Mude | Brand & Creative Agency

Mude | Brand & Creative Agency stands as a strategic powerhouse in Canberra's innovation district, offering a fresh and incisive approach to brand building that goes far beyond surface-level aesthetics. Operating from 5/1 Moore Street within the Canberra Innovation Network, this agency has cemented its reputation by treating brand and creative not as mere accessories but as competitive levers. The team, led by founder Ben Develin alongside key personnel Tess and Ben, brings a sharp, results-driven focus to clients across government, entertainment, property, technology, FMCG, and consumer sectors. Their work is defined by a single, relentless question: how can a brand capture a position in the market that no competitor can claim, and then build a creative universe around that position that earns genuine cultural attention?

With an exceptional 5.0-star rating from 19 Google reviews, Mude operates on a philosophy that merges cultural insight with uncompromising creative execution. The agency's website articulates a clear mission: to help companies master the positioning game, enabling them to outmanoeuvre rivals rather than just modernising their visual identity. The agency draws in businesses at pivotal moments—those moving upmarket, launching into new categories, navigating mergers, or realising their existing brand has been outgrown. Rooted in cultural strategy, Mude believes the most resonant brands carry a distinct cultural posture, and they've built a body of work that proves it, from rebranding solar disruptors to crafting large-scale government campaigns and producing award-winning music content.

Our Core Services

Mude’s service offering is structured around three interconnected pillars: Brand, Creative, and Web & App. This is not a generic marketing menu but a deliberately integrated system where strategy drives identity, identity fuels creative production, and digital platforms amplify the whole. Every engagement begins with a fundamental question of competitive positioning, mapping where a brand can play and what it can own, before any visual or digital work begins.

The Brand pillar encompasses comprehensive brand strategy, full identity systems, and packaging design. The agency specialises in positioning companies for a clear competitive advantage, determining target audiences, unique market territories, and the cultural signal the brand will carry. The result is not just a logo but a complete system of verbal and visual language that can be deployed consistently and powerfully. This strategic foundation is what separates a typical redesign from a genuine rebrand, and it’s the first step for clients like Skyline, where Mude transformed an OEM bottle manufacturer into a performance brand anchored in cycling culture, or Sunstrata, where a solar disruptor’s identity was sharpened to challenge Big Energy.

The Creative pillar covers video production, photography, graphic design, and digital design. Mude’s creative output is cinematic and culturally literate, reflecting a team background in film, documentary, and music rather than traditional agency hierarchies. Projects range from Webby-nominated work for Amazon Music and live performance videos with Dan Sultan and Julia Stone, to government campaigns for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, and a powerful documentary in Tonga for SPREP covering the aftermath of a devastating volcano and tsunami. This depth of production capability means the strategic vision isn’t just described in a deck—it’s realised in moving images, editorial photography, and design systems that live in the real world.

The Web & App pillar sets Mude apart from many brand agencies because they actually write code. Their digital work merges flawless user experience with brand storytelling, building websites and digital products that signal a brand is worth someone’s time. Projects like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute website and the GEOCON digital presence demonstrate how a brand’s strategic posture translates into digital interfaces that are both functional and emotionally resonant. For Amazon Music, they built a competition site that became a digital campfire for fans during Country Music Month. This technical fluency ensures the brand’s voice is consistent from strategy through to the screen.

Why Choose Mude

Choosing a brand partner is a high-stakes decision, and Mude’s clients repeatedly point to a combination of strategic candour and creative excellence. The agency doesn’t traffic in category clichés; you won’t hear empty promises about “bringing brands to life” or “human-centred design.” Instead, they offer a genuine point of view and a commitment to building brands that earn their place in culture. This honesty extends to how they qualify engagements—they niche by attitude, not industry, and they’re upfront about whether a project is a good fit.

One of the defining characteristics of Mude is its deep integration of cultural creation into its own operations. The agency runs a live music series called Mood on the Roof, a tastemaker event hosted on their studio rooftop that has featured artists like Benson Boone, Alec Benjamin, Griff, and Keli Holiday. This wasn’t a client brief; it was an internal impulse to make something that contributes to culture. That same impulse shows up in client work, where a documentary about a Tongan volcanic eruption is treated with the same creative seriousness as a commercial rebrand. Clients benefit from a team that lives and breathes creative production, not just manages it.

Client testimonials underscore the agency’s effectiveness. One review from Chris Scullin praises Mude for guiding a mature business idea through the entire branding process with clear methodology, transforming confusion into a cohesive image and marketing strategy. Craig Dear describes the team as a remarkable group of creative geniuses and technical experts who delivered exceptional results. Even large institutional clients like Crowne Plaza Canberra have noted their impressed by the team’s creativity, professionalism, and deep understanding of organisational goals, particularly during high-pressure video and photo productions. The consistent 5-star rating across 19 reviews is a rare achievement in the creative services sector and speaks to the agency’s ability to build trust and deliver on ambitious promises.

A Distinct Approach to Client Relationships

Mude isn’t a full-service marketing agency, and they’re transparent about that. They focus intensely on the brand and creative layers—positioning, identity, video, photography, and web—and work seamlessly alongside in-house marketing teams, PR agencies, and channel specialists. This clarity of role is a deliberate strength. The agency believes work is better when everyone stays in their lane, and they’d rather be the best at high-stakes brand building than a mediocre jack-of-all-trades. This collaborative model has proven effective for complex government clients, fast-moving tech scale-ups, and culturally driven consumer brands alike.

The engagement process is refreshingly straightforward. Clients reach out, describe their situation in their own words without needing a polished brief, and Mude holds a conversation to determine fit. If the alignment is right, they build a project outline based on the actual business need, not a pre-packaged solution. This bespoke approach is critical because a startup investing $80k of precious runway requires a different psychological and strategic framework than an established corporation allocating a fraction of its annual budget. Mude’s experience with both startups and established businesses means they’re adept at managing the different anxieties and opportunities each context presents.

Industry Expertise Without Limitations

While many agencies attempt to claim specialisation in every sector, Mude openly acknowledges they don’t niche by category. Their portfolio spans an extraordinary range: Government (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing), Music & Entertainment (Amazon Music, Warner Music Australia, The Rions), Property & Construction (GEOCON), Science & Technology (Sunstrata, Panasonic Energy), Food, Drink & Hospitality (Full Proof sourdough doughnuts, ByAsia Food), NGO & Non-profit (SPREP, BreastScreen Australia), and Corporate & FMCG (Skyline, Nescii cosmetics).

The common thread across this diverse roster isn’t the industry vertical—it’s the client’s recognition that brand and creative are competitive infrastructure. These are organisations that understand visual and verbal identity is not a cosmetic layer but a fundamental business tool for pricing power, market perception, recruitment, and behaviour change. This clarity attracts clients who are culturally ambitious and willing to invest in work that can stand on its own as a creative contribution, not just a marketing asset.

Location and Canberra Roots

Physically anchored at 5/1 Moore Street inside the Canberra Innovation Network, Mude’s office places it at the crossroads of policy, innovation, and culture. Canberra is not just Australia’s political capital; it’s a growing hub for technology, education, and cultural institutions. Operating from CBRIN gives the agency direct access to a community of startups, researchers, and high-growth companies, while remaining deeply connected to the Commonwealth clients that form a significant part of its portfolio. The location is strategically symbolic—Mude isn’t a Sydney agency that occasionally visits Canberra; it’s a Canberra-founded firm with a presence and credibility in the national capital that few creative agencies can match.

The address on Moore Street is accessible and central, with the Canberra Innovation Network serving as a landmark in the city’s business landscape. While the agency also maintains a Sydney presence and serves clients nationally, the Canberra base is critical. It positions Mude at the heart of policy-making, enabling deep, long-term relationships with government departments and agencies that require creative partners who understand the complexities of public sector communication. The office operates by appointment, with the team frequently on location for video shoots, client workshops, or interstate meetings, reflecting a dynamic and project-driven rhythm rather than a desk-bound routine.

The physical workspace itself reflects the agency’s ethos: functional but creatively charged, equipped for everything from strategic whiteboard sessions to full-scale video production. Being part of a wider innovation ecosystem means the Mude team is constantly exposed to emerging technologies and new business models, an intellectual environment that feeds directly into their brand strategy work. Clients visiting the office find themselves in a space that signals seriousness of purpose without corporate pretension—much like the brands Mude builds.

Hours and Availability

Mude operates during standard business hours, Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. However, the nature of creative production—especially video and photography—often extends beyond conventional office hours, with shoot days, editing marathons, and event coverage requiring flexibility. The agency encourages initial contact through its website or direct email, and typically responds within one business day to new enquiries. Given the bespoke and high-touch nature of engagements, Mude is selective about its project load to ensure partner-level attention on every account, so prospective clients are advised to reach out early when planning major brand initiatives.

What Clients Can Expect

Engaging Mude means entering a partnership defined by intellectual rigour and creative courage. The initial phase always involves a deep strategic examination: defining where the brand competes, who it is truly for, and what cultural territory it can own. This isn’t an exercise in filling out templated frameworks but a bespoke, sometimes challenging, process of articulating the brand’s competitive story. From there, the visual and verbal identity is crafted, not as a decorative layer but as a precise signalling system. Then comes the production of creative assets—films, photo libraries, design collateral, websites—that carry that positioning into the world with high production values.

Clients can expect honest feedback and a refusal to simply execute a pre-determined brief that doesn’t serve the business. Mude’s value is in the strategic challenge they present, the quality of their creative execution, and the long-term durability of the brand assets they create. The agency’s track record of awards—including multiple Telly Awards (6 Golds in 2024), Webby nominations, and shortlists for the Pentawards—confirms that this approach produces work that stands up to global scrutiny. For businesses ready to stop looking modern and start winning the positioning game, the conversation begins with a simple message sent through the Mude website or a direct email to the team.