December 12, 2025
Recently, I was helping a founder think through a rebrand. As we talked about narrative, differentiation, agencies, and budget, I remembered that I’d actually written about this exact topic a few years ago - before AI and large language models became part of our everyday workflows.
I went back and reread it, and what struck me was that the fundamentals still hold, but how founders approach brand work and what they should expect from agencies has changed meaningfully now that AI and LLMs exist.
So rather than rewrite the original post, I wanted to share how I’d think about picking and managing the right brand agency today, informed by the same principles, but updated for an AI-native world.
At Bonfire, we begin investing at the Seed stage, when companies are still forming their identity. Early on, “brand” is usually a logo someone designed quickly, messaging written by the founders, and a website that does the job well enough. That’s not a bug - it’s exactly what should happen early.
As companies raise capital, hire teams, and start selling more seriously, they usually reach a point where their brand needs to evolve. I still prefer the term brand evolution over “rebrand,” because nothing is broken - your company has simply learned more about itself, its customers, and its market.
What’s different now is that founders don’t show up to this moment with a blank page. They show up with:
This is both incredibly powerful—and potentially dangerous.
AI can accelerate brand work, but it cannot replace the hard decisions that make a brand differentiated and durable. With that in mind, here’s how I think about picking and managing a brand agency today. These aren’t new rules so much as updated principles—grounded in what still matters, but adjusted for how founders actually work now.
In my original post, I said narrative is half the battle. That’s still true.
What’s changed is that AI now makes it easy to generate something that sounds like a narrative. The risk is mistaking speed for clarity.
LLMs are excellent at:
They are not good at:
Before engaging a brand agency, founders should absolutely use AI to explore ideas—but they still need to answer the core questions themselves:
At Bonfire, we still help founders work through narrative deliberately, often via a structured workshop. AI can support that work, but it can’t substitute for it. If your inputs are generic, AI will simply help you get to a generic answer faster.
A brand agency should not be discovering your story for the first time during design. Narrative alignment—human alignment—is still the biggest determinant of whether a brand project succeeds or stalls.
If anything, AI has raised the importance of a clear RFP. If helpful, we’ve put together a practical Brand RFP template founders can use to scope a brand evolution and engage agencies more efficiently. You can find it here.
Agencies now vary widely in how they work:
None of these are inherently right or wrong—but you need to understand how your agency works before you hire them.
In addition to the traditional scope questions, founders should now ask:
AI doesn’t eliminate the need for careful scoping—it makes sloppy scoping more expensive. Anything “assumed” to be included in a brand project still has a way of surfacing later as added time, cost, or frustration.
A quick note on budgets and agency selection
One thing I’ve learned over time: the more agencies you engage, the more work you’re creating for yourself. Each agency will typically want two to three meetings and that time adds up quickly.
There’s also a natural chicken-and-egg dynamic in these processes. Founders want the highest quality work for the lowest possible price, so they often wait for agencies to put a number on paper first. Agencies, meanwhile, are trying to scope the work without knowing what’s realistic.
In practice, sharing a budget range upfront saves everyone time. It helps agencies quickly assess fit and propose the right scope, and it prevents founders from comparing proposals that were never designed to be comparable in the first place. A budget range doesn’t lock you in — it creates efficiency.
One of the most common failure modes in brand projects has always been too many stakeholders and subjective feedback. AI has made this worse.
Now, anyone can generate alternatives: “I prompted ChatGPT and got this version…” Access to tools does not equal accountability for decisions.
Before starting a brand project, it’s still critical to:
AI should expand thinking early, but converge decision-making fast. A small, empowered approval group is still one of the strongest predictors of success.
This is where the biggest practical shift has happened. Today, a brand isn’t just a logo and a brand book, it’s a system that needs to scale across:
Founders should expect agencies to deliver:
A good question to ask agencies now is: “How does this brand system hold up when our team is using AI every day?” If the answer is “you’ll need us every time,” that’s a problem.
A good brand is still good business. AI hasn’t changed that. What it has changed is the pace, the surface area, and the number of people who can now participate in brand creation. That makes clarity, alignment, and strong partners more - not less - important.
A great brand agency in 2025 doesn’t just deliver beautiful assets. They help you:
If you’re thinking through a brand evolution and want to compare notes—or want my list of vetted agencies across budgets—I’m always happy to share.
