18 | How Can You Grow Your Brand?

Brand Development vs Brand Strategy vs Brand Identity: What’s the Difference – and What Do You Actually Need?

Many established brands hit a point where things just don’t feel right anymore. Maybe you’ve lost traction with your audience, launched new products that don’t seem to connect, or sense inconsistency creeping in. Knowing something is off is one thing, but knowing what to fix is another.

Do you need to revisit your strategy? Update your identity? Invest in a full brand development programme? It can be confusing when these terms are used interchangeably, but each one actually plays a distinct role in how a brand grows, performs, and connects.

This guide will help you break down the differences between brand strategy, brand identity, and brand development – and figure out which one, or which combination, will move your brand forward.

Brand Strategy: The foundation

Brand strategy is the backbone of your brand. It defines why you exist, who you exist for, and how you deliver value in a way nobody else does. That includes your purpose, positioning, audience, messaging, and values. It’s the lens through which every other brand decision is made.

When should you revisit your strategy? Whenever you’re launching something new, repositioning in the market, or aligning after a significant leadership or vision shift. Without a clear strategy, any identity or creative work risks being built on sand.

“Strategy is your north star. It ensures every piece of brand expression has meaning.” – Kim Van Elkan, Our Managing Director.

When Doritos’ global brand started to splinter across regions, we helped bring it back together. Through deep research and strategic realignment, we created a flexible brand system that stayed recognisable while allowing local teams to adapt for their markets. It was a strategy-led project that re-established clarity and consistency on a global scale.

Brand Identity: The expression

If brand strategy is the why, brand identity is the how you show up. It’s the sum of your logo, typography, colour palette, tone of voice, image style, photography, illustration, and more. These elements work together to create recognition, consistency, and distinctiveness in a crowded market.

Brand identity should never be built in isolation as it needs a strategic foundation. That’s how you avoid looking like everyone else and instead tell a story that’s unique to your brand.

Colman’s is one of the UK’s best-loved heritage brands, but it needed to reconnect with a broader, modern audience. We refined the brand identity with bolder colour use, stronger visual language and subtle nods to its legacy, proving that a good refresh doesn’t mean losing your roots.

Brand Development: The full process

Brand development is the bigger picture. It’s the end-to-end process of building your brand ecosystem, from strategy, to identity, to the systems that make everything consistent and scalable. Think brand guidelines, asset libraries, packaging systems, campaign tools, and the creative storytelling pieces that connect emotionally with your audience.

Brand development is best suited to brands ready to grow: those launching new products, entering new markets, or realigning their purpose after periods of fast growth. It’s how you build a system that can flex, scale, and stay recognisable, even as you evolve.

For Levi Roots, we worked across the entire brand ecosystem, from clarifying messaging to evolving the identity and rolling out an extensive brand toolkit. It wasn’t about changing what made the brand famous, but about bringing consistency, warmth and structure to help it grow with confidence. The result was a 22% uplift in core range sales and a brand system built to stretch.

Why getting the order right matters

You can’t build a recognisable identity without a clear strategy. You can’t roll out a brand development programme if your identity is outdated or fragmented. The right order – strategy → identity → development – gives you solid foundations, consistent expression, and a scalable system.

Brands that jump straight into visuals without first clarifying their positioning often find themselves rebranding again in a year or two. Similarly, brands that skip building guidelines or asset libraries waste time, money, and goodwill trying to maintain consistency.

“Too often, brands come to us after realising they skipped the strategic groundwork. It’s almost always more costly to course-correct later. Getting it right from the start isn’t just smarter—it sets you up to scale with confidence. It’s a step many smaller or newer brands overlook, but it makes all the difference.” – Kim Van Elkan, MD and co-owner at OurCreative.

How OurCreative. helps clients choose the right approach

Our team believes every project should start with a discovery-led process to diagnose what your brand actually needs. That might mean refining your positioning, refreshing your identity, or developing a full brand system for scale. Our goal is to give you a roadmap tailored to your ambitions, not just a set of visuals that look good in a pitch deck.

‍

This approach allows us to stay aligned and laser-focused throughout. It also helps you maximise your investment by prioritising what matters most by getting the biggest impact from every element of the process.

We help clients with everything from auditing and diagnosing what’s working and what isn’t, to evolving their identity to match where they’re going. Developing brand systems that protect consistency as well as providing creative direction for photography, illustration, packaging and beyond is also often part of our scope.

Your brand deserves more than guesswork. From strategy to identity to brand development, OurCreative. helps ambitious brands grow with confidence. Let’s start the conversation. Drop us a note to hello@our-creative.com and we’ll get back to you soon.