This scene, common behind the scenes of any business negotiation, sums up something that many entrepreneurs in the western region of São Paulo still treat as an aesthetic whim: a brand isn’t about appearance. It’s a business decision.
For twenty years at the helm of Alef Design Editora, alongside her partner Alexandre Almeida, Fernanda Sodré has seen this scenario repeat itself, with slight variations, in virtually every industry that has come through the studio—from healthcare to engineering, from jewelry to law. And she reached a conclusion that today guides Alef’s work: branding is not the department that handles a company’s aesthetics. It is what quietly determines how much the company can charge, who trusts it first, and what remains of it after the novelty wears off.
The price that trust allows a company to charge
Two service providers can offer exactly the same technical deliverables and yet charge completely different rates. The difference rarely lies in the cost spreadsheet. It lies in the perception of value that the brand builds even before any commercial proposal reaches the client’s desk—and this perception isn’t abstract: it translates into a number at the bottom of the quote.
“No company competes solely on price, even when it thinks it does. It competes on trust, and trust has a price,” says Alexandre Almeida.
In his view, the most common mistake among small and medium-sized businesses is treating visual identity and communication as a one-time expense—a one-off investment, done once and then forgotten—rather than seeing them as permanent business infrastructure, just as essential as a good management system or a well-trained sales team.
AI Enhances, It Doesn’t Replace
Over the past two years, artificial intelligence tools have become part of Alef’s daily routine—they generate layout variations in minutes, suggest color palettes, and speed up text drafts that used to take an entire day. For Fernanda, this doesn’t threaten editorial and design work—it refocuses it on what truly matters.
“The tool handles the drafting. The people who decide what the brand needs to say, to whom, and why are still human beings,” explains Fernanda Sodré.
This observation isn’t a defense of the profession—it’s a market reality: any competitor has access to the same AI tools that Alef uses. What no tool can replicate is the strategic judgment regarding what that specific company should communicate, when, and with what emphasis. Automation works faster; it does not replace the nuanced understanding of a business, an industry, or a client that AI will never get to know personally.
This, in fact, is the very opposite of what many business leaders in the region fear when they cut their communications budgets, thinking that “AI takes care of everything”: without human curation, the result tends to be generic—text that any company in the same sector could have written. What dilutes a brand isn’t the use of technology; it’s the lack of judgment about how to use it.
Communication isn’t a campaign—it’s a habit
A common mistake among companies is treating communication as an isolated action: a year-end campaign, a post that went viral, a rushed rebranding before a trade show. After the peak, silence—until the next urgent matter.
A brand isn’t built in bursts. It’s built through repetition. Every consistent touchpoint—a post, a newsletter, a magazine, a well-written email—is worth less on its own and much more as part of a series, because it’s repetition that embeds the message in the minds of those observing the company from the outside. A company that makes a good impression once is remembered for a week. A company that makes a good impression, with the same voice, every month, is recognized even before it speaks.
This principle is also a form of self-criticism inherent to the profession: the very magazine the reader holds in their hands only works because it is consistent—because it arrives issue after issue, maintaining its tone, quality, and frequency. A single issue, no matter how good it might have been, would not have built the credibility the publication enjoys today among BNI members. The same applies to the communications of any company in the network.
It’s the story that sells, not the ad
Among all the formats that have come through Alef over the past twenty years, one continues to outperform the rest in terms of the return perceived by the client: the well-told story. Not the ad that promises a quick fix, not the generic motivational post—but the concrete narrative, with a character, an obstacle, and a turning point, that makes readers recognize themselves or someone else.
It is this mechanism, in fact, that underpins this very magazine: each issue works not because it lists the services of member companies, but because it tells the stories of the real people behind them—the professional who overcame a crisis, the company that was born from a referral, the expert whose life story explains their passion for their craft.
“No one memorizes a slogan. Everyone remembers a story,” Alexandre sums up. For him, Alef’s role is no longer just about designing brands—it has become about understanding the client at their core, to the point of seeing in them a story that already exists, but one that no one within the company itself knows how to tell about themselves.
In the end, what Alef Design sells isn’t layout, copy, or a tool—it’s an accurate understanding of who the client is behind the business, translated into something the market recognizes even before any sales pitch. It is this understanding, sustained issue after issue, year after year, that distinguishes a company that is remembered from one that is forgotten. For the business owner flipping through this magazine, the question that remains is not whether the brand is communicating something. It is whether it is communicating by choice—or by oversight.
