What’s behind an authentic brand? A mission, vision and values that roll up to a brand promise that can be delivered upon. With a 99% repeat-business rate, environmental contractor Hudspeth was delivering the goods, but their brand wasn’t selling that story.
What’s more, their 20-year-old logo and colors didn’t align with a company that provides innovative, creative solutions. Through our Be Your Best Brand Workshop, we helped Hudspeth uncover the differentiators that keep clients coming back for more. A refocused mission, values and brand is reflected in a modernized logo, tagline and messaging. A slick new website and collateral illustrates to clients that Hudspeth is as cutting edge as their services.
AWARD WINNER
Hudspeth’s rebrand was the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) 2016 Marketing Excellence Award winner in the Corporate Identity category.
"The rebrand is a solid program that meets the objectives. The cost demonstrates wise use of funds for an outstanding result."
Black Hawk, one of Colorado’s oldest gold mining towns, is no stranger to reinvention. After the boom of the Gold Rush and its subsequent bust, the City was revitalized in the 1990s through the introduction of gaming.
In 2014, as forward-thinking City leaders made plans for Black Hawk’s next renaissance through redevelopment, there was a clear need for a re-brand and new messaging that would convey the excitement and opportunities of the future while still honoring the City’s historic past. At the same time, the City was poised to celebrate its 150th anniversary. After market research, analysis and collaboration with City leaders, our multi-faceted “Still Making History” campaign hit the mother lode.
Armed with some smarty pants research that shows that the strongest brands have employees who understand and embrace what the company stands for, we set out to help Rocky Mountain Prestress (RMP) define and communicate their brand internally. For years, this nearly 60-year-old precast concrete company has kept its edge through innovation, but resource demands had put innovative thinking on the back burner.
After refocusing their brand on innovation, we collaborated with RMP through our NormStorming process to infuse innovation throughout the organization with a spiffy employee campaign. Within the first month, the “Ah-Ha! Challenge” yielded more than 100 innovative employee ideas. Now, light bulb moments are not only encouraged, they have become the norm.
Waste Retriever is a new company in a relatively new business category—“valet” doorstep trash and recycling services for apartment complexes. The company’s leadership came to us with a solid business plan and a name—and not much more from a brand perspective. Sure, the business needed a logo, but they also needed a brand strategy.
Through our Be Your Best Brand process, we collaborated to develop Waste Retriever’s mission, vision, positioning and brand attributes, all of which informed the successful creation of a brand strategy and identity that will allow the company to run with the big dogs.
Sometimes what a brand needs is more of an evolution than a revolution. Catamount Constructors, a large national general contractor, was pretty clear on their company’s core values. What wasn’t so clear is how the company’s values and brand promise were being articulated.
Our first step was to engage with Catamount in our Be Your Best Brand Workshop to refine and align the company’s brand attributes and messaging. From this collaborative work, we gained insights that informed a complete refresh of the company’s brand. A new color palette, graphics and tagline builds on Catamount’s established brand equity while simply and concisely conveying their values and mission. Boom.
Nothing says “fun” like a bunch of engineers. No, really. In the case of engineering consulting firm, Redland, our research and collaborative work with the company’s leadership supported fun as a core value and brand attribute the company could hang its hat on. On the subject of hats, the principals of this small firm wear many and often don’t have the time to stay in front of prospects.
Our solution was to create a multi-touch campaign aimed at reaching key prospects through email, digital, direct mail and advertising channels. The visibility campaign highlighted the firm’s unique differentiators while promoting its professionalism and expertise so successfully, prospects responded with glee and the initial campaign was extended.
“Personalized” and “caring” may seem like unlikely brand attributes for a large construction company, but they are part of a winning brand strategy for Taylor Kohrs. After surveying clients and employees alike, we captured trending responses around the construction company’s personal and caring approach, and hey, the research doesn’t lie. As it ends up, neither does the success of a company that has built its business on nurturing client partnerships for more than 30 years.
Rather than argue with success and research, we helped Taylor Kohrs define and solidify their brand positioning as a large company that provides small-company, personalized care.
As a successful general contractor for more than 25 years, Krische Construction was built on old-school values. The firm’s leadership recognized their old-school website wasn’t reflecting the leading-edge services they offer. What they didn’t realize was that they also needed a shiny new brand story.
By conducting in-depth surveys, we learned that what Krische was saying about themselves didn’t resonate with clients or employees. Not only were we able to develop a user-friendly website that better reflects the company’s capabilities, we created a brand story and messaging that aligns the best of the old with the best of the new.
“BRANDiac Strategies was very thorough in their research and interaction with our customers. They were able to help us bring focus to who we are as a company and project that image company-wide. The BRANDiac team’s enthusiastic approach was instrumental in identifying how to present our core messages in future projects.”
— Daniel Krische, Vice President, Krische Construction, Inc. The Denver Connection is a high-visibility development site within the city of Denver’s future “Aerotroplis” (developer speak for ‘airport city”—how cool is that?) corridor to Denver International Airport. However, the development’s brand look and feel lacked the credibility needed to accurately convey opportunities and attract the interest of serious developers to the area.
Our solution? We created a typography-based logo and color-palette that are intentionally serious and mega professional, along with a website and brochure that clearly highlight the value and benefits of the development site to potential partners. The result is a legit brand with enough street cred to support some serious business.
Let’s put our heads together and come up with some brainy ideas.