How do you showcase your branding portfolio in a pitch?

Below are some strategic steps to follow: Research Your Audience: Before diving into the portfolio, get to know your potential clients. Understand their industry, challenges, and what they value in branding. Select Relevant Work: Choose projects that align closely with the client's needs and goals. This shows you can deliver what they are specifically looking for. Narrative Structure: Organize your portfolio as a compelling story. Start with a brief overview of each project, including the client’s problem and your creative solution. Showcase Versatility: Include various elements (logos, campaigns, digital assets) to showcase your breadth of skills, but ensure they’re relevant to your audience.

Here's how to effectively highlight your process: Introduce Your Methodology: Briefly explain the framework or methodology you use for branding projects. This gives your audience a roadmap for what to expect. Initial Consultation: Discuss how you approach the client brief. Detail the key questions you ask to understand the brand's goals, target audience, and unique selling points. Research and Insights: Highlight your research methods, such as competitor analysis or audience surveys. Concept Development: Include mood boards, sketches, or wireframes, and explain the rationale behind your creative choices. Collaboration: Speak about how you work with other professionals, be it copywriters, developers, or marketers.

We like to think that we have a process. In reality, it's never the case. It keeps improving and adjusting with every project, and each customer comes with a specific package that forces us to adjust the plan. That's the beauty of these projects; design is just like chess—it's not a solved game.

Tell it like a timeline: Highlight where you came from before each project, what the main challenges you faced along with your customer, what you've learned from each experience, and how you plan to avoid similar challenges in your future projects. There's no power stronger than a good story.

Make sure to present the work that you want to do more of. It should be the projects you enjoyed working on the most and the work that is likely to yield exceptional outcomes. With the few projects you choose to present, ensure that you cover multiple areas within each of them. For example, if you're showcasing a print project, demonstrate how you've considered a digital extension to the project and how it could seamlessly evolve from the same concept. Many times, customers may not fully realize the potential of an idea; your goal is to help them see it.

There are a few recipes out there for the 'perfect' portfolio; don't follow them. They have been overused, and they almost all look the same. Be yourself! Tell your story from a blank sheet.

I totally resonate with the importance of being yourself, you for sure need to show your brands personality. When we present our work, we kick things off by showing the initial problem we set out to creatively tackle. Then, we dive into our process, explaining how we uncovered insights, and finally, we get into the nitty-gritty of the execution. Whenever we can, we drop in a quote from the client. Something like, "We couldn't believe it – our site was live, and we saw sales shoot up by XX% in the first month!" It's not just about making things look good; it's showing how our work is both strategic and super successful. This kind of real-world proof gives potential clients that extra boost of confidence to want to team up with us.

Portfolio is just a portfolio without additional placements of you, your story or pieces of your knowledge and experience. Consider being present on conferences either as a speaker or a participant, share your knowledge on Linkedin, utilize other social platforms, blogs, podcasts. Think also about enhancing your portfolio with client’s testimonials and reasons why someone should use your knowledge and expertise.