to choose only one brand. Thus we created a list of the 15 UK-based leading firms that can cover your needs, from creating an influential label that resonates with your audience to providing a fresh look at your identity.
If you’d like to shorten your research among the listed companies and partner with a time-proven branding company in the UK, we recommend our long-standing partner, Luminary Brands. The firm has helped us create our client’s names, logos, and brand communications strategies.
List of the best branding agencies in the UK
Luminary Brands
Luminary Brands is a world-class branding and web design agency that helps customers leverage their potential to drive more customers. They’re working with companies worldwide, being one of the fastest-growing companies on the global market.
Among its branding services, clients can apply for brand strategy, verbal identity, visual identity, corporate branding, and consumer branding.
How they work with their partners:
- Luminary Brands implements Agile methodology to efficiently work on your project.
- Their branding solutions are based on end-users expectations and industry needs.
- Luminary Brands concentrates 100% on your project.
- Experts analyze the latest trends to present a tailored solution.
Over the years, Luminary Brands, as a world-class branding agency in the UK, has helped businesses improve their brand perception and solidify in their niche. For example, they have collaborated with NextE, Impltech, Raccoon Care and more.
Contact Luminary Brands to discuss your branding requirements.
Their team of 35+ specialists helps to build stronger brands with the use of cutting-edge technologies. Luminary Brands has experience of working in various niches. If you would like to learn more about previous projects, visit their portfolio page.
If you are seeking for a proven branding company, get in touch with Luminary Brands. We will be in touch with you to discuss your obstacles and business goals within a complimentary call.
SGK
SGK is a team of branding specialists established in 1953 and has since served an impressive assortment of clients, including Abbott and Amazon.
The company’s core services are content creation, advertising, and brand management to help companies scale, grow, and stand out against the crowd. Their team also offers sustainability, print support, and packaging services.
SGK simplifies marketing and amplifies brands to deliver value and foster revenue growth. With the provided offers, their partners can grow faster and easier, increase their online presence and get more consumers. World-famous brands such as Abbott, Accor, and Amazon are among their partners.
LoveGunn
Love Gunn is one of the award-winning companies that helps brands in fintech, entertainment, and mobile publishing with brand building and graphic design requirements. It’s a partner that can craft various solutions, from the tone of voice and identity to brand strategy.
The company offers brand identity, storytelling, packaging design, and art direction. Their work approach is based on deep analysis of the company’s and audience’s needs and market uniqueness.
Over the years they have amassed a large number of former works that potential clients will have a blast sorting through. Love Gunn’s consumers include Chelsea FC, Jungle Creations, and Iconic Labs. Also, LoveGunn is included in top branding agencies in London.
Our Own Brand
Our Own Brand is an award-winning prominent UK-based agency whose experts continuously push the boundaries of imagination to craft identities that resonate with people and create marketing campaigns that cut through the clutter.
Our Own Brand’s core offers are branding and videography. It has a team of experienced digital marketers, graphic designers, production directors, and copywriting specialists who are constantly learning to perfect their craft and deliver web design services along with branding.
Since 2018, they have cooperated with numerous world-famous brands, such as O’Neill, Christy, Sky, and CAT.
Burst Digital
Burst Digital is a digital studio in the UK with a small but dedicated team of tech specialists who create solutions for businesses in various industries.
Since 2018, Burst Digital has worked with startups and established businesses, mainly in the information technology, B2B, and consumer goods industries. Their team consists of brand creation professionals who continue to support firms past the establishment of their business and into the growth stage.
Their vast selection of services includes creating a visual identity, design, SEO, social marketing, etc. Burst Digital’s portfolio includes Vivienne Westwood, QPR, and Clean Kitchen.
Make Us Care
Make Us Care represents outstanding companies that help brands communicate eloquently to reach the right target audiences. It provides consumers with solutions that make people love their brand using modern marketing tools.
The team is experts at making companies look and sound exciting, thus differentiating from the competition. The core offers of Make Us Care are advertising, branding, content & production, and marketing campaigns. Their team is proficient in working with financial, IT, and many other industries.
The agency worked with various brands; among the featured, to name a few, are Seraphim, Paint My Home, and Buyagift.
OCD Studio
OCD Studio is one of the most prominent branding vendors that create fresh brand identities across the globe. They believe in a holistic approach to the branding and harness all social media channels to build their balanced yet comprehensive strategies.
It offers brand-building and professional video production to companies of all sizes. Most of its clients are from B2B, advertising, and non-profit fields. Its robust portfolio includes cooperation with companies such as Earthly, Motus, and Together Alone Records.
OCD Studio’s team members are experts at capturing organic audience-generated content and leveraging it to create engaging digital experiences. Its partners can receive various services according to their requests, such as creating video content, visual identity, etc.
Fellow Studio
Fellow Studio is one of the marketing companies with a robust portfolio that includes Nepa, Travel Sentry, and Hermanos Columbian Coffee Roasters.
Fellow Studio mainly works with healthcare, consumer products, and B2B brands, providing various services from graphic to print design. Their designers create a visual identity that tells a story about your company, revealing it to the consumers and gaining their trust.
Being one of the most experienced corporations, Fellow Studio has an established method of working built on principles of connections, humor, understanding, drive, and charm. Nepa, Travel Sentry, and Hermanos Columbian Coffee Roasters have entrusted their projects to the Fellow Studio’s experienced team.
Sparks Studio
Sparks Studio helps businesses with rich history empower their ambitions with a distinct brand identity. Being strategic designers, they take a methodical and straightforward approach to their work through a process they call Review, Define, Design, Create.
In a lineup of their services, Sparks Studio offers branding, web and graphic design as well as printing services for clients in the UK and internationally. The agency predominantly works with startups and small businesses but does not shy away from landing a helping hand to a larger-sized company.
As a full-service company, Sparks Studio works with established companies like Ruffer LLP, Iress, and Sequent to foster their brands, remove unnecessary complexity, and breathe fresh life into their identities.
Series Eight
Series Eight is among the top branding services providers adept at creating beautiful brands, websites, and e-commerce stores. As an award-winning company, it has impactful experience creating websites and brands for consumers in various industries. Founded in 2015, Series Eight is a full-service firm specializing in brand building, UI/UX design, and animation.
Notably, all their employees worked from home long before COVID-19 hit. Over its years on the market, Series Eight worked the most with the hospitality, advertising, and consumer goods industries. Among their consumers are companies such as Kuoni, Cardconnect, and First Data.
NEVERBLAND
NEVERBLAND provides branding, custom software development, and UI/UX services to all businesses, from startups to established corporations like Paul McCartney and TikTok.
NEVERBLAND’s mission is to support every company that would like to make a significant impact. Their in-house team builds solutions for companies using creativity and modern technologies. Since 2005, NEVERBLADN has been helping businesses in the healthcare, e-commerce, and consumer goods industries do just that.
Its portfolio has impressive case studies with partners like Togetherall, Lick, MyTrees, Bulb, and Paul McCartney.
Fat Cow Media
Fat Cow Media is one of the branding specialists in London that provides unparalleled design solutions as well as comprehensive consultancy to companies throughout the United Kingdom and abroad.
In addition to digital solutions, Fat Cow Media creates responsive design solutions, web design, search engine optimization, digital marketing, etc. They mainly operate with products for the e-commerce industry and cooperate with small and medium-sized businesses.
Since its inception in 2010, Fat Cow Media has done projects for companies of all sizes, focusing on B2B, fintech, and education brands. Their client roster includes Bubbleology and 60Forty Films, Raymond Legal, Caroline Victoria London, and South Devon UTC.
Complex Creative
Complex Creative specializes in creating brands and compelling custom websites for them, with the lion’s share of development being done on WordPress.
The Complex Creative team believes providing holistic service is better and strives to help their clients wherever possible. That’s why customers often stay with them after branding for marketing projects and hire them for new website creation and design.
Сomplex Creative is based in London, established in 2019, and has cooperated with numerous clients, such as Pirelli, the Ministry of Defence, and UNICEF.
KOTA
KOTA is an agency that brings design excellence, technical skills, and strategic thinking to branding and digital projects.
Its service offering includes branding, design, and online marketing. KOTA’s team comprises technical innovators, artists, and other creative professionals who propel brands with elegant solutions and forward-thinking strategies. This service provider offers companies many benefits to create full-fledged solutions, from building brands’ identities to bespoke websites.
Since 2013, KOTA has worked with various businesses, including Penguin Books & Jamie Oliver, Matchroom, and the British Red Cross.
Gabrielle Shaw Communications
Gabrielle Shaw Communications is a prominent brand-development provider offering digital public relations and event marketing to consumers in the United Kingdom and Europe.
It has experts in brand communications and identity who are highly experienced across a variety of industries, including luxury goods, lifestyle brands, retail goods, travel, beauty & fitness, arts, and more.
Since 1996, Gabrielle Shaw Communications has helped a number of brands refine their brands and communications, including Ladurée x La Double J, Peroni Nastro Azzuro, and Selfridges.
Which agency is the best for branding in the UK?
While choosing among the 15 leading branding providers, our experts considered all the listed requirements and essentials to provide a comprehensive guide. For now let’s consider what essential points impact choosing a proper candidate to bring your project to successful completion.
Features of a successful branding agency.
Experience in your industry
Ensure the services provider has robust experience in providing solutions for your request, such as email marketing, logo creation, rebranding, etc. As for the course of action is to find a vendor that has expertise working with your particular niche — fintech, education, etc.
How to check if the top branding company has the proper expertise? — check their portfolio and case studies to keep it simple. Experience with similar projects means they know peculiarities and will provide a reliable solution based on the current trends in the market.
The number of projects
The leading purpose of this point is for you to realize if the company has proven successful projects. It’s essential to overview challenges, used technologies, key results, etc to have a clear understanding of how they will treat your project.
The company has to be equipped to resolve unforeseen situations as well so ask them how they overcome challenges. Mitigating risks of bugs and misalignments the vendor 100% will concentrate on error prevention to deliver valuable and risks-free solutions according to your business needs.
So if your answer to the question “Does it have reliable experience?” is “no”, it’s better to skip the candidate and suggest companies that have similar projects.
Communication and user-centricity
Nowadays what differentiates brand agencies from each other is how they treat their customers and if they perceive end users as the backbone of the project. Consider the agency’s answers to your questions, how clear they are, if they answer within working hours and provide you with the required information.
Branding is all about how your customers perceive your brand so ensure that the final solution is concentrated on them, providing them with relatable experience catching people’s attention. To achieve user-centricity, many firms employ what is called a design thinking methodology during which the experts step into the shoes of the audience and design with their needs in mind.
Reputation
Check the company’s profile within independent resources like Clutch and Goodfirms, or read testimonials. Brands have to provide Online Reputation Management (ORM) to track how they are performing in the market and what customers say about them.
So for you to ensure the best branding companies are worth your time and resources you can check their trust and credibility, customer retention rate, brand image, business growth and other crucial points. To put it simply you can use various independent sources and many companies provide crucial information within their websites.
For example, Luminary Brands has a 5-star rating on Clutch with a lot of reviews and their clients are represented on a website at a “Portfolio” page so that you can easily check all case studies.
How to choose the right branding companies?
There’s a saying marketing brings you buyers, and your brand makes them stay. What is often omitted is good brand creation also improves marketing and, in time, generates your business on its own. The leading agencies can help you:
- Improve the effectiveness of all your digital strategy by boosting your ROI and decreasing customer acquisition costs.
- Open up new advertising opportunities for your business according to the current trends, like email marketing.
- Make people think of you when they or someone they know have a need you can resolve.
- Improve your customer retention rate by gaining their trust and loyalty through personal connection and marketing communications.
- Enhance employee loyalty, retention rate, and work motivation, and increase productivity.
- Allow you to charge more due to improved brand perception, awareness, and the touch point with users.
Further, you can receive full-fledged assistance from branding companies for your business’s unique request, improve your brand awareness and get more consumers. For now let’s jump right into the manual of choosing the best-suited organization for your project.
Points to pay attention to when choosing a branding agency.
Define your requirements and expectations
Before jumping into a cooperation you have to establish your business needs — what do you expect from branding services? Even before contacting a candidate for a complimentary consultation you have to define your future achievements — what type of benefits you would like to receive, what a success means for you, etc.
In a nutshell it’s better to create a document and write down all the requirements for branding, how you see it, what image you would like to have on the market and others. It will be helpful for a candidate to create a branding plan and clearly understand the final goal — for example to make your brand more visible.
Consider branding services
Best branding agencies offer comprehensive list of services not limited to branding so that you can easily continue cooperation with the same company. Check what services they provide within their website or some independent sources, it’s better to ensure that for example the company delivers redesigning for existing solutions if that’s your request.
For example Luminary Brands offers websites, branding, marketing services covering digital campaigns, website development/design and services for branding from strategy to visual and verbal identity.
Check case studies and testimonials
Word of mouth and proven track record will tell you everything about the company you would like to cooperate with. It’s common that you also need to check testimonials using the company’s website or other sources and ensure they offer reliable services with the best possible communication and within deadlines.
For example you may use Clutch or GoodFirms with proven reviews and testimonials to have in-depth information about how agencies operate, who their specialists are, if they go an extra mile for their customers, etc. You will also be able to review ratings, case studies, core services, and other crucial data.
How much do branding agencies charge?
While it is natural to wonder about how much you can expect to pay for the services of branding representatives the actual answer to this question is trickier. The cost can also depend on the pricing model that the firm typically operates on.
Typical hourly rates for top-tier agencies range between £50 and £300, with most of them falling somewhere between £100 and £150.
Main elements that influence branding agencies charges.
You’re mostly paying for proficiency with these services, so the quoted work hours may be significantly less than expected. Also, keep in mind that the final price will depend on the following factors:
- Workload: the expense depends on whether you need only a logo design or a package of services. The scope of work will be defined after you contact branding firms for consultation so that they can evaluate your needs.
The harder technologies you will need, the more tasks will need to be done will also define the final price. Also consider that redesigning an existing solution may cost less opposite to creating branding from the very scratch.
- Project’s complexity: the cost will be higher for challenging design, visual elements, etc. Talking in terms of complexity we also consider the timeline — tightening deadlines may cost you more since vendors have to prioritize your project and move other timelines.
- The level of branding experience: Since there’s a vast pool of experienced and talented professionals and agencies you are able to choose any company that fits your needs however it will cost more to hire middle and senior experts. Still hiring broader-skilled top branding companies will ensure project success.
For example, Luminary Brands employs top experts who have broad experience in various niches within branding services.
Also consider that the final price is intertwined with the hourly rate or a minimum project budget which starts at £1,000 according to different companies and can reach £100,000
You can learn how much your project is going to cost by getting a free quote.
Main benefits of cooperating with a branding company in the United Kingdom
Developing a branding identity is a collaborative process. First it is about appealing to your consumer base; nobody knows your company and consumers better than you.
4 main benefits of cooperation with a branding company.
The quality of the leading agencies for you depends in equal parts on their skills and how you communicate with your partner and deliver essential information about your company, such as details on your business and target audience, the advantages of the product or service you offer, your main competitors and how they position themselves, etc.
Consultation
A competent branding company will start any task with a discovery call to gather your requirements and get a better understanding of your business, its core philosophy, consumers, competitors, and the like.
During this meeting you will also cover the goals of the branding operation and the perception you are trying to achieve. Also, this consultation allows you to identify the company’s communication style and if it fits you, what are their values and how they resonate with your vision of further product branding.
This may sound unnecessary and overbearing when you want something relatively simple, like a logo and a color palette. Still without this stage, any branding change will likely do more harm than good.
Brand strategy
Only after investigating you and your competitors branding agencies will start to work on creating or reimagining the elements of your brand. Giving candid and detailed feedback on all deliverables at this stage will ensure you receive the desired results about your new brand strategy.
After you are satisfied with all the deliverables, you can expect a branding company in the UK to compile the results into a comprehensive document containing the best practices for the usage of your brand elements.
This document can then be provided to your employees or consultants specializing in other services to make sure that a consistent brand style is upheld across all of your marketing channels. After all a consistent brand image is highly important to the recognition and relevance of your business on the market.
Brand awareness
This point refers to the firm’s services a few situations simultaneously — from word of mouth to how your target audience perceives your brand identity like logo, colors, etc. Increased brand visibility leads to associations with your company and simultaneously — to more consumers and awareness in the marketplace.
Consistently investing in brand awareness will play a significant role in further development since more and more people will recognize your company. On the other hand you will receive competitive advantage differentiating your brand among numerous firms.
Better credibility
With a strong brand built by a branding agency you will be able to represent your business effectively on the market. Therefore you make your customers think that you are a reliable partner considering values you share with them.
Defining what values you would like to display with your brand you also decide how they will resonate with the company, making them more loyal to your business. Determine how you will treat your customers, what does your brand operate for? What is your mission?
The named questions will allow you to reach new opportunities and build a strong reputation online and offline.
If you are also interested in finding a marketing consultancy, look at the list of the top 25 digital marketing agencies.
Looking for a branding agency in the UK?
Now that you have reached the last paragraph of our article you can clearly understand what requirements are set when it comes to choosing the right company and how much nuances are in staying ahead of the pack. Having multitude of choice makes picking the proper partner more challenging but with this article you can see the big picture.
Our list outlined not only the best companies in 2024 but also includes information about what makes the top partners and how the prices are defined within various projects. You have learned about which agency is the best for cooperation and how to choose the right one among numerous partners.
If you want to cooperate with one of the best branding firms to start a new chapter in the life of your brand, consider reaching out to Luminary Brands. The company has already provided over 50 successful projects for companies worldwide related to new brand creation and rebranding.
Leverage their creativity to establish business identities that resonate with consumers and create beautiful websites that maximize business results. Luminary Brands will help you to illuminate your brand delivering branding solutions that elevate companies.