Meanjin | Brisbane, Australia
Strategically redefining Bee One Third’s brand architecture to establish a seamless yet distinct hierarchy across its product brands, ensuring market clarity while amplifying its activist mission and elevating its new luxury offering.
Location:
Meanjin | Brisbane, Australia
Selling:
Australia
Sector:
Food - Honey
Our role:
Strategy: Group Product and Brand Strategy, Product Range Architecture.
Branding: Naming, Brand Design, Brand Messaging, Website Design, Art Direction & Photography, Swag/Merch.
Packaging: Packaging Design.
Bee One Third has been pollinating change—flower by flower—since 2012. With over 150 beehives under their stewardship across Australia’s East Coast, they’ve built a reputation for raw, hyper-local honey, ethical beekeeping, and community-driven pollinator education. But as their offerings expanded, so did the complexity of their brand, creating challenges in market positioning, scalability, and customer clarity.
Pollinating change, flower by flower.
Their flagship brand, Bee One Third – Neighbourhood Honey, resonated with local communities, but its hyper-local model made inventory management and packaging increasingly complex. At the same time, their broader service offerings—beekeeping, training, and corporate programs—added further layers to their identity, blurring the lines between their product and service divisions.
The introduction of Velvet Fields, a high-end, ethically produced honey range, highlighted the need for a more structured brand strategy. Set for national distribution with retailers like Simon Johnson—along with expansion opportunities into airlines, cruise ships, and fine dining—Velvet Fields needed to exude luxury. However, close alignment with Neighbourhood Honey risked not only diluting its premium positioning but also cannibalising Bee One Third’s existing brand equity.
By Ninja was brought in to take a bee’s-eye view, establish a clear brand architecture, and define a strategy that allowed Bee One Third’s mission to thrive. Our solution? A bold repositioning that transformed Bee One Third into an industry benchmark—Bee One Third: Pollinating Change—shifting it from a consumer-facing product line to an accreditation and service-led entity, while allowing each product brand to flourish under its own distinct identity.
This strategic move safeguarded Velvet Fields’ luxury positioning, clarified Neighbourhood Honey’s role in the market, and created a more scalable, efficient, and future-proofed ecosystem for Bee One Third’s broader mission.
Bee One Third’s brand was buzzing with purpose, but their expanding offerings needed clearer structure to thrive. With multiple product lines, a new luxury range, and a powerful activist mission at its core, it was essential to establish a brand strategy that was seamless, distinct, and scalable.
To craft a solution that was both strategic and deeply authentic, we immersed ourselves in Bee One Third’s world. Through collaborative sessions, in-depth market analysis, and a hands-on approach to brand storytelling, we uncovered a lack of brand clarity, an overwhelming number of product names, and a risk of cannibalisation between their hero offerings.
We mapped out an interconnected brand ecosystem that allowed each product to thrive within its own space while reinforcing Bee One Third’s overarching purpose. Working closely with their team at every stage, we created a solution that was clear, intuitive, and adaptable for future growth.
At the heart of our approach was simplicity. By refining product positioning, restructuring naming conventions, and developing a cohesive visual hierarchy, we ensured every touchpoint reinforced Bee One Third’s mission while elevating its brands to their full potential.
Too much choice creates paralysis. Clarity unlocks growth.
Bee One Third’s expanding offerings had become overwhelming not only for them to manage, but for both customers and retailers, making it difficult to navigate, compare, and ultimately choose. By distilling the complexity into a simple, structured, and intuitive brand architecture, we eliminated friction, enhanced clarity, and transformed the customer experience into one of ease and confidence. By streamlining product lines and refining naming conventions, we built a foundation that enhances customer experience, strengthens brand differentiation, and sets the stage for future expansion.
The strategic repositioning of Bee One Third’s brand ecosystem ensured that each offering had a distinct and purposeful role while reinforcing the company’s larger mission. The introduction of Velvet Fields as a luxury honey brand required a premium identity—one that could sit comfortably within high-end retail and hospitality without diluting Bee One Third’s activist-driven positioning and cannibalising Neighbourhood Honey's market equity.
Velvet Fields was developed as a premium honey experience, with a brand name evoking lush, untamed landscapes and the rewards of ethical beekeeping. The tagline, The Beekeeper’s Dream, captures its artisanal, small-batch philosophy. Product names align with this elevated positioning, drawing inspiration from floral origins and native landscapes. The visual identity was designed to exude luxury, featuring clean typography, dynamic organic colourful forms representing different varieties, and gold foil accents to enhance shelf appeal.
Neighbourhood Honey had already built strong brand recognition, but its product names and packaging lacked consistency. We refined the naming conventions, replacing hyper-local identifiers with clear, regionally recognisable descriptors to improve consumer searchability and brand cohesion. Recommended packaging refinements included improved label orientation, and a structured colour and illustration system to differentiate product lines, improving both visual appeal and retail navigation.
In addition to refining its product brands, we recommended repositioning Bee One Third from a consumer-facing honey brand to a service-driven entity—Bee One Third: Pollinating Change. This shift establishes it as an authority in ethical beekeeping, allowing its honey brands to operate independently while reinforcing the company’s broader mission.
By creating a structured and scalable brand ecosystem, we provided each product with a clear purpose while positioning Bee One Third itself for long-term growth. The new architecture allows its honey ranges to thrive without overlap, ensuring clarity for both consumers and the business as it evolves.
The repositioning of Bee One Third’s brand ecosystem has already shown significant traction.
Velvet Fields has been embraced by premium retailers, earning strong feedback from distributors and driving new opportunities for international expansion. Its distinct positioning and packaging have heightened brand visibility and retail uptake, with customers responding positively to its unique market presence.
The structured brand architecture has provided a scalable foundation for future growth, ensuring that Bee One Third’s honey brands can evolve without confusion or overlap. While early in its journey, this transformation has set Bee One Third on a path toward long-term success, strengthening its position as both an industry leader and a changemaker in ethical beekeeping. The clarity, distinction, and strategic refinement of each brand now allow Bee One Third to fully realise its mission—pollinating change, one jar at a time.
Doing things differently starts with a conversation.
