The ongoing drama surrounding the roll out of the website HealthCare.gov reminds us, yet again, bad things can happen when, to quote an old adage, "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing." 
Of course, we don't need to tell you the importance of a coordinated and — dare we said — "aligned" approach towards all facets of business management. That is obvious. As this example indicates, things get interesting once other partners enter the equation. Outsourcing forces businesses to interface with a third party, but the level of complexity depends on the task itself, and some arrangements work better than others.
For example: most small companies outsource their payroll seamlessly, which, of course, is a no-brainer: it's easy stuff. You can make a strong case that other roles — SEO, blog writing, and social media management — should be outsourced as well. Then there are tasks when outsourced together can deliver even greater business value. Take branding and advertising.
Businesses generally keep branding in-house. After all, a company's brand didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere: it's the vision of a single individual or group of people who founded the company and cultivated the brand from day one. Why would a company want to outsource this role to a third party? It's like giving the keys to your 1961 Ferrari GT California to a complete stranger (and as anyone who's seen "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" can attest, it rarely ends well)
The business case for outsourcing pure advertising, on the other hand, is more logical. Advertisers, more so than business managers or in-house sales staff, are uniquely attuned to the ever-changing trends in advertising. They have relationships with traditional news outlets. They have experience working with similar clients and can pull from that knowledge. Plus, it's a cost-effective arrangement for the client company: would you really want to pull your rock star salesman off an account to focus on your Twitter presence?
For many companies, branding remains in-house and advertising remains outsourced. Sometimes the two roles intersect, sometimes not. And when they don't intersect properly, bad things happen. And this is where our brief and wholly non-political reference to HealthCare.gov again comes into play, because the existence of these two "siloed" roles heightens the risk of brand disconnect, brand dilution, and ultimately, lost sales. Which is why we're proposing three reasons why your business will benefit from working with a company that does both: an advertising and branding agency. After all, it will enable you to....
Avoid the Perils of Brand "Tunnel Vision"
Outsourcing advertising and brand management to a single provider needn't be as painful as watching your cherished Ferrari pull back into the driveway with a broken headlight. These agencies are a flexible and responsive bunch, and client companies retain a direct role in the shaping and extending of their brand. Moreover, the true value of this relationship becomes evident when an agency flexes its own brand management expertise. As difficult as it may sound, sometimes business managers are almost too close to their brand They've lived with it most of their professional careers, they're emotionally invested in it, and they're often reluctant to change it. In the psychotherapy world, this phenomenon is called "unhealthy boundaries." For the purpose of this post, however, we'll call it "Brand Tunnel Vision" (BTV.) BTV can hurt a company in the short- and long-term, which is why a fresh set of eyes, courtesy of an advertising and branding agency, can be powerful and lucrative.
Know When to Change
Think of the classic start-up run by three people. Suddenly their business expands rapidly, and they're forced to hire a dedicated IT person to manage their increasingly complex technical environment. The same logic applies to branding and advertising. During the formative stages of a company the brand may simply be relegated to the business owner's head. It's an intuitive, gut-feeling thing with no science behind it. That may be fine for the time being, but as the company grows and changes, the brand should, at the minimum, be re-examined and strengthened. And like IT management, branding is a science, where, much like a dedicated IT manager, an outsourced brand consultant can apply quantitative principles to strengthen and extend your brand.
Reap Bountiful "Synergies" (and Other Silly Business School Words)
Third party branding experts have a pulse on what's hot and what works. By being dialed in with inbound and outbound marketing tactics in the advertising space, they can also articulate how a brand can be extended across multiple channels. Working with an agency that handles both advertising and branding unifies your messaging while tweaking the delivery across different marketing channels. Instead of having to hand-off changes to your brand to an in-house or outsourced advertising firm, the interface here is seamless, all under one roof. Less steps and hand-offs translate to less risks of "brand/advertising disconnect." As a result, marketing-savvy personnel can be directed towards more immediate tasks like lead generation and direct selling, and opportunity costs associated with needless, redundant work are minimized, if not eliminated.
Think you may need some branding help? Download our Brand Audit Guide to see where your brand stands:
