Cover Brand: From Inside the Jar
Nic Hinwood returns to Cover Brand for a Shop Talk episode about the messy middle of brand building—the place where client expectations, practical marketing work, and brand science collide.
Nic runs Keo, a brand and marketing agency in Tamworth, Australia, working primarily with small and medium-sized businesses. After sixteen years in business, he has watched his agency evolve from producing tactical assets—logos, websites, visual identity—into something broader: brand advisory, strategy, and reputation-building.
In our conversation we unpack a familiar pattern in agency life. Many clients begin with a simple request: we need a logo. But once you start pulling on that thread, the conversation often reveals deeper questions about positioning, reputation, and how the business actually creates value in the market.
That’s where a useful mental model comes in: the spectrum between little-b brand and Big-B Brand.
Little-b brand is the visible stuff—logos, colors, typography, mascots, design systems. Big-B Brand is the reputation those things help support: what people think of the company and why they trust it.
Both matter. But they matter in different ways and at different stages of a company’s growth.
Nic shares examples from agency work where clients believed a visual change would fix a business problem—only to discover the real issue lived elsewhere. We also talk about how agencies grow from tactical production into strategic partners, and why stubborn curiosity is often the skill that keeps an agency alive for sixteen years.
Along the way, we begin—as always—with a cover song.
Nic brings an Australian favorite: Something for Kate covering Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan” on Triple J’s Like A Version, a format famous for letting artists reinterpret songs in their own style.
Which, in its own way, mirrors branding work: the art of taking something familiar and making it unmistakably yours.
Main Topics
The evolution of a branding agency from tactical production to strategic advisory
The difference between “little-b brand” (assets) and “Big-B Brand” (reputation)
Why many clients begin brand conversations with logos and visual identity
How brand assets contribute to recognition and reputation
The real reasons businesses seek branding help
Working with small and medium-sized businesses on brand challenges
How agencies expand their services over time through curiosity and client demand
Practical brand science for client conversations
If you're building a brand—or helping someone else build one—this episode is a reminder that logos and colors are useful tools. But they only matter insofar as they support the bigger thing: what people actually think of you.
