The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

When a branding agency shows you three options, you already know how the film ends.

Picture the scene. The agency walks in, dims the lights and reveals three routes on the screen while everyone around the table leans forward, and the presenter lets a pause hang in the air before asking the question that has quietly killed more good ideas than any budget cut: “So, which one do you prefer?” A lovely moment for the wrong question.

Three options? Run.

Look closely. Nearly every time, the three routes follow the same script: there’s the Good, the route the agency actually believes in, usually shown second so it has room to shine. Then the Bad. That’s the bold one, pushed just far enough to make the others look reasonable. The Ugly closes the set, a timid compromise that borrows a little from each and was built for diplomacy rather than distinction. What you’re watching is a classic western without the Morricone soundtrack, with the client stuck somewhere in the middle of the standoff, eyes moving from one route to the next, trying to work out which way to draw.

Whichever one they pick, the hardest part of the job (the part they hired an agency to do in the first place) has just landed back on their desk, dressed up as collaboration. Clients choose the way people choose. Taste and comfort play their part, though mostly it’s whatever looks least risky in front of the board. More often than not they ride off with the Ugly, the one nobody hated. Nobody will remember it either. That’s how brands end up sensible, well executed and completely invisible.

The chef doesn’t ask

You don’t ask the chef: butter or olive oil? Nobody tells a surgeon where to cut, or asks an architect which way the staircase should turn. You hire them so you won’t have to know. What they’re worth lies in what they can do, and just as much in the hundreds of small decisions they take before anything reaches you, along with the confidence to stand behind every one of them. Branding should work the same way. But somewhere along the line, our industry decided that handing over the choice was a form of respect.

One proposal, a thousand attempts

We present one proposal. It’s the one left standing after we’ve tried everything else. The standoff still happens; it just happens in our studio, weeks before you arrive. Behind that single proposal sit dozens of directions and hundreds of sketches, typefaces we tested and dropped, colours that looked brilliant on Tuesday and wrong by Wednesday, and ideas we loved and killed anyway because they were answering the wrong question. The kitchen is organised chaos, which is fine, since none of it ends up on the plate.

What reaches the table is the Good, and only the Good. It’s the version that survived all of that. We can defend it line by line against your strategy, your market and, above all, your audience. Whether we like it best hardly matters as long as it’s the one that works, because as we see it the job is to explore everything and then have the nerve to choose.

Not take it or leave it

Still, none of this means take it or leave it. One proposal starts a conversation. We’ll challenge it with you, test it against real situations and keep sharpening it until it holds. What we won’t do is hand you three menus and ask you to cook. Some clients find that unsettling at first, with no plan B on the table and no safety net, but after a while the conversation moves away from which option they like and settles on a better question: whether this one is right.

So if an agency shows you three options, by all means enjoy the show. Then ask which one they’d choose. If they can’t answer, you have yours.