The size of a company always plays a part – sometimes large, sometimes small – in brand makeup and messaging. Small businesses know this well, because often you must address a prospect’s concern of hiring or buying from a smaller concern (pardon the pun). There’s the old adage that nobody ever got fired by hiring IBM, and in the past this was often a tacit reason why small businesses and startups lost pitches, proposals and sales.
But over the last year or two, this has dramatically changed. No longer can a decision maker automatically assume the corporate giant they are about to hire will be in business a year from now, let alone a month or a week from now. In fact, most of the smaller branding agencies and ad firms I know are much more stable than larger ones because they don’t have to cover the big monthly nut of an ostentatious office or large staff.
And the one thing that big firms are doing to their detriment right now is dropping their prices to cover their big nut (or nuts … again, pardon the pun). This may keep them alive in the short term, but they are also training their clients to pay less, which means when we pull out of this downturn those clients will be trained to pay less and may migrate to a smaller company that always has lower prices and/or better value.
Both these factors play to the advantage of small businesses and startups, including how you can position yourself against your bigger competitors. Just hang in there, as the real payoff may not happen for several more months. But hopefully being small will shed some of its negative connotation and become perceived as a valuable brand attribute.
