This Land Is a Part of Us

Client: Barenbrug Australia
Studio: Zebra Direction
Role: Creative Direction, Brand Development, Concept Creation, Script Writing, Design

Barenbrug is a fourth-generation Dutch agribusiness with over 120 years of expertise in pasture and forage seed. In Australia, its presence had long been felt through Heritage Seeds, a brand with deep recognition in regional communities, on farms, in reseller networks, and in field trial paddocks across the country.

The global parent company had embarked on a brand unification strategy, aiming to bring its international subsidiaries under the single, consistent Barenbrug name. For Australia, the risk was clear: a name change, even when the people, products and service remained the same, could unravel decades of brand equity if handled poorly.

The brief was not to reposition, but to realign. This wasn’t about persuading people to switch brands, it was about helping them see what they already had.

The Creative Idea

The creative began with a poem.

Written in the style of Banjo Paterson, a voice long embedded in Australian identity, it spoke not just of farming, but of belonging. It reflected the way the land shapes us, and how the quiet presence of a company like Barenbrug weaves into that rhythm. It was poetic, but not sentimental. Honest, but warm. And most importantly, it felt familiar.

That poem became the emotional and structural core of the campaign. From it emerged the anchor line: “This Land is a Part of Us.”

It’s a line that functions both literally and metaphorically. It speaks to agriculture, to heritage, to national identity, and to Barenbrug’s own history in Australia. More than that, it connected Barenbrug to the land itself, from the produce it yields to the tough and unpredictable conditions that define Australian farming. The line reframed the rebrand not as a shift, but as a quiet unveiling of a truth that had always been there.

The Campaign

The campaign rolled out across TV, radio, print, digital, social, web and retail. But its strength lay not in its reach, but in its restraint. It wasn’t trying to build demand, it was trying to sustain confidence.

Asset Structure:

• Two core feature-length films were produced: one for the northern market (primarily beef producers) and one for the southern market (focusing on sheep and dairy). Each told a regionalised story in multiple voices, reflecting different relationships to the land.

• Cut-downs and stings extended the narrative into radio and social formats, carrying the same lyrical tone and emotional core.

• Press and in-store assets were built from stills taken directly from the film footage, ensuring visual continuity across touchpoints.

• Digital display and web banners reinforced the message with minimalist design and calm, confident copy.

One of the most memorable scenes came in the southern version of the film, a young child raising an oversized glass of milk and beaming with delight. It needed no words. It said: this is what all the work is for. The land feeds us, connects us, sustains us. And so do the brands behind it, when they’re doing their job well.

Design Detail: The Logo Transition

One small detail that carried a surprising emotional weight was the animated logo transition.

While the Heritage Seeds and Barenbrug logos shared visual DNA, including a similar yellow and blue palette and a near-identical icon, there was one key difference: the icon’s position. On the Heritage Seeds logo, it appeared on the right. On the Barenbrug mark, it sat on the left.

Rather than jump from one logo to the next, we created a moment of visual storytelling. The shared icon was animated to sweep from right to left, gently clearing the Heritage Seeds wordmark as it passed. As it reached the left, the Barenbrug wordmark emerged in its place, now fully formed.

It was a motion bridge. Deliberate, clean, and metaphorical. It showed not a replacement, but a revealing. The new name had been there all along, just waiting to be uncovered.

It was one of those quiet design choices that few viewers would name, but many would feel.

Strategy and Tactics

This wasn’t a campaign with a user journey. There was no funnel to move through, no new action to take.

Its entire purpose was alignment. Emotional, visual, and verbal.

It didn’t ask the audience to change their behaviour. It simply helped them connect the dots between a name they knew (Heritage Seeds) and the global name behind it (Barenbrug). Familiarity did the heavy lifting. The creative simply cleared the fog.

Every element, from the voiceover cadence to the typography, was designed to feel quietly confident, not declarative. It assumed people were smart. It gave them space. And it landed.

Outcomes

The primary measure of success? Maintained sales.

No drop. No confusion. No backlash.

In a category where changes in packaging or product names can cause doubt at reseller level or hesitation in the paddock, stability is a strong result. The campaign did its job not by changing minds, but by preserving what already worked, just under a new name.

Internally, the campaign also provided a flexible narrative platform. The shift to a farm-to-table framing helped widen its appeal and future-proof the story across both upstream and downstream communications.

Key Takeaways

• Familiarity creates a shortcut to alignment. Drawing on a Banjo Paterson–style poem wasn’t just nostalgic, it was strategic. It made the campaign feel native, not imported.

• Emotion builds trust better than information. Especially in sectors where decisions are grounded in long-term relationships, not marketing claims.

• Not all success is loud. Sometimes holding ground is the win. In brand transitions, stability is impact.

• Design can tell the story, too. The logo transition said in motion what the campaign said in words: we’re still here, just newly named.

“This Land is a Part of Us” worked because it didn’t announce a new brand. It gave language and shape to one that had been there all along.