- Brand Consulting
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity System
- Digital Strategy
- UI/UX Design and Website Development
- Publishing
- Watagan Park, NSW
A place that believes in outside.
Some projects arrive with a clear sense of what they want to be. Watagan Park was one of those. When Johnson Property Group came to us with a 356-hectare site at the foot of the Watagan Mountains in Cooranbong, the land itself was doing most of the talking. What it needed was a brand that listened.
We have worked with Johnson Property Group on this project for more than a decade, from early inception through to its current life as one of the Central Coast’s most significant master-planned communities, now home to over 1,000 families and still growing.
The insight
When we started working on Watagan Park, research surfaced something that sat at the heart of what this place could offer. In the space of a single generation, childhood in Australia had moved almost entirely indoors. The shift from outdoor play to screens was not a trend. It was a transformation, and parents felt it. They could see what growing up outside had given them, and they wanted to find a way to give that back to their children.
Watagan Park, with its generous blocks, wide streets, a forest reserve occupying a third of the estate, and its position at the base of the Watagans, was uniquely placed to respond to that. This was not just land at the edge of a mountain range. It was a genuine invitation to live differently.
The buyers most drawn to that invitation were families and couples who placed real weight on connection, simplicity and the natural world. They were not chasing proximity to the city or the next lifestyle trend. They were looking for a place where their values were reflected in how they lived day to day. That understanding shaped everything from the brand strategy to how we communicated across each stage of the project.
Nature's Playground
That insight gave us the brand: Nature’s Playground.
We see a future where people are reconnected with nature. We believe the benefits of outdoor play are unrivalled. It allows kids to use their imagination, develop physical skills, and find relief from everyday stress.
The platform gave the estate a clear and purposeful identity that went well beyond aesthetics. Live Outside the Box became the campaign expression that carried it into market: getting outside, being active, living healthy, having a backyard big enough to explore. It was specific enough to mean something and open enough to hold across years of communications.
Everything the brand touched was shaped by that ethos. The forest reserve, the community gardens, the walking trails, the events and activities posted for residents each week. The brand and the place reinforced each other. That alignment is what makes a purpose-led brand durable rather than decorative.
A community that kept growing
Over more than a decade, Watagan Park evolved from a residential land release into something considerably more substantial. Today the estate spans 356 hectares and is planned to grow to over 2,500 residential lots, with apartments up to six storeys, a vibrant town centre designed to serve thousands of dwellings, a regional sports facility including a full-size oval, skate park and community centre, cycleways and extensive open space.
Along the way, the estate set a record land sale price for the region, a result that reflected both the quality of the product and the clarity of the position built around it.
The brand has held through all of it. As the project matured and expanded, the visual identity was refined to match, but the underlying purpose remained unchanged. A community where people and nature exist together. A place that genuinely believes in outside.
What a decade of partnership looks like
Watagan Park is the project that best illustrates what a long-term creative partnership can become when it is built on genuine alignment. Over more than ten years we worked alongside Johnson Property Group across brand strategy, digital marketing, website development, social media, advertising, print and OOH collateral, and event coordination, contributing not just to the communications but to the thinking about the development itself.
A creative agency isn’t the best descriptor for Mezzanine, as they deliver so much more than beautiful creative. Their team has developed the clever skill of pulling-out and articulating our many brand stories, aligning them to our core strategy and creatively communicating them across all channels and client touch points.
Our long relationship with Mezzanine has been one of collaboration and collectively working towards our desired outcome, having a lot of fun along the way."
