How is a branding agency chosen in Spain?
You choose it for fit and connection. After many years in the industry, we see five key criteria: what problem you have, who does the work, price, what happens after delivery, and the size of the provider.
Every few weeks a call comes into Cocota starting the same way: “we’re looking at three or four studios and we don’t know how to compare them.” It’s a reasonable question for someone who isn’t deep into the industry, and the market answers it badly, because almost everything published about how to choose an agency is written by agencies that want you to choose them.
This guide carries the same problem at its root —we wrote it—, so we did it backwards: we tell you the five criteria we use internally to say no and to understand whether we’re the perfect partner for the problem and client in front of us. We publish them in full, including the cases where the right answer is to hire someone else.
Below are the five, with the price range for each type of provider and the seven questions we would bring, written down, to the first call with an agency.
What is a branding agency, and why the label matters little
A branding agency is a company that defines what space a brand occupies in the market and how it expresses itself: positioning, identity, visual and verbal system, and its application across the touchpoints where the brand meets its audience.
In the Spanish market the same discipline is sold under at least five labels: branding agency, brand studio, brand consultancy, design studio, and creative agency. The labels are not a clear purchasing criterion. Two studios with the same label can work in opposite ways, and two with different labels can deliver the same thing.
What does discriminate is what comes next.
Criterion 1 — What problem do you actually have?
Nowadays, many of the big briefs come in with the phrase: “we need a logo.” And in a good number of cases, once you scratch the surface for ten minutes, the logo isn’t the problem.
We’ve learned to ask a lot of questions before talking about anything visual. Among them, “what would happen if you did nothing?” tends to give us answers that describe the real assignment much better than the brief.
These are the four situations we see most, and each calls for a different provider:
| What you say | What it usually is | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| "We need a logo" | The brand has become too small for what you already are | Full identity, not a logotype |
| "The website doesn't convey what we do" | A messaging problem, on top of design | Agreed positioning before design |
| "The website isn't generating enough leads" | A product and performance problem | A product or performance team, not a brand studio |
| "Every department does its own thing" | Missing a system and someone to maintain it | Brand system and continuity |
The third row is the most important one in the table. If your main concern is conversion rate, load speed, or lead generation through paid media, a brand studio is not the best purchase. They’ll talk to you about brand when your problem is technical.
Criterion 2 — Who is actually going to do the work?
This is a question we consider key because a brand project is absolutely strategic for a company, and the people who lead it make the difference. We’ve rarely been asked it ourselves, and we’ve always appreciated it when we have: it forces you to put names to it.
You can ask directly: is the person I’m seeing today going to be on the project? At large agencies there’s usually a layer of account managers between who sells and who designs. That’s not bad in itself: it’s what allows them to manage thirty projects at once. But it means the person who convinced you in the meeting isn’t necessarily the one who’s going to make decisions on the project.
What to ask for regardless:
- Name and role of whoever is going to lead the work.
- Whether that person will be in the decision-making sessions or only in the presentation.
Criterion 3 — Is the price published?
In Spain almost nobody publishes the price of a brand project. We do: between €12,000 and €50,000 depending on scope.
It was a hard call to make. The argument against is the usual one —every project is different— and it’s true. The argument in favor weighed more: it saves time for people whose budget doesn’t match what we offer, and lets us spend more time talking with people and projects that do fit.
We don’t say this as a virtue but because a published range now saves meeting time and shows transparency. If your budget is €4,000, you know it before investing your time and ours. If it’s €100,000, you probably need a consultancy with a bigger structure to support you, and you also know that up front.
What to look at when there’s no published price:
- Ask for or share a range on the first call.
- Ask what drives the price up and down: market research, number of interviews and working sessions, deliverables included, number of languages for the verbal identity, number of applications, complexity of the brandbook, training workshops, support after launch…
- Be wary of a closed budget without a closed scope. It’s the source of 90% of the friction we’ve seen.
Criterion 4 — What happens the day after delivery?
This is where it’s decided whether the project is worth what it costs, and it’s exactly what almost nobody asks during the buying phase.
A brand is delivered in a manual and, usually, with key materials ready to use. And then come the trade fair, the campaign, the change of marketing lead, the new website, the new product. If nobody upholds the criteria, the system falls into disorder within eighteen months and the conversation starts over.
The expensive part isn’t this brand. It’s doing it again in three years.
What to ask:
- What happens when my marketing team changes?
- Who resolves an application question six months later?
- Can you show me a relationship of yours that has lasted more than five years?
The third one is the good one, and it allows for a verifiable answer. We’ve worked with the same industrial account (URSA) for twelve years, with Amadeus for seventeen years, and with Havaianas Europe for eight, renewing every year. These are three accounts, not the only ones we’ve been growing alongside for a long time, and not our whole portfolio either, but we’re proud to include their names because they’re demanding companies and our relationship can be checked.
And to be fully transparent, we don’t mean twelve years of continuous project work. It’s twelve years in which they keep calling us back regularly. That’s an important difference and we’d rather be the ones to say it.
We’re not saying nobody ever leaves us. We’ve lost accounts, like everyone does. Most as a natural result of the studio evolving toward more mature services. Even so, our commitment to long-term relationships is clear and it’s part of our DNA.
Criterion 5 — Does it match the size of your company?
It’s the least glamorous criterion and the one that saves the most projects.
| Provider type | Approximate price | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance | €1,500 – 8,000 | A bounded assignmment, with in-house judgment |
| Brand studio | €12,000 – 50,000 | Companies of €3–50M that need expert judgment and want to talk to whoever executes it |
| Large branding agency | €40,000 – 120,000 | Structures with several brands, several markets, and a brand committee |
| Brand consultancy | +€100,000 | Corporate brand architecture, reputation, brand governance |
| In-house team | Headcount cost | High and sustained volume of production |
(Approximate market prices as of August 2026, for branding or full identity projects in Spain. Our published range is the second row.)
The practical rule: if you’re your provider’s smallest account, you’ll get their most junior team. If you’re their biggest, you’ll exhaust their capacity. The sweet spot is the middle.
The criteria that discriminate less than they seem to
Awards. We have more than forty, including 12 ADG Laus and 2 European Design Awards, and even so: in this category almost everyone has a track record of wins. It works as hygiene —it confirms the work is competent— not as a reason to choose. An award says a piece turned out well. It doesn’t say what it was like to work on it.
Portfolio logos. Just because a studio did a project for a multinational doesn’t mean your project will be handled by the same team, or with the same scope. Ask what exactly they did in that case.
Team size. More people isn’t more judgment. It’s more production capacity, which is a different thing and only matters to you if you have volume.
And if you’re searching in Madrid
Searching for branding agency in Madrid returns three things mixed together: directories, blog listings, and real studios. It’s worth separating them.
What actually changes when you choose locally:
- In-person sessions. In a brand project there are two or three moments where being in the same room shortens weeks: the kickoff, the territory presentation, and the final validation. Everything else works just as well remotely.
- Knowledge of the local market, if your client is local. If you sell across all of Europe, it matters little.
- Nothing else. Proximity doesn’t improve the criteria.
Where to find candidates: sector directories (Sortlist, Clutch) and award listings in the category (ADG Laus, Awwwards, Lovie) include many agencies and studios. Cross-referencing them is more reliable than trusting a single list. If what you’re looking for is a large, established branding consultancy with global presence, you can look into Saffron, Landor, or Interbrand.
Branding and website with the same provider, or separate?
It depends on what kind of website it is, and the answer changes quite a bit.
With the same provider, when the website is the main expression of the brand and when the provider specializes in both branding and web design. If the website is corporate, presents a high-ticket product or service, or a new and/or complex concept, our recommendation is to try to concentrate everything with one provider that’s strong in both areas and that can build on what was learned during the branding process. Splitting branding and web would create two separate criteria, and the result could be less coherent.
With different providers, when the website is a conversion machine: e-commerce, high-volume lead capture, a digital product with usage metrics. There, the dominant work is product, analytics, and performance. A brand studio can handle the visual layer, but shouldn’t lead.
And a rule that always applies: if you hire separately, decide beforehand who has the final say on brand decisions. If you don’t decide it, urgency will.
The seven questions for the first call
They work with any studio or agency, us included.
- Who is going to lead the project and be in the decision-making sessions?
- What price range does what I’m describing fall into?
- What drives this project’s price up and down?
- What deliverables do I get exactly, and in what formats?
- How long does it take, and what depends on me to keep it from dragging on?
- What happens when my marketing lead changes?
- Can you show me a relationship of more than five years?
If all seven answers are specific, you have a candidate. If three are vague, you have a risk.
When you don’t need us
We say this here because it’s the useful part of a guide written by an interested party.
- If your problem is web conversion and performance. Look for a product team.
- If your budget is under €12,000. A good freelancer with sound judgment will give you more for that money than we will.
- If you need corporate brand governance, portfolio architecture within a listed group, or reputation management. That’s the territory of the large consultancies and they do it better.
- If what you need is continuous production volume and you already have the judgment in-house, build the internal team. It works out cheaper.
And when you do
We’re a brand studio in Madrid. We work with companies that need to express their essence more clearly and that, generally, have outgrown their own identity. They need guidance, judgment, order, and someone who’s still there once the project is finished.
If you’ve made it this far applying the list, you already know a lot more than when you started. And if applying it rules us out, the guide has done its job!
What we offer, listed:
- Brand strategy, architecture, and positioning
- Brand identity and visual system
- Naming and verbal identity
- Web design and development
- Accessible design compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA
- Brand systems and ongoing support
- Editorial, digital, packaging, and spatial design
Published price: €12,000 – 50,000. If it’s not a fit, we’ll tell you on the first call.