If your peers talk business and you talk design, you’ll lose
Agency owners rarely admit it out loud, but many feel the same quiet fear: what if other studios are evolving faster than us?
While you focus on craft and visual quality, your competitors have evolved by talking strategy, outcomes, and business value. They’re speaking the language clients want to hear, linking design decisions to growth, customer behaviour, and market advantage.
When clients can’t tell the difference between two agencies, they choose the one that proves impact. If design is still the only thing you’re selling, you’re giving your competitors the easiest way to beat you.
In our work with studios across Australia we find that agencies must now show how design changes behaviour, drives growth, solves real problems, and improves the customer experience.
This shift challenges the identity of many visual design agencies. If your positioning is still centred on craft alone — brand identity, packaging, websites — you risk being seen as interchangeable. And interchangeable agencies are chosen on price.
The opportunity is to move design upstream: to understand the market, the audience, and the business objectives before any visual work begins. When agencies speak the language of strategy and outcomes, clients listen differently.
There are strong examples across Australia of visual design delivering measurable impact.
Take the Happy Snack Company, based on the Sunshine Coast. They manufacture chickpea and fava-bean snacks, a highly competitive category in FMCG retail. The business had clarity around the product, but their challenge was communicating its emotional appeal across different consumer groups.
“We had clarity on what the product needed to be… Then we had a communication design challenge. How do we create a common design style that highlights the key emotional objectives for those consumer groups?”
Craig Agnew, Managing Director
That’s where Muddie of Ingenious Studio stepped in, with a packaging-led brand transformation. The results were significant:
- 40% year-on-year turnover growth
- employment multiplying five-fold
- expansion into UK export markets
This is what clients now value: design that drives business momentum.
A change in mindset
For agencies, this means a shift in mindset. A beautiful brand identity or slick website still matters, but without clear links to business goals (higher conversion, customer retention, or improved digital UX) clients won’t see the value. Design is becoming a vehicle for strategic change.
In a recent DBC article titled Case study: helping a design agency find their niche, one studio doubled revenue, improved margins and repositioned as a strategic partner rather than a service provider.
Agencies that embrace this shift will thrive. Those who stay focused only on the visuals risk being left behind.
If you want to learn more about how the DBC is helping the Australian design community contact Greg Branson.
Greg Branson
Contact Greg Branson if you would like to learn more about the many programs the DBC offers.
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About Greg Branson
Greg’s passion is the research and development of methods that improve design management and the role of design in business.
His longevity is in his ability to change and adapt. Greg’s career as a traditionally-trained photographer; became an academic, teaching photography to design students. He co-founded and ran Mackay Branson design (for over 25 years) until, recognising an area that he loved – design management – was not an area traditionally covered in design education. This lead to him founding Design Business Council. Since then he has worked alongside hundreds of Australian creatives helping them manage their business better.
Greg has sat on the AGDA Victoria and National councils, on a number of University and TAFE Advisory Boards and helped rewrite the VCE Visual Communication curriculum.
Outside of DBC, he is a passionate analogue photographer who spends an inordinate amount of time in his darkroom. You can follow his work on instagram @gregurbanfilm
Always happy to chat, he can be contacted here.