When it comes to branding, small business owners often have no clue where to start. But where should they turn for help? Just take a look at sites like Your Logo Makes Me Barf, and you’ll discover an underground community of designers who would rather make fun of the branding missteps of small business owners rather than help them strengthen their identity. Enter Prestobox, a company that automates brand identity. Prestobox’s new Brand Genie product helps small business owners not only generate a brand identity based on a set of questions about the company, it also gives small business owners the option to purchase the identity across multiple platforms, including business cards and website templates. Brand Genie was tested on over 25 small companies, with 100 percent of the participants calling the process “easy and fun”. The process is free, and Prestobox offers a number of branding suggestions that include recommended colors, fonts and images. Prestobox was founded by CEO Elicia Putnam, who partnered with COO/CFO Sara Conte, an experienced angel investor and consultant. Michael Verdine is in charge of the creative side of the team. He is known for his work with Nike. Putnam came up with the idea for PrestoBox when she was working at her own agency 14 Hands. She found that branding was hard to scale, and many small business owners just couldn’t afford the service. When small businesses try to brand themselves, they often don’t understand how colors, messaging, and images all tell the story of their business. “We are thrilled to launch PrestoBox and create an affordable, easy and fun software service to solve the challenge of small business branding,” believes Putnam. “We believe in brands and we believe that every company of every size should have one.” The market for automated branding services is huge, and the onboarding process via the Brand Genie quiz is actually as easy as Prestobox claims. There is no snobby agency jargon on the Prestobox site. Instead, small business owners will find a straightforward solution to their simple problem.
