
The Bit Before The Bit People See
While we’re known for turning a street into a fragrance, a public health issue into a global competition, or a late-night cooking habit into a cookbook, there’s a whole layer of thinking that happens long before any of our ideas come to life.
Brand strategy is the bit before the bit people see, and it’s the bones of any successful business. It’s where instinct becomes direction, ambition gets an action plan, and a brand begins to understand the role it could play in people’s lives before it asks to be let in.
Far beyond mere ideation, our brand strategy services are a comprehensive guide to making a name for your business. We stand out as a brand strategy agency because of the groundwork we do towards understanding your brand properly: what it is, where it wants to go, who it needs to reach, what people already think, and what they could be made to believe.
Once we’ve gotten to the brand’s marrow, we take all that abstraction and condense it into a usable strategy that gives you positioning advice, audience profiles, messaging pillars, tone of voice, brand personas, visual direction and competitive context.
From there, we can recommend the right next steps across design, advertising, film and whatever else the strategy needs in order to become real.
Different businesses approach brand strategy with different goals in mind. Some want to turn a brand into a rallying cry, like Become A Weapon for Outward Bound. Others want to reposition around a feeling people already have but haven’t been given words for, like Be Imperfect for Les Mills.
Creativity is limitless, and as a brand strategy company, we’re not especially interested in being restrained by category, convention, or what everyone else in your industry has decided is “normal”. If you want the safest possible version of your brand, we might not be your people. But if you want to push boundaries and carve out a name for yourself, we’d love to hear from you.
Our brand strategy services can include positioning, audience profiles, messaging, tone of voice, brand personas, competitive context, visual direction, and the next steps needed to bring the strategy to life.
Not at all. While we’re based in Auckland, we’re proud to provide brand strategy NZ-wide.
Usually, yes. Design goes a lot further when it has something clear underneath it. Brand strategy gives the identity its direction and makes the whole process smoother and more purposeful.
Before committing to anything expensive or visible. If you’re launching, repositioning, entering a new market, or just starting to feel unsure about your message, that’s usually the moment.
Not at all. We know an existing brand is usually someone’s baby, with years of work, decisions, feelings, and internal meetings behind it. Our brand strategy services can help shape and narrow what’s already there, without doing a full overhaul.