16 | Brand Development? Our. Guide to Taking Your Brand to the Next Stage

Brand development isn’t about ripping it up and starting again. It’s about building on the equity you’ve already earned by sharpening your story, strengthening consistency, and making your brand work harder for what’s next.

This principle means we can effectively partner with brands that have momentum but need clarity, cohesion and creative tools to grow with intention. This guide is for the brands that are evolving, not reinventing.

What is Brand Development (and what it's not)

Brand development is a strategic and creative process that builds from the foundation you’ve already laid, but it’s not just a visual facelift. It’s about refining your brand identity, honing your tone of voice, sharpening your positioning, and building the brand assets and guidelines you need to scale, without diluting what makes your brand distinctive.

Logo tweaks and fresh colour palettes have their place, but without a solid strategy behind them, they’re just decoration. Brand development ensures every decision is made with purpose, so your brand can stretch, scale and stay consistent as you grow.

As our Creative Director Jon Dignam says: "Brand development is about making sure your brand can scale, stretch and stay consistent across new products, new markets, and new people."

Why established brands can’t afford to ignore Brand Development

There comes a point when a brand’s original foundation starts to creak under the weight of new ambition. Entering a new market is one such moment, because what resonates in one place won’t always land in another. Brand development helps adjust the story without losing the core of what makes it familiar.

Launching new product lines is another trigger. Expanding into different categories demands an identity system that can stretch without snapping. Without strategic brand development, the risk is creating disjointed offshoots that dilute recognition.

A shift in leadership or business strategy is also a common catalyst. As the vision changes, the brand must evolve to support it, aligning with internal goals and external expectations.

Mergers, acquisitions, and portfolio expansions make brand development critical. Bringing together different cultures and customer bases demands more than visual alignment; it needs a unified brand voice and system.

Finally, brands must move with their audience. As consumer expectations evolve, brands that stand still risk becoming irrelevant.

When Levi Roots decided to take back ownership of his brand, he came to us for a refresh that would reassert his character and heritage in a more competitive market. We brought his personality front and centre, injected more colour into the brand world, and positioned him to stand out among bigger players. The result was a 22% sales uplift on his core sauces range.

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What are the risks of operating with an outdated or undeveloped brand?

A brand that can’t scale visually or strategically becomes a bottleneck to business growth. It creates confusion for customers who no longer understand what the brand stands for and fosters disconnect among internal teams, making it harder to rally around a shared mission.

Design and messaging that don’t reflect the quality of the business today can create perception gaps. Customers might assume the product hasn’t kept pace either.

Without brand development, growth becomes reactive meaning it responds to short-term opportunities without a clear framework. Inconsistent brand expressions across channels or markets can erode trust and loyalty.

In short: if your brand doesn’t grow with you, it holds you back.

Building brands for the next stage of growth

We’ve built our Brand Development Services around making sure brands scale smart. Our approach starts with strategic foundations: understanding your audience, refining positioning, and auditing competitors. This groundwork ensures that every decision is rooted in real-world insight.

From there, we move into identity refinement. This might mean evolving your logo, refreshing your typography, building a colour system with meaning, or tightening your layout principles.

Visual assets could be anything from illustration systems and iconography to photography direction – whatever is needed to bring the brand to life in a way that's rich and ownable. We also sharpen messaging and tone of voice, ensuring your brand speaks clearly and consistently to your audience.

Next, we build out the visual system and application, rolling the brand out across packaging, digital platforms, campaigns and beyond. It needs to work everywhere your audience meets you.

Along the way, we create the tools that keep everything consistent: brand books, technical guidelines, and asset libraries that are built to scale.

This is how things played out when we worked with Doritos, who came to us with a challenge. Their brand had become disparate across global markets and Our work helped to realign the brand’s core assets. Through modernising its look and building a flexible identity system that could stretch across geographies, we brought consistency and cohesion to a global icon.

Similarly for Bullfix, we created a brand built from the ground up for an ambitious scale. With a system designed to flex from product packaging to digital, it’s a case study in how strategic brand development builds strength and recognition right from launch.

5 signs your brand might need development now

If your visual identity no longer reflects your business today, it might be time to evolve. Maybe you’ve launched new products or entered new markets but lack the systems to support them, leading to inconsistent messaging and brand fragmentation.

Here are some key signals to watch for:

• Your visual identity no longer reflects your current business.
• You’ve launched new products or entered new markets but lack supporting systems.
• Internal teams struggle to explain what your brand stands for.
• Your audience seems confused or disconnected from your messaging.
• Brand expression is inconsistent across channels or departments, which can erode trust.

If you’re growing fast but feel like your brand is playing catch-up, brand development isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.

Curious if it’s time to develop your brand? Explore our Brand Creation Services or get in touch to chat about how we can help.

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