The Astute Group Archives - The Astute Group

The Astute Group Turns 50 and Shows No Signs of Slowing Down

Fifty years in business is remarkable. Fifty years in business with your best year yet still ahead of you? That’s something else entirely.

The Astute Group, the Forfar-based brand and marketing agency founded in 1976, is marking half a century in style, a record 12 months of client growth, a 17-strong team firing on all cylinders, and a brand-new visual identity that signals exactly where this business is heading next.

Over 50 new clients joined in the past year alone. Turnover is projected to grow 15% year on year, and the client roster now stretches from Angus right across the UK, spanning energy, construction, healthcare, legal, hospitality and sport. National Gas Service, Clancy Group, P&J Live, Norco Energy, the names keep coming.

Not bad for a company that started out trading from a former farm shed.

Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunity

Joint MD Barry Sellars is the first to acknowledge the journey hasn’t always been straightforward. When Covid hit in 2020, turnover fell from £1.9 million to £1.2 million, and the team went from 29 people to five almost overnight. Most businesses would have battened down the hatches, but The Astute Group chose a different path.

“We knew this was our moment for a reset,” says Barry. “We were already transitioning into digital print, and we doubled down, repositioning ourselves as a full-service brand and marketing company. By doing that, we’ve brought the team back to 17 people and hit £1.9 million in turnover in 2024/25, and that will propel beyond £2.2 million this year.

It’s a pivot that has paid off spectacularly. Where The Astute Group was once best known for print and office essentails, it now offers everything a growing business needs under one roof: brand identity, logo design, website development, email marketing, digital print, litho print, large format, signage, branded merchandise, workwear, and interior branding.

Built on Approachability

Joint Managing Director Paula Muir, who has been with the business for 25 years, puts the loyalty of The Astute Group’s client base down to something refreshingly simple.

“I think people come to us because we’re approachable. If someone’s thinking about how their business looks, how they present themselves, or how they want to grow, they know they can pick up the phone. We’ll help them figure it out, whether they know exactly what they need or not.”

That approachability has been a constant across five decades of change. So has the quality of the people around the table. Paula and Barry bring over 48 years of combined service to the business and more than 30 years as shareholders, the kind of continuity that gives clients and colleagues alike real confidence.

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What Matters to Me in Our Business

For me, everything starts and ends with people.

I’ve never seen our business as just about what we sell or the services we provide. What really matters to me is how we make people feel. I genuinely care about our customers, their businesses, and their challenges, and I love being part of their journey. I want them to feel listened to, understood, and supported, not just another customer, but someone we truly value.

There’s nothing better than that moment when a customer is delighted with what we’ve delivered. Whether it’s seeing their brand come to life, helping them solve a problem, or simply making their day a little easier, those smiles mean everything to me. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

I’m also incredibly proud of how our business has grown and evolved over the years. The world around us has changed so much, and rather than standing still, we’ve embraced that change. Moving more into digital print, creative, branding, and new ways of working has been an exciting journey. I love that we’ve adapted, learned, and developed so we can continue to meet our customers’ needs in a modern, forward-thinking way — while still staying true to who we are.

But the real heart of our business is our team, our TAG family. I don’t just see them as employees; they are truly part of our story. They don’t just “do a job”, they care, just like I do. They care about our customers, about getting things right, and about making a difference. Their passion, commitment, and willingness to go above and beyond is what makes us special.

And that’s something I’m incredibly proud of. If a customer rings in a panic because they’ve forgotten to organise branded merchandise or print for an event, we don’t turn them away. Instead, we pull together, get creative, and do everything we can to help. I love that we’re the kind of business that will try to make the impossible possible.

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Plural Brand

Brand Guidelines: Your Roadmap to Recognition

Have you ever stood in a supermarket aisle, grabbed two completely different products, and had absolutely no idea they were made by the same company? That’s not an accident, and it’s one of the most powerful tools a growing business can have.

Whether you’re a business owner juggling multiple product lines, an entrepreneur thinking about your next venture, or a marketing professional advising an SME, this is a strategy worth understanding deeply.

It’s called plural brand strategy, one company, multiple completely independent brands. Separate names, separate audiences, no obvious connection between them. This is more relevant to growing SMEs than most people realise.

I work with businesses that are sitting on this problem without knowing it. Two product lines that attract completely different customers. A new service that doesn’t sit comfortably under the existing brand name. A recent acquisition with its own loyal following. In every one of those situations, the instinct is usually to force everything under one roof, one name, one look, one story.

The parent stays invisible

Most people don’t know that Dove and Lynx are the same company. Think about Unilever; most consumers couldn’t tell you which brands sit in that portfolio. They know they trust Persil, buy Hellmann’s, or have always used Sure. Unilever never needs to be part of that conversation; each brand earns its own place.

That’s a plural brand strategy working exactly as it should. The parent holds everything together structurally, budget, governance, and strategic direction, while each brand faces its own market, speaks to its own customer, and builds its own equity.

Compare that to how Apple operates and rolls out its products; Apple puts its name on everything. That works brilliantly for them because consistency and premium positioning are central to what Apple is. If you try running a budget line alongside a premium line under the same name and watch the premium positioning collapse in real time.

This isn’t only for the big players

I’ve spoken to business owners running two or three genuinely distinct offers who’ve never considered that they might need separate brand identities for each. They’re stretching one brand to cover audiences that want completely different things from it and then wondering why their marketing feels vague.

If your customers think differently, buy differently, and respond to different messages, one brand is already a compromise. The question is whether you can resource separate identities properly, and that is where this strategy stares you in the face.

Each brand needs its own budget, its own channels, its own guidelines. The moment you start sharing marketing resources across brands to save money, the identities blur, and blurred identities are worse than no identity at all.

The internal discipline is the hard part

The strategy itself isn’t complicated; what’s hard is the governance, deciding who owns which brand, how budgets are split, and what happens when two brands start chasing the same customer. Those questions need answers before you launch, not six months after.

Done properly, a plural brand strategy lets you grow into new markets, protect your core brand from reputational risk, and speak to completely different customers with complete authenticity, because each brand was built specifically for them.

The question you should ask yourself

Are my customers different enough to need separate brands? If yes, this could be one of the most deliberate moves you make as a business.

Article written by Babajide O.,
Digital Marketing and Strategy Lead, The Astute Group.

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Brand Guidelines

Brand Guidelines: Your Roadmap to Recognition

Brand guidelines are not just pretty pdfs designed to show off your logo, they are the foundation of a strong, recognisable and trustworthy brand. They define how your brand looks, sounds and behaves across every touchpoint.

The key is in the communication of consistency at every point of interaction. It’s not just a design preference, but a strategic business practice that impacts the credibility, customer experience and long-term value of your brand.

Recognition:

At their core brand guidelines provide a roadmap to building consistency and recognition. When a brand uses the same logo, colours, typography, tone of voice and visual style on everything from websites to packaging, it becomes easier for the audience to recognise and remember it. Familiarity with a brand reduces cognitive effort for consumer and reinforces brand recall, making it more likely to be chosen over other competitors in flooded markets. Without purposeful application of a brand’s identity, even a great design can feel disjointed and can weaken the brand’s presence.

Integrity:

The likelihood of the same person producing every bit of content that your brand puts out is slim-to-none. A brand guide document should layout a specific tone, appropriate for your given brand. This allows a brand to remain cohesive even through phases of growth, were new teams, agencies and partners may contribute to brand communications.

Efficiency:

The word that every member of an operational team loves: Efficiency! Following a brand guidelines document helps reduce decision-making time by providing rules and templates that allow team to create branded materials much faster with fewer required revisions. The best part? This not only saves time and resources but ensure that speed doesn’t come at the expense of quality.

Strength:

Strong brands are built through repeated, consistent experiences. Every touchpoint – no matter how small – contributes to the overall perception of the brand. By consistently applying brand guidelines, businesses reinforce their values, positioning and personality over time. This contributes to strengthening brand equity, ultimately making the brand more resilient, valuable and influential.

Ultimately, a brand guidelines document may present itself as an inconspicuous document, but following the directions in them is what counts.

The Bottom Line: They provide you with a tool for maintaining consistency, driving recognition and building a trust-worthy relationship with your customers. The success of the anyone of brands you love is not accidental, it’s a result of deliberate actions of a core identity, backed-up by guidelines.

Brand development and guidelines docuemtnation for Arborath Community Trust

Article written by Becky Littlewood, creative designer at The Astute Group

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How to Approach a Design Pproject

Think about what you want – what’s the goal for you with this project?

Is it a logo refresh, a full rebrand and brand guidelines, a leaflet to increase footfall, or a new, fresh business card?

Carefully consider the brief you will submit to the designer, as it is the foundation for the whole project.

What’s important to know before approaching a designer with a project?

The more accurate and relevant information it contains, the more likely it is that the design process gets off to a good start and that the first draft aligns with what you are after – giving you a good starting point for feedback.

I say first draft because, though it does happen that the first iteration is just right, it is much more common for the design process to involve a few iterations. I believe that feedback and reworking a design are usually fundamental to achieving a strong finished product. However, you still want a good starting point to avoid unnecessary rounds of iteration, which waste time for both parties.

What to include in the brief:

For print projects:

Overview of the project and what it entails
Sizes needed
Any images, logos, and text you want included (images and logos should be as high quality as possible, logos ideally as vector files)
Brand guidelines, if applicable

For logo design and branding projects:

A brief explanation of what your business does and what you are hoping to convey with the new logo and branding
Do you have a specific style in mind?
Any colours you like or don’t like that should or shouldn’t be included?

Any thoughts on graphics that should or shouldn’t be included (for example, you might want to avoid clichés or include a personal element

When does the design process start?

As soon as the brief has been handed over or a first meeting has taken place. The designer might not have started physically putting designs together yet, but once they have the brief, the cogs start turning, and plans begin forming as to how they will approach the design.

What happens after the first meeting or once the brief has been handed over?

A timeline is agreed upon, and the designer will work with this in mind to prepare a first draft, leaving time for feedback and iterations. The length of the timeline and the number of iterations will depend on both the client’s needs and the complexity of the project, from a couple of days for more straightforward designs to several weeks or months for full rebrands.

Once the client is happy with the design, the designer will finalise the artwork and supply the required files, whether this is a vector file of the logo or full brand guidelines along with the logo in relevant file formats and variations.

If the project is for print material, such as business cards, the files are sent to production and the final printed items are delivered as agreed. It might also be the case that additional print materials are needed, especially after a rebrand. In this case, new jobs will be booked to accommodate this.

The Bottom Line: As a designer, my goal is always to create a design that the client loves. Communication with the client throughout the process is essential to making this happen, which is why I believe that feedback and iterations during the design process are immensely helpful in achieving the best results.

Business card design and print for Fiona Hughes Pottery

Article written by Julia Nilsson, creative designer at The Astute Group

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The importance of keeping the Human Element

AI is here to stay and avoiding it is not an option. But the businesses that will truly stand out are not those that replace human thinking with algorithms. They are the ones that use AI to enhance creativity, not as a substitute.

Keep the Human Element:
10 Suggestions to Get the Best Out of AI

Machines cannot see beyond their own limitations. They do not know what they are missing. You can choose to look past the efficiency of algorithms and invest in the strategic thinking that creates brands people remember. Your brand deserves better than working inside invisible constraints.

So, how do you maintain a strategic advantage while still leveraging AI? Here are the essentials:

1. Reframe Your Relationship with AI

Think of AI as a production assistant, not a creative director. Use it for speed and exploration, not for strategy or decision-making. Let it generate options quickly but apply human judgement to decide what works.

2. Invest in Discovery

Before AI touches your brand, spend time on clarity. Understand who you are, who your audience is, and what makes you different. This is where human insight excels.

3. Build a Hybrid Workflow

Combine AI’s efficiency with human creativity. Use AI for mock-ups and variations, but keep people in charge of strategy, concept and final decisions.

4. Set Brand Guidelines

Create clear guidelines before generating content. These act as a quality filter for AI outputs and prevent inconsistency.

5. Treat Design as Partnership

Design is not a transaction. Engage designers as strategic partners. Their value lies in thinking and judgement, not just software skills.

6. Audit AI Outputs

Ask yourself: Does this look like everyone else’s? Is it memorable or just competent? If the answer is no, bring in professional input.

7. Learn the Right Skills

Understand AI tools, but also learn design fundamentals, typography, colour theory, composition. The better you grasp these, the better you know when to call in experts.

8. Create Space for the Unexpected

Great ideas often come from exploration, not optimisation. Schedule time for creativity beyond prompt engineering.

9. Value the Conversation

AI gives outputs; designers give dialogue. That back-and-forth often reveals opportunities you had not considered.

10. Know Your Limits

There is no shame in recognising where your expertise ends. Successful businesses know when to bring in specialists.

The Bottom Line: AI is a powerful tool, but it cannot replace human insight. Use it to speed up production, not to define your brand. Creativity thrives on curiosity, conversation and those unexpected moments that machines cannot replicate. Keep the human element at the heart of your process, and your brand will stand out in a sea of sameness.

Article by John Doyle, Creative Lead at The Astute Group

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