Innovation

Branded Agency is a startup that has been operating in Morocco since 2014. Its main objective is to provide businesses, associations, and individuals with personalized products and services that meet their individualistic taste and demands. In a developing country like Morocco, such services are considered to be a luxury that not any business or individual can afford to use. In addition to making access to such services easy, Branded Agency is also making it affordable.

Furthermore, Branded Agency is also reaching to operate on a humanistic level. The company is collaborating with psychologists and mental health centers in Casablanca. The aim of such a collaboration is to provide special attention to the mental health patients. For example, printing personalized cheering messages on depressed and bipolar patients’ personal items is a small gesture that generates much benefit and appreciation. The items would be personalized case by case and would carry the names of the patients based on the demand of the collaborating psychologists. This is a win-win-win situation where the businesses make money, and the patients get heart-warming services.

In addition to the humanistic level, Branded Agency is also reaching to an environmental one. As the new law banishing plastic bags was implemented in Morocco, Branded Agency very quickly adjusted to the new circumstances and since then has been supplying personalized recyclable bags. This new approach certainly costs more, but is serving a greater cause: The environment.

Inspiration

The work of Branded Agency is either directly or indirectly supporting a number of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

#3 Good health and well-being

#8 Decent work and economic growth

#9 Industry, innovation, and infrastructure

#13 Climate action

Overall impact

First, Branded Agency is introducing to the Moroccan market an easy and affordable access to personalized services, which so far has been considered only as a luxurious service in Morocco. Branded Agency is making it possible for startups and small businesses to follow a differentiation strategy in order to focus on specific target market segments and increase their market share to economically grow and expand. While such practices usually could only be accessed by developed businesses that benefit from their economies of scale and important bargaining power, Branded Agency is making it possible now for small businesses to compete on this level without having to bear outrageous costs.

Business benefit

Branded Agency’s business revenue is based on a production model by selling their products and services to businesses and individuals that value them and hence pay for them.

Social and environmental benefit

Branded Agency is impacting individuals in the society through small gestures that carry much meaning. Referring back to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which is divided into lower-level needs and higher-level needs, we could position Morocco as a country that still did not move its needs to the higher level, which are esteem and self-actualization. Branded Agency’s personalized services are in fact pleasing to these specific needs that are self-esteem, confidence, and creativity. Hence, what Branded Agency is trying to do is to indirectly increase awareness of these needs and their benefits for individuals by shedding light on them and making them affordable.

Environmentally, Branded Agency is supporting the decision of Morocco going green in the margin of the COP22 event that was held in the country for the prevention of global warming, and is now supplying recyclable bags to make it easier to live with the new implemented law, which is an aspect of a responsible business and economy as a whole.

Interview

Mehdi Hjouji, Founder