Your customers are exposed to thousands of brands every single day. Logos. Ads. Product launches. Promos. Across social, search, inboxes, and marketplaces, brand messages are multiplying faster than people can process.
Most of it fades into the scroll.
So what’s a marketing manager to do? How can you make sure your brand gets the attention it deserves in this era, notorious for shrinking people’s attention spans?
Let’s dig into practical steps to make your brand identity and story stand out in 2025.
What Is Brand Identity? (Why It’s More Than a Logo)
Your brand identity goes way beyond your logo, colour palette, and Instagram grid.
Real brand identity is a system, not aesthetics.
At Viabrand®, our famous-among-our-clients Brand Visioning™ process helps businesses uncover and express the core attributes that make their brand distinctive, relevant, and memorable.
Our goal? To design identities that don’t just look cohesive, but that behave cohesively across every touchpoint for maximum impact and brand trust.
After all, a good brand identity should flex across future product lines and markets – while giving your brand the memorability and persuasive power it needs to be chosen by your ideal customers.
Here’s what a robust identity system actually includes:
- Brand name: Pressure-tested for memorability, values alignment, and future-fit.
- Brand storytelling strategy: The narrative that connects your purpose to your audience’s worldview.
- Values: The non-negotiable values that shape your internal culture and brand expression.
- Brand voice and messaging: The way you speak — your rhythm, tone, cadence, personality, and specific point of view.
- Visual language: A strategic system of typography, colour, layout, photography, and video — designed to create immediate emotional recall.
The truth is: Smart brand identity design = business efficiency.
According to Marq’s State of Brand Consistency report, 60% of companies reported that brand consistency contributed 10–20% to revenue growth.
Why? Because clarity scales. When your business vision and brand identity are in sync, everything moves faster.
- Marketing becomes easier and more focused.
- Teams become more aligned across marketing, sales, product, and customer experience.
- Your sales team becomes fluent in your value prop.
- Your design system finally feels like it belongs to something bigger.
- You build trust faster with partners and investors.
- Your customers feel more confident, with fewer reasons to say, “I’m not sure.”
What Is Brand Storytelling?
Decision-making is always emotional first, rational second. Which means our brains are wired for story.
That’s why story matters. It’s how we process information, remember things, and connect emotionally with brands.
According to the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, stories activate more regions of the brain than facts alone. Why? Because they’re memorable, meaningful, and more likely to create lasting impressions. This is why narrative-driven brands often outperform in both recall and trust metrics.
Brand stories make it easier for your customers to understand who you are and how your brand relates to their needs.
But brand storytelling isn’t just your origin story. Brand storytelling is about:
- The values you share with your audience: Who you are and what you stand for
- Your customers’ transformation: Who or what does your customer become when they choose you?
- The stakes: What happens if they don’t choose you?
- Your worldview: What beliefs are you inviting them into?
Storytelling is one of the easiest ways to differentiate your brand from your competitors.
How to Build a Brand Identity That Tells the Right Story
If your current brand feels generic or outdated, start here with a mini brand audit:
1. Sense-check your brand promise
- Can you clearly articulate the experience your customers will have with your brand?
- What emotional or practical outcome are you helping them achieve?
If it sounds like something any brand in your category could say, it’s probably too vague or too safe.
2. Clarify the customer transformation
What transformation are your customers trying to make and where do you fit into that story?
Identifying what they want to become gives you the fuel to build a brand that’s anchored in real relevance.
3. Spot the disconnects
Take a look at a few things side-by-side: your website headline, your social bio, a recent sales deck.
Do they sound like they’re telling the same story and speaking with the same voice?
If not, it’s a sign your identity might be too fragmented. A clear brand identity system will help pull everything into alignment.
4. Notice what no longer fits
Are there parts of your brand — visual or verbal—that no longer reflect who you are or where you’re going?
This doesn’t mean starting from scratch. It means deciding what to evolve, what to protect, and what to leave behind.
5. Capture what still feels true
What elements still feel right—and why?
This is often more instinctual than strategic, and that’s okay. Our job is to interpret those signals and translate them into a system that works harder for you.
6. Zoom out and ask: Is this built for the future?
Does your identity stretch far enough to support what’s next? New audiences, new markets, new ambitions?
This is where our strategic process can bring everything back into sync—with structure, storytelling, and confidence.
What Great Brand Storytelling Looks Like (with Real Examples)
Boral
The Challenge: How do you make cement and asphalt exciting to potential buyers?
Their Story: Boral has taken commodity products and embedded them in a bigger narrative about national progress and environmental responsibility. Their visual identity—industrial but clean, grounded but forward-looking—supports this story perfectly. Their sustainability initiatives are proof of their commitment to responsible progress.
Why It Works: They made the story bigger than the product. They sell contribution, not concrete. Major contractors now see them as strategic partners, not just suppliers.
Almanac Health
The Challenge: Almanac Health needed a brand that could serve as a foundational launchpad for multiple ventures. They needed something that felt purposeful, strategic, and scalable.
Their Story: Viabrand® partnered with Almanac Health to articulate a unifying “Beyond Boundaries” brand promise — a signal of purpose, connection, and ambition that’s designed to flex across multiple ventures.
The identity system leans into the visual metaphor of navigation: a compass and shooting North Star, reflecting their role as strategic guides steering founders toward growth and impact. Every element — from the brand name, messaging, and tone to logo design and colour palette — was intentionally crafted to feel modern, expansive, and trustworthy.
Why It Works:
- Flexible yet cohesive brand architecture: The “Beyond Boundaries” promise threads through the umbrella brand and ripples into each venture, ensuring consistency without restriction.
- Narrative-driven design: The navigation motifs (compass, North Star) visually reinforce their positioning as strategic partners.
- Purpose-led messaging and tone: The conversation shifts from buzzword-laden hype to credible, mission-driven clarity, speaking directly to founders, investors, and healthcare innovators.
- Built for growth: The brand is a foundation for storytelling, pitch decks, collaboration platforms, and digital experiences that need to evolve without losing coherence.
Since launch, Almanac Health has expanded its collective of healthcare ventures across Australia—leveraging its brand presence to attract founders, partners, and investors.
Gilbert + Tobin
The Challenge: Law firms all look the same—conservative, traditional, intimidating.
Their Story: Gilbert + Tobin positioned themselves as commercial clarity partners. They tell the story of a law firm that operates at the intersection of law, business, and innovation. Instead of highlighting their legal expertise (which every firm claims), they focus on delivering “strategic and commercial clarity” for high-growth, high-risk clients.
Why It Works: Their visual and verbal identity reinforces speed, precision, and contemporary thinking. Clients hire them for strategic direction grounded in legal advice. Every touchpoint reinforces the same message: we’re not your traditional law firm.
Questions to Ask Before Refreshing Your Brand Identity or Story
Don’t wait for a downturn or a plateau to act. The strongest brand growth comes from proactive choices — made with intent, not in reaction.
Ask yourself:
- “Does our story reflect where we’re going?”
- “Can my sales team tell this story with confidence?”
- “Is our visual identity actually distinctive?”
- “Do customers remember and describe us accurately?”
If the answer to any of these is “no,” it might be time to refresh, realign, or reimagine your brand.
Ready to Strengthen Your Brand Identity and Story?
Here’s what’s happening:
- Brands are becoming media companies. Your identity must support content at scale.
- AI is accelerating sameness. Only a strong identity keeps you from disappearing into the blur.
- Culture moves fast. Storytelling is your real-time adaptation tool.
The difference between brands that thrive and brands that survive is clarity. Clarity about who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to show up.
If you’re ready to align your identity and story to your business goals, we can help. Our brand identity agency Viabrand® works with growing Australian businesses to define, design, and roll out brand systems that actually drive traction.