Beyond the Pitch:
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Join us on May 9th, 2024
Optimas Brand Investment Brings the Messaging Home
Growth Lanes - New Markets | Human Capital
The Growth Opportunity:
Red Caffeine helps B2B clients by focusing on growth opportunities such as entering new markets, adding human capital, or streamlining their technology. In doing so, we’ve found that very few B2B companies strategically develop their brand and leverage their ability to impact growth. They struggle to differentiate themselves from competitors. They have a hard time attracting and retaining top talent. When they want to enter new markets, it can take years for them to become known. Manufacturers and distributors, specifically, blend into each other on a canvas of similarly positioned companies forced to compete on cost.
Optimas Solutions is a world leader in the manufacturing and distribution of c-class components like fasteners and enclosures. Optimas annually sources and delivers over nine billion parts from 150,000 SKUs. The company also provides six technology solutions that optimize forecasting and inventory management.
Although metal screws, nuts, and bolts literally hold our world together, these parts typically make up only 1% of an OEMs total project budget. They are overlooked and undervalued by many companies–but not by Optimas Solutions.
So, when Optimas wanted to be seen as a strategic partner that provides supply chain assurance, quality control, inventory management, world-class engineering, and quality certification at the highest industry levels, the $650M company was asking for help ensuring it didn’t look, sound, or feel like other manufacturers and distributors of c-class components like fasteners and enclosures. Optimas wanted to be sexy in an unsexy industry.
The Highlights:
- Created a memorable and differentiated brand that resonated with employees and customers
- Tailored branding elements to target new markets and cross-sell to current customers
- Invested in branded spaces to make the company's commitment to safety, quality, and core values highly visible
PLAN METHODOLOGY
BRAND STRATEGY
DEVELOP CUSTOMER AND EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION
CAMPAIGN PLAN
BRAND AWARENESS & COMPANY CULTURE
DRIVING PERFORMANCE
CROSS-SELL OPPORTUNITIES & NEW MARKET PENETRATION
Stage One - Extending the Brand Messaging
First, our designers extended the Optimas brand messaging into creatively communicated graphics for its global website, industry advertising, trade shows, and product line cards.
Using the Optimas tagline, Efficiency Up, we could visually convey the company’s value as a partner who can manage parts from procurement to replenishment and is more than the sum of its parts.
We designed a series of composite images representing this position across various vertical markets. An upward arrow comprises 56 screws, nuts, bolts, and washers. A wind turbine composed of 37 individual parts, provided by Optimas. Sixty-nine components are arranged in the shape of an electric vehicle.
Extending the brand messaging allows Optimas to enter these new markets now with industry-specific graphics, consistently branded for every channel. Today, Optimas goes to market with a distinct visual identity that positions the company as a creative and forward-thinking leader.
Stage Two - Bringing the Message Home
With a fresh perspective on its brand, Optimas leaders asked what could be done at their facilities to generate excitement and get everyone talking about Optimas the same way. To their credit, they wanted to breathe life into the stereotypically dull, gray industrial environment.
We responded to this challenge in stage two by turning several stereotypically dull, gray, cement, and iron facilities into dynamic and memorable branded spaces that create an experience unlike anything the fastener industry has seen.
Nearly every wall of Optimas facilities in Columbus, Indiana, and Sturtevant, Wisconsin now welcomes visitors and employees with the company’s bright green logo (an interlocking set of three components, symbolizing the important work components and fasteners do every day) and a series of bold messages for all to see.
For Optimas customers and prospects, the Columbus facility now vividly reinforces the brand positioning, differentiation, and the company's array of full-service capabilities for each vertical it serves. When customers walk through the building, they are reminded of the branded Optitech Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solutions (OptiScale; OptiRack; OptiZone; OptiDrop; OptiBeam) that differentiate the company from every other manufacturer and distributor of c-class components.
As much as a strong brand works externally to attract and engage the right customers, it also pushes and pulls internally to attract and retain the right employees. For Optimas employees, the branded spaces make the company's commitment to safety and quality highly visible while deepening their understanding of its core values. And the ever-present messaging feels ingrained into the environment instead of a set of disconnected corporate directives.
As a result, employees have expressed an increased sense of pride and ownership in the Optimas brand. So much so that several team members have even had the Optimas logo tattooed on their arm. They are living and breathing brand champions.
Red Caffeine impacts clients like Optimas by helping them think differently–about themselves, their brand positioning, and their growth opportunities. To discuss how we can help your company grow, email Dayna Kramer today.
