SCENE: Dusk is falling. Laptop keys click contentedly under the designers' adorably manicured fingers as they make their last edits for the day – 

WHEN SUDDENLY 

Me: "Kristen, have you seen the [x] that [x] is promoting? Did we approve that?" *sends link* 

Kristen: "No, I haven't seen that... Checking it out now..." *clicks link*

[a few moments pass]

Kristen: *gasps* "They've gone rogue!"

Both: "Nooo!" *they facepalm in unison*

In Hoot-speak, "going rogue" means abandoning basic brand principles. Going off-brand. Throwing your brand identity to the wind. Jumping the proverbial brand ship.

"Going rogue" costs cold hard cash.

It really costs. After you've spent weeks, months, even years, creating your business and establishing your credibility, straying from your brand crushes the recognition and professionalism you've built up over time.

Especially as a small business, where just keeping your doors open is an uphill battle from day one, going off-brand could be the misstep that sends you tumbling.

And many design companies couldn't care less.

"We're making this and then you're on your own," is an extremely common mindset that design firms hold toward their clients. They want to create your brand, hand over your assets, see you out the door, and move on to the next project. They couldn't care less whether or not your brand succeeds.

They're not necessarily heartless robots. That's the business model of a straight-up design-only firm. Create a brand, finish a brand, and move on. 

That's not how we operate.

So why do we care when other design firms don't?

Our business is focused on marketing, branding, and design. Not just design. When we work with the clients we take on, we really want to get to know you, get to know your business, and work together to make it succeed. We become invested in you. We try to create the best brand possible and then educate our clients about what it takes to maintain an effective brand.

But we know our clients are experts in their business, not in branding.

So we target our services to fill that niche.

Because we're highly invested in our clients' success even after we've finished creating their brand, we offer retainer services. Retainer clients sign on for a minimum number of hours a month, and we're accessible to them for at least that many hours, up to as many as they need to order, every month, at a standard hourly rate. For any design or marketing service needed. So if one month it's digital promotion materials you need, perfect – we're on it. If the next month, it's a new product you're rolling out, excellent – we're going to ensure it's 100% on-brand to boost your business.

Know the company, create the brand, and grow with the business.

We never want a client to invest time and money into working with us to create an awesome brand and then have it collapse because they can't find resources to maintain it. That's a recipe for brand disaster. We are those resources, here to help market and grow your brand for the long haul, if you should so choose.

The bottom line is:

We care about your brand's success because we're passionate about growing small businesses.

It's the way Hoot Design Co. is structured. We've made it our business to advance yours through strong, long-term partnerships together. We make sure that our services are here for you when you need to enlist extra support after taking that first step to create your brand.

But we also want to invest in helping you understand brand success to make sure you avoid the major pitfalls that spell ruin for so many small businesses. 90% of what kills a new brand is done unintentionally. 

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