Branding Strategies: 5 Types, With Examples, and How to Choose One

My short version: figure out who it’s for, use one name, and only split something off when it outgrows that name. That’s mostly what I did with 45royale for 14 years. Pixel Union, Gitdone, and Zero Brand were the few times I didn’t. By the end of this you should know whether your next thing gets the name you already have or its own.

What are branding strategies?

A branding strategy is who you’re for, what you stand for, how you sound, and which name goes on what. The logo and colors come later.

For Digital Native, my newsletter and a sub-brand of this site, “Every detail, from the aesthetics to the content to the tone, is designed to connect with a specific ideal reader. The goal is to build a relationship that keeps that reader coming back each week.” More on the client side of that in building strong client relationships.

Offer names, sub-brands, and independent brands

Super Templates were an offer. In my 2021 year in review I wrote, “I started working on my first theme in August and published it to the Super Market on September 1st. I got my first sale on September 3rd.” The 45royale Shop and the Nounish shop on mattdowney.com were offers too.

Digital Native is a sub-brand that lives on mattdowney.com.

Pixel Union, Gitdone, and Zero Brand were independent brands. Zero Brand got its own site and handle, @zerobrandco.

Does branding strategy actually drive growth?

In my experience it does, mostly through price and recognition. In May 2023 I tweeted, “Your product or service price isn’t just a number; it’s a psychological tool that can significantly impact your brand. A well-considered pricing strategy can convey quality, exclusivity, and worth. Or it can convey the opposite if not given enough thought.” In my post on product pricing I wrote, “When I design my products, I think about how to convey premium quality or unique features in a way that justifies the price point.” More in prestige pricing and the pricing paradox.

Recognition is the other half. That’s my read from running 45royale, not something I measured: when people already knew the name, we weren’t introducing ourselves every time. I wrote about that for newsletters in newsletter branding as a competitive advantage.

How to build a branding strategy

This is roughly the order I’ve worked in. It follows the same idea: the audience first, the name second, everything else after.

1. Decide who it’s for, and who it isn’t for. From a 2023 thread: “Explore the personality traits and emotional factors of your ideal customer. Find the following: Interests, Values, Fears, Desires. This information will help inform your messaging to make sure you align your brand with your ideal customer’s needs.” For Digital Native, the sub-brand, that became “a signal-only newsletter for designers.”

2. Pick the name that leads. For most people that’s one name, theirs or the company’s. Whether anything later becomes a sub-brand or its own brand is covered in the decision guide below.

3. Write the words. In February 2026 I gathered my thoughts on words to avoid when marketing or branding a product. “‘People’: The ultimate vague word. Be specific about who you’re talking to/about.” “‘Better/Best’: There’s no such thing because that’s subjective. Better for who? Better for what?” And from the 2023 storytelling thread: “Instead of saying ‘We have excellent customer service,’ share a story about a time you or your team went above and beyond for a customer/client.” Then, “Your brand should play the role of the mentor, guiding the hero toward their goal.”

4. Design the identity, and show it early. October 2021: “Still messing around with the branding for @buildyourbridge. I think I’m leaning more towards the palette on the left now. Thoughts?” January 2023: “I’ve been doing some personal branding exploration. Which do you prefer, A, B, or C?” June 2024: “Just wrapped up the new branding for my newsletter, Digital Native. I really like this direction.” July 2024: “I made some refinements to the Digital Native logo and mockups. These feel more balanced and put together.” For Digital Native I went with bold colors and a modern feel, including a retro-futuristic logo and wordmark, so the visuals should be easy to identify at a glance.

5. Match the price and the delivery. “I positioned my agency as a premium solution, which justified higher pricing because of the specialized expertise we offered.” The work had to back that up.

6. Leave it alone long enough to be recognized. “Clear, consistent marketing messages help assure customers of your brand’s reliability. No fluff, no buzzwords. Just straightforward communication.”

What are the main types of branding strategies?

Textbooks use other labels. Company name branding is corporate or umbrella branding, individual branding is product or multi-brand branding, and the classic four branding strategies are line extension, brand extension, multi-brand, and new brand. Co-branding puts two brands on one offer.

1. Company name branding (corporate branding)

One name goes on the company and everything it sells. I founded 45royale in Atlanta and ran it for 14 years, closing it at the end of 2019 after hundreds of projects. Client sites and WordPress themes all went out under it.

For a designer, freelancer, or agency owner, it’s usually cheaper than building separate brands. In April 2009 I tweeted, “45royale is on Web Designer Depot’s 50 Excellent Corporate Sites list. We don’t wear ties, but appreciate the mention!” Smashing Magazine featured us four times, starting with the “35 Designers x 5 Questions” interview in 2007, where I preached the power of a detailed wireframe.

A good company name can outlast the company, too. In November 2025 I tweeted, “the @45royale crew is officially back together. I pushed a quick site refresh and used Midjourney and Nano Banana to generate some organic, looser takes on our circle logo.”

mattdowney.com is the company name today. The things I sell live under it as offers. Digital Native has its own name, so it’s a sub-brand, but it still sits here under my byline and builds on the same reputation.

2. Individual branding (multi-brand)

Each product gets its own name. The exceptions at 45royale were products with a different buyer. From 2010 to 2012 the Tumblr themes we made with MetaLab were sold as Pixel Union, not as 45royale. We built and sold our own product, Gitdone, a tool for bulk-adding GitHub issues, used by developers at Mozilla, ustwo, Full Sail, and UC Berkeley. Both were independent brands. Procter & Gamble does the same with Tide and Gillette.

3. Attitude branding

The brand sells a point of view more than the product. Supreme is the example I bring up, where a white t-shirt with a logo on it sells for hundreds of dollars.

Zero Brand, an independent brand, is my version. The tagline is “The future of the web is permissionless. The future of brands is CC0. The future is here.” When I found CC0, it gave me the same feeling I had when I found sampling, hip-hop, and remix culture, and that feeling is the whole brand. When I launched the CC Zero hoodie, I quoted @punk4156 saying that public domain brands would change the game, because manufacturers would have to compete on quality and creativity once the monopoly was gone.

Anybody can print CC0 art on a hoodie, so with Zero Brand the attitude was most of what we had.

4. Brand extension branding

A name people already trust goes on something new. In my 2021 year in review I wrote, “Tumblr invited my agency to help launch their theme store back in the day. Because of that experience, I understand the dynamic nature of building themes for platforms.” When I saw what Super was up to, “it was a no-brainer.”

Super Templates, an offer under my name, were the result. From September to December 2021, five of those products made 162 sales. That shows the extension sold. It doesn’t show the name is why. The theme store work is why templates made sense for me and shoes wouldn’t have.

Merch has been my longest-running extension. It started in 2011 with the 45royale Shop, an offer under the agency name, where we sold shirts and gave away a wallpaper pack. In January 2022 I opened a Nounish shop on mattdowney.com, another offer. I got my first 10 sales on launch day, including a hoodie that went all the way to Australia, and it grew to around 60 products. This year I extended the Digital Native sub-brand onto apparel, along with some Agentic Design Design Club designs.

The Nounish shop is also where an offer turned into an independent brand. In December 2022 I tweeted, “Bad news: I’m closing down my Nounish shop at the end of the year. Good news: I’m launching @zerobrandco, a new site and brand that celebrates CC0 and the openness and abundance it creates.” When I announced it on the blog, I wrote, “I’m in the process of shutting down the CC0/Nounish shop on mattdowney.com, and will replace it with the new Zero Brand shop.” More in Introducing Zero Brand.

5. Private-label branding

Someone else makes the product and you sell it under your own name. I haven’t done it.

Branding strategies for services

At 45royale the company name carried the service work. Flock was our first client. The whole engagement billed $6,500 over a few months, and it taught us more than plenty of bigger projects that came later.

In 2009 I tweeted, “If 45royale gave the level of customer service that Comcast did, we’d be out of business.” For a studio our size, the service was what people were buying.

Articulate was our first major client and an eight-year relationship (2007 to 2015). Working with their fully remote team is what gave us the idea, and the confidence, to run 45royale as a remote agency in the first place. The name stayed the same through all of it.

When we closed I tweeted thanks to “everyone that helped 45royale grow into the amazing, remote-first studio it became.”

How to pick the strategy that fits

Does it sell to a different buyer?

More than 5,000 Tumblr users bought our themes, and they weren’t hiring a studio. Pixel Union got its own name, and so did Gitdone, which was for developers.

Does it borrow trust from a name you already have?

Super Templates did, through the Tumblr theme store work in the brand extension section. They stayed an offer.

Does it carry its own idea or point of view?

Zero Brand did, from the tagline on down. CC0 and permissionless brands had nothing to do with design consulting. Digital Native has its own point of view too, a signal-only newsletter for designers, but it’s written by me for the same designers I already talk to. That’s why it’s a sub-brand and not a separate company.

Will it outgrow the name?

The Nounish shop opened in January 2022 as an offer on mattdowney.com. At the end of 2022 it became Zero Brand.

What a second brand costs

An independent brand needs its own site, handle, and identity, and someone to keep them going. MidMod was another independent brand of mine, a curated shop of mid-century modern furniture and decor from Amazon. I launched it on Product Hunt in January 2019. In March 2024 I tweeted, “Gradually rebooting @midmodco as I have time. New branding and palette in the works.” The new branding never went live, and the site has said “Coming 2026” since late 2025.

Branding strategies for freelancers and creators

For a company of one, the answer is usually your own name. “I design things” doesn’t support prestige pricing. “I design product experiences for early-stage startups” does. I’ve always had a problem with “just pick a niche” as advice, because it only tells half the story, but who you help is the half that matters here. There’s more in how to brand yourself and building a value ladder.

Common branding strategy mistakes

From my post on making progress: “Last weekend, I sunk hours into over-engineering an avatar builder for Jasin. Pure catnip for the designer in me: custom inputs, slick UI, endless little decisions that felt important. But after hitting a few stubborn bugs, I paused long enough to ask myself the obvious question: Who’s actually going to use this?” Nobody was. A logo designed before the business knows who it’s for has the same problem.

Also from the February 2026 list of words to avoid: “‘My’: This one depends a bit on context, but if your messaging says ‘My’ more than ‘Your’ it probably needs an edit. Your work isn’t about you.”

Start with one name

What do you call the thing you’re making? At 45royale it was almost always the company name, for 14 years. Pixel Union, Gitdone, and Zero Brand got their own names because they had their own buyers or their own idea. Digital Native sits in between. It’s a sub-brand, because it still leans on my name. Everything else stayed under one name.

If you’re a freelancer or creator, how to brand yourself is the next step. I write about this every week in Digital Native.

FAQ

What are the four branding strategies?

Line extension, brand extension, multi-brand, and new brand.

What’s the difference between brand strategy and brand identity?

For Digital Native I picked the reader first. The bold colors and the retro-futuristic logo and wordmark came after.

Which branding strategy is best for a freelancer or small business?

Company name branding, usually your own name.

Can you use more than one branding strategy at once?

Yes. Digital Native is a sub-brand under mattdowney.com, and Zero Brand has its own name.

When should an offer become its own brand?

When it outgrows the name. My Nounish shop became Zero Brand at the end of 2022.