As Jeff Bezos says, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”, so give them something good to talk about
Building an identity from scratch, refreshing your look, or rebranding completely, whichever it is, if you’re reading this, you’ve decided you need some level of branding services. But branding means different things to different people, so it’s worth first defining exactly what it is we’re talking about.
When we use the word ‘brand’, we’re referring to the perception people carry in their minds about a company, built up over every interaction they’ve ever had with it. It’s different to a product, which you experience physically either through a tangible good or by engaging with a service, because a brand is purely emotional. It’s how a company makes you feel.
In a world with endless options for the same item, people buy brands, not products.
The clearest example of this is water. Water is an essential resource for human life, yet somehow, somewhere down the line, it went from something nature gave us freely to something we have to pay AED 30 for in a restaurant. Supermarkets stock rows upon rows of different water brands, and we’re stood there at a loss on which one to choose so our partner doesn’t complain that it’s not the one they like.
Despite the logos on the plastic wrappers, the shape of the bottle, and the unreasonable disparity in price tags, within each container is simple H2O. So why do people have such strong opinions about which one they buy? That right there is the power of branding.
What Makes Up A Brand?
A brand is an amalgamation of the company’s purpose, vision, mission, values, guiding principles, and visual identity. People often mistake the expression of these components, the web design, advertising campaigns, product design, in-store experience, or customer service, for the branding itself. But really, those are just how the brand shows up.
At Katch, when we’re developing a brand from the ground up, we first define how the business should be seen, by whom, and why, this is the brand positioning and brand strategy. Then, we address the messaging direction, including the tone, vocabulary, and the language the brand uses to define itself. Only once these have been ironed out do we begin working on the logo system design, inclusive of the primary mark, variations, and icons.
After the strategy and the logo are finalised, we move on to colours, typography, and imagery. From there, we define clear usage guidelines for everything we’ve covered so far, along with application examples that show how the brand stays consistent while adapting across channels. A strong brand is recognisable wherever it’s seen, because it follows a defined set of rules that accounts for every application.
How Much Does Branding Cost in Dubai?
As much as we would love to give a straightforward answer to this, it’s not a straightforward question. Ask a freelance designer or a branding agency in Dubai for a proposal, and the numbers that come back could differ by a couple of zeros. One quote might cover a logo and two colourways, while the other covers a full identity system, messaging matrix, rollout templates, and source files.
There are also other factors that affect the price, ones that don’t necessarily translate into physical deliverables but still shape the outcome of what you receive. Things like agency seniority and team structure, turnaround speed, and the number of revisions included. These vary from agency to agency, so you’ll need to get in touch for a bespoke proposal on the nitty gritty.
What we can offer some guidance on, though, is how scope of work changes the branding cost in Dubai. To make it simpler, we’ve broken the scope down into layers, with each layer adding to the total project price.
Layer 1, Brand Strategy
Who are you? Who are you for? What makes you different? What do you want people to feel when they encounter your brand? Without clear answers to these questions, everything that follows is guesswork, which is why this is the foundational layer of brand creation.
Layer 2, Brand Identity
If you’re already clear on layer 1, you can jump straight to layer 2. This is the physical expression of your brand strategy, through logo, colour palette, typography, visual language, and messaging. Done properly, your brand identity gives your business a visual system that works across every touchpoint and scales with ease.
Layer 3, Website Development
Your website is almost always the most important brand touchpoint you have, and its inclusion is often what separates a proposal from a branding agency in Dubai from one by a freelance designer. It’s where buyers go to make up their mind, which makes it the place your brand identity needs to work hardest. An updated website should launch alongside your updated brand, since inconsistency here confuses potential customers and turns them away immediately.
Layer 4, Activation and Rollout
This is the layer most businesses forget to budget for. Your new brand is live, but now what? Your team needs to understand it, believe in it, and use it correctly. Existing clients deserve that same communication, and so does anyone with prior brand recognition, letting them know that you haven’t disappeared, you’ve simply had a makeover.
The Final Breakdown
Whether it’s a refresh, a rebrand, or a completely new identity, you should be considering all four layers at once. A decision you make in layer two will affect what’s possible in layer four, and shortcuts taken in layer one will show up as roadblocks in layer three. The total cost will vary depending on how many layers you include, but the cost of doing it once will always be lower than the cost of doing it twice.
The Benefit of Partnering with a Branding Agency in Dubai
You could outsource the work to an agency overseas, potentially getting the same quality standards and comprehensive outcome for less. When it comes to building a brand in Dubai though, this isn’t something we’d recommend.
Our biggest edge over such agencies, and most freelancers too, is our in-house Arabic content team. Arabic language adaptation is one of the most underestimated costs in UAE branding projects, and it involves far more than simple translation.
As we have already discussed, your brand is how you make your audience feel when they encounter your business. A native Arabic speaker looking at a poorly translated brand website feels only indifference, maybe frustration. A brand that takes the time to communicate meaning over a literal translation will be received much more warmly and stands a chance of actually converting.
Arabic services come in handy at every stage of the branding process, with or without website development or content creation in scope. Trade licenses require an Arabic version of the company name, the selected Arabic typeface needs to look cohesive with the Latin variant, and logos and brandmarks need to work right to left as well as left to right. Service providers without local expertise tend to overlook these details, yet they’re essential in determining if a brand feels culturally native in the region.
Your Business is Only as Strong as its Branding
If you’ve read this far into the blog, chances are the question in your head isn’t ‘should we do this?’ but rather ‘how should we do this?’
What you need to consider is the cost of cutting corners on branding, and that’s not something you’ll find on a spreadsheet.
Think about everything else you’re already spending on. PR, events and activations, print collateral, paid media, an incredibly experienced sales team. On paper, you’re doing everything right, but all that activity comes back to your brand. If the branding is poorly executed, inconsistent, or unconvincing, all of that spend is working against itself. It’s like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Invest in quality branding from the start, and everything else you invest in will actually generate results.
