Industrial Marketer
Industrial Marketer
Industrial Branding Begins with Consistency
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It’s always been difficult for manufacturers to communicate what they do through their name and branding. We look at the importance of visual branding to let industrials know what you do and how you can help them.
Welcome back, everybody. It's Friday. That means we're here at the industrial marketer podcast, we're sharing tips, tricks and trends that help those that make, manufacture and move in this world around us. I am one of your hosts. My name is Joey strong. And I am joined, as always by my esteemed colleague Nels, Nels he's definitely not Welsh, Jensen, how are you? My man.
Nels Jensen:I am doing great. I am in a happy Norwegian and Danish mode here. And people, people might not know.
Joey Strawn:I just wanted that rhyme to make sense. So good.
Nels Jensen:I'm,I'm both kinds. I'm Danish and Norwegian. The people may be listening, you know, any day of the week, but here at the industrial marketer podcast, it's always Friday. We're just all happy, upbeat, you know, we.
Joey Strawn:I'm not gonna say it's Friday somewhere, but it is it's Friday somewhere.
Nels Jensen:You know, that's, that's, that's where we're at.
Joey Strawn:I'm excited to dive into today's topic, because, quite frankly, and it's one that I am not an expert in. So that's why we're bringing some experts onto this show with us. But today, we're talking about why visual representation, branding, logos, whatever you want to call it. Why those are so important for industrial manufacturers and industrial marketers in this day and age. I am not a designer now. So are you a designer? No. Okay. So we're going to talk about this from a perspective of more marketing and content and things of that nature. That's why we have later in this episode, our distinguished digital design, dude, Brandon Jagger's will be joining us, and it's going to be spectacular. You want to hang around for that, because that's going to be the meat of the episode, where we talk about on the shop floor, active ways to get this into your into your world. But first off else, why is branding important for manufacturers and brands?
Nels Jensen:Well, it's important for everybody, it's who you are you.
Joey Strawn:Nice, Good Answer. Smart.
Nels Jensen:Right. Right. And i the case of manufacturing, yo
Joey Strawn:Well, and and let me just throw this out there, we know, it's, I think, incredibl difficult to communicate wha you do. And it's becoming mor difficult as the world become more fragmented, an manufacturing becomes mor specialized. So yeah, I thin it's, I think it's a big ask, think, you know, I thin branding, I think is difficul in the in the industrial world always like to talk about where we've been and where we're going, you know, where we've been is, a lot of manufacturers, when they started, their companies probably weren't thinking about search intent on Google, when they were naming their companies or putting together their original sales collateral, or training their sales staff at the beginning, you know, of their engagements and their onboarding process. And as I would imagine that, you know, not naming a company, thinking about how it would rank on Google could be problematic in a brand.
Nels Jensen:Oh, sure. You know, and you also had the regionalism not not the globalism. So if you think about manufacturing, at its height, where you had companies that were doing manufacturing for their respective region, whether it was the specifically the upper Midwest or, maybe it was like here where we are in the Mid South, but you really, you know, people knew Oh, this, this company over here. Yeah, they're big in manufacturing. And they might not know exactly what they do, but they knew generally what you did, right? That was... Word of mouth. Word of mouth, right? Yeah, our world, your world was a lot smaller when a lot of these companies were were named. And I think you see that and a lot of legacy manufacturing companies might not have anything more than family name, and whatever, you know, family meal, or,you know, family name, you know, machines or something.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, well I mean, and you'll have like, you know, there, JB Dubois industrial supply, you know, at least industrial supply is in there. That's good. You know, not everybody is lucky enough to think ahead and name their company, like International Paper and twine, like that's very specific. And geolocate is like good for them like great, but some people have, you know, Russell's metal and that could be a lot, you know, it could be a metal fabricator. It could be a metal supplier, it could be a metal band, you know, you don't really know like you could, you could be going for some hard rock music, and you're finding this, you know, metal sheet supplier out of Milwaukee. It's not gonna line up.
Nels Jensen:Right? And but though it's also, as we know, branding is more than just a company name. So that's part of the, the message as well, that's a lot of manufacturers do a good job of telling you what they do, and more importantly, how they can help you. You know, a key component of any messaging is not just who we are, but it's what we can do for you. Right.
Joey Strawn:And I think that's one element of branding that will be vitally important. And I think Branon will talk about that as the specificity around your company and the solutions you provide. And let me be clear, I use that word solutions on purpose because that's a favorite. Everybody loves, you know, industrial solutions, or, you know, oh, Tim, Tim McGraw's solutions. And yes, you provide solutions you obviously do. But you know, taking it a step further and making sure that, you know, your brand represents what you the solutions, the specific solutions you provide, I think it was Jeff Bezos is credited with this phrase, I don't know if it's him. But credited is your brand is what people say about your company when you're not in the room. one phrase another adage that I really liked that stuck with me since grad school was and I forget who said this, but brand is the emotional aftertaste people have after dealing with your company, it's kind of that intangible, oh, it kind of felt like this feeling. And, and a lot of that's encompassed, you know, we've talked about the name, but and Brandon will talk about kind of the visual identification and logos and logo types and things like that, and way deeper than then we'd be able to now, and probably a lot smarter than be able to. But it also is important about its incorporating how you speak about your products and services and solutions, and how you how your sales people engage and how your collateral looks and reads. And I mean, now, I'm gonna throw it to you as a content guy. How important is it for a company to have an established brand identity? When you're then presented with having to create technical content pieces for them? Well, it's like, it is like those shouldn't apply, but they definitely do. And I want to get the misconception out of the way that they don't.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, so branding is a lot. I'm gonna I'm gonna use a analogy to web design, right? I'm not a web designer, many, many, many, most, the vast majority of people are not web designers. Yet, we all look at a new website. And we all become web designers, because we like and here's what we don't like. And here's what you should do. And here's, you know,
Unknown:if you add some more just pop to it,
Nels Jensen:yeah. Don't change the lot. Just make it pop.
Unknown:The
Nels Jensen:branding is live the same way. We all recognize really good branding. And we all especially recognize weak branding. So yeah, when it doesn't work. And I think that's one of the challenges in your messaging. And we can talk about it in terms of content, but you know, it, it's broader even than that, you know, is these people don't know you, right? They're not from you know, it used to be the manufacturing world is a lot smaller circles. And well, people knew us and they knew what they did. So we could be called about that.
Unknown:In our lives. Yeah,
Nels Jensen:we could, we could, we could name our firm Jensen Salut Jensen systems. And then we can, you know, have a little, you know, subhead slogan about, you know, designing solutions for all your metal forming needs, you know, and right, that might mean something to somebody, but to the vast majority of people even in the manufacturing space that's like, Oh, well, I wonder if they do A or B, or C, or D or whatever. So and
Joey Strawn:another example is the, the phrase electronics, that's one that I have come to have a new appreciation for having worked in the industrial sector for a long time is, you know, when you think of electronics, you think, oh, Radio Shack or BestBuy or whatever, but, you know, you could I would start I could start a company, you know, Joey's electronics supply. And that could either be I could be a distributor for other people's electronic components, or, you know, an underserved market is I could make plastic or cellophane or protective coating and casings for electrical components that go in Machines down that could be a tier three supplier for that. So yes, the idea of well, I had to have a name and it had to be electronics, Joey's you know, electronics supply made sense, because everybody was in my Rolodex already, you know, yeah, that makes sense. But it you know, so nowadays, but you could write so quickly.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, but if you quickly come up on your you made a really good example. So if it's, you know, building the components and supplies, you know, for the, you know, whatever world Okay, so now you've immediately gone from broad to specific, or at least maybe not specific, you've at least taken us down to, okay, we know they're not a distributor there, they're building components, you know, that are going to be going on to something else. So, you know, it's not just the name, it's also the, you know, the tear to the tear. If you think of web, I talked about web design, you know, you know, what is your level headlines, your h1, your h2, or h3, the h2 and h3 have your branding is really, what makes the difference? Right? And you talked about what words mean? A category that I'm glad no one says anymore is Telecom. God, what does anyway sorry for the side? Bella?
Joey Strawn:Yes. Tell us usually like those,
Nels Jensen:are you a telecom company? It's like,
Joey Strawn:telecommunications was a mean?
Nels Jensen:Alright, enough, enough. Enough about that?
Joey Strawn:Well, and one thing and and one thing that I want to bring this up, because I think it's vitally important, especially when talking about brand is the idea of consistency. Because one thing that a lot of in my experience was put that way, though, I think that I've come up against like, Oh, well, we paid you know, x 1000s of dollars for somebody to rebrand our website. And I'll you know, we'll get into what a rebrand is with Branon. But, you know, we they rebranded our website, and you'll look and be like, well, they came up with a nice logo, I guess it looks like and added some colors and designs, but then none of that's carried through into their emails, or into their sales collateral, or, you know, the the website is presented in a very fun and video centric way. But then when they talk, it's very clinical, it's very straightforward. And, you know, their, their, their tone, and their engagement methods aren't the same. And so that, to me is always interesting is when it's like, oh, well, we rebranded. It's like how it's like we updated our business cards, it's like, then you did not rebrand you updated your business cards. Well, I worked in business journalism for many years, and companies would send us press releases about oh, we're excited by our rebrand. I was like, that's not news. Sorry. Yeah. And then you look, and you look at what they did. And, you know, yeah, they
Nels Jensen:changed some messaging. It's like, so I don't take the term lightly at all. But I'll give you a real world example of how difficult it can be. You know, this week, the street on which our office is located, changed names. It did, right. It's right, it went from Fifth Avenue to john lewis Boulevard. So you think about what everything needs to change for our company. Maybe it's just some letterhead thing. Maybe it's, you know, some database things, maybe it's some. And you know, that that's just one tiny component of a rebrand.
Joey Strawn:Oh, and trust me, I was in Google Maps and Yellow Pages and our directory listing management software services, making sure that we were good across the board, because one that was the change that we didn't know of, then we kind of had to retro actively act to, but it did, it does require us to update a lot of assets across the board. And you know, doing that isn't necessarily the act of you know, rebranding, but it applies to how we brand and how we communicate ourselves. And now we talk about ourselves, you know, and it's interesting that you actually mentioned kind of locations and and our brand name, we're very familiar with our brand name, and but you know, using, one of the things that I have seen, and what conversations that I've had over the past year to a lot more frequently are conversations about expanding territories, you know, oh, well, we've been very successful in Texas for the last 50 years. But given the shrinking margins, and given our base, being more mobile, and given the digital technologies, we need to expand out into the regions that were a lot logistically able to deliver to, and that is a frequent request. And digitally is a very easy and quick way to do that. But using a name or a brand that's familiar and recognizable in one territory, and then hoping that that brand significance or weight is then carried into a different region where you are not the top dog, you have no footprint or presence, and other competitors have that catbird seat. That's a much bigger brand expansion and way to use your brand than then is then then you've been familiar with and many companies are familiar with. A lot of companies are familiar, like, Oh, I can just call up and say, I'm from Jensen systems, and they know exactly what I'm talking about. But in Michigan, they have no idea what I'm talking about. So maybe And advertising awareness, or, you know, trade publication play is the one that's needed there for more brand awareness as opposed to solutions consulting.
Nels Jensen:Yes, I couldn't agree with you more. And that's part of the challenge that, you know, not only is manufacturing becoming more fragmented, but the whole way we consume information is becoming more fragmented. So, you know, it's almost like your branding, you know, squared or cubed, right? It's the challenges become, you know, it's not branding isn't playing checkers or chess? It's like playing three, three dimensional chess. I feel for a lot of these companies, it really is. You talk about new opportunities and changes in the supply chain. There. You in some cases, you are starting over from brand basics when you're dealing with even adjacent markets. Mm hmm.
Joey Strawn:Yeah. And I think honestly, I think this is the perfect opportunity to. We've talked about this a lot. And honestly, we've talked about branding from probably the direction that a lot of people weren't expecting. It's not the visuals so far. But that's what this next section is for. So I think it's time now that you and I take a trip over to the shop floor. We get Branon in here. And we talk about some real ways that manufacturers, marketers, and industrial marketers, like us can use branding and actually put this into action. So do it. Yeah. Let's get Branon on here and see what we can learn. All right. Welcome back, everybody. We've made it to the shop floor. And I am delighted and pleased to be pleased as punch to introduce our digital design dude. Branon Jagger's. We've got you all the way from New York City calling in and we want to talk to you about how industrials can use some brand. And you're ready. You're ready to talk to us today, Branon,
Branon Jaggers:Absolutely, happy to be here. Thank you so much.
Joey Strawn:Well, before we dive in, with all the boring stuff, brag about yourself for a little bit, I want I want people to know who they're talking to. You're my go to design guy. And I asked you about creative stuff all the time. But but but tell the people who you are.
Branon Jaggers:Yeah, so I've been in the marketing industry for over a decade. And I've worked with, you know, companies, as tiny as a mom and pop and as large as a global brand. And I kind of have done anything and everything when it comes to design, whether that be branding, whether that be video is literally all across the board. And, you know, I, I really nerd out about it. I mean, you know, thinking, thinking about how something, you know, represents a company and how it makes people feel. I mean, down to like color science, that stuff is it's just it's intoxicating.
Joey Strawn:See, now if I told you this, this was gonna be the right guy for this, because we've been talking about nerding out over industrial marketing, as long as you're following your passions, you nerd out about whatever. And I love this because you're the person to bring these actionable insights, these helpful tidbits to our listeners. So, you know, everything here in the industrial marketer podcast is focused in that industrial world. So, you know, Branon, from your perspective, when you're looking at industrial brands, what makes a good industrial brand? Like how do people even start thinking about that in nowadays, I guess?
Branon Jaggers:Yeah. So I think that industrial brands are they're a very unique, a very unique animal. And the thing that I see more often than not, and I know you asked, what makes a good one, I'm going to start first with the the biggest things that I see industrial companies doing that they need to stop doing.
Joey Strawn:Perfect. Even better.
Branon Jaggers:Absolutely. So my first one right out of the gate is industrial companies love acronyms. More than most companies and the problem with acronyms internally, they're wonderful, right? They help you do your job better. When you name your company, three letters. And you have no sort of no sort of supporting tagline. And your logo has no logo mark that tells the story of what you do. No one knows who you are.
Joey Strawn:Big problem.
Branon Jaggers:Yes. Absolutely.
Nels Jensen:That's the logo which many manufacturers and industrials don't even have
Branon Jaggers:No you're totally right.
Nels Jensen:We'll get we'll get to that later. Anyway, continue what else should they just stop doing?
Branon Jaggers:Yeah, I mean, first off, you need to name your company something that actually is relevant. Now I know that that has all kinds of crazy things that come with it, which is that like you've probably spent an insane amount of money with your your three or four, you know letter acronym stamping that on all your stuff. And that's amazing and people have probably gotten to a point. Finally through years and years and years of you guys being amazing and trying really hard. They know those those letters and they know that That font, right? But the challenge comes when you're trying to get new customers. And so you know, taking the opportunity to do a rebrand and to think a little bit more about that name is vital. And then once you have that name, and people, you know that when people hear that they're going to know who you are and what you do. Well, now you probably need a logo mark, there are companies that are totally fine doing typeface logos, but having a logo Mark that's strong, that's symbolic, that can be pulled away that everything can be stripped away from it, and that one tiny icon, you know that that's that is uniquely you, not something you found, like Microsoft clipart,
Joey Strawn:Not to interrupt your flow, but because I'm a dum dum, tell me the difference between a logo type, and and what wasn't fancy words you were using what they mean?
Branon Jaggers:You're right, you're right, you're right. So there are there are two, two different types of logos typically, and you have one that's a regular font, it's just regular old type. And if that's it, there's nothing special about it, you pull it right out of the box, it's just, it's just the type. And usually, if it's just going to be the type, somebody has created a custom font for that it's not something you would like, load up in Google and say, I would like you know, Helvetica, it's probably had something unique done to it to make it uniquely you. But there are also companies that along with doing that, pair a an icon with that. And what this allows the
Joey Strawn:Like th Nike swoosh or something.
Branon Jaggers:Absolutely. swoosh. There it is, right.
Joey Strawn:I'm getting it.
Branon Jaggers:I've got as if that is exactly the case. You know, think Starbucks. Starbucks has a they have a font, they have a type. And if you separate everything from it, you just have that green Starbucks, you still know what Starbucks it's still custom to Starbucks, but then you pair the mermaid with it. And now you have a full what's called a local logo lockup, right, this is the icon that you're going to recognize when you're walking down the street, and then it is the typeface. Now, with those, right, certain companies, when you get to a certain size, you can, you can just use that icon, right? You think Apple? Sure, you think McDonald's with the, the arches, almost call them the humps, but I'm sure they probably want it to be called the arches.
Joey Strawn:Here's what they want. They're not paying for this.
Unknown:Exactly. So the McDonald's humps. And, you know, there are multiple companies that are like that most companies though, and
Joey Strawn:Especially the industrial space.
Branon Jaggers:Especially the industrial space, your niche, not a lot of people know you, if you are going to have an icon, you need to make sure to pair that with your type face. It needs to be one thing that you use together, because people aren't going to see a dot and a squiggle and be like, that is insert name. Right? Right. They probably you're going to need to spend a lot of years building on that foundation. But once you have that once you have your icon once you have your typeface, guys, you're gonna need colors. I don't mean any color. I don't mean like, whatever color.
Joey Strawn:Every color.
Branon Jaggers:Yeah, I think Yeah, yeah. Why not? Let's just every color. It's gonna be very vital. And this is something we see manufacturers do all the time. They'll say, our logo colors blue. And then they they just mean blue. So the shirts in the company are 12 different shades of blue. The materials that they send out to their clients are 15 different shades of blue, it's just blue. And so they know that their company's blue and people will associate blue. Wrong!
Joey Strawn:Abadee Dabba di,
Branon Jaggers:Exactly. Could not be more wrong.
Nels Jensen:You're right. You're you're just you're asked to design you've helped design a lot of industrial websites, and I'm guessing the word masculine comes up in almost all of them.
Branon Jaggers:Yes, that does happen. That does happen a lot as you're thinking it's your blues, right? Yes. Hence your blues. And I think that's, I think that that's also a i think that's that's an easy thing that people lean into, right? They're like, we're nuts and bolts, and we're metal and things are on fire, like it's got to be masculine. Like, it's like, that's not always the message that you want to send to people. Sometimes you want to tell people that you know that you're caring, sometimes you want to tell people that they can trust you. Sometimes you want
Joey Strawn:I mean, if you're, if you're a packaging provider, you know, your boxes need to be supportive and safe, not super bad ass.
Unknown:Exactly 100% and like there's so many nuances, and the color that you choose is really important. And not only just the color, but the you know, the intensity, the saturation of the color where it falls within the spectrum. Look, that's all very important to the message.
Joey Strawn:What you're what you're What are you hear you say and Branon, is that a brand? Is it just making your name bold at the top of your website? There's more to it than that. Like there's more thought that goes into it than that.
Branon Jaggers:Oh, my goodness, yes,
Joey Strawn:I'm astounded.
Unknown:Yes, so much more thought. And you guys, you guys, you got to stop just shipping it in to see, you know, just got it, you got to stop just being like, Oh, we have a product. Guess just, well, I guess we go the best Yeah, just like just go to FedEx and print our name on a piece of paper, we'll just stick it to a box we'll sell it. Stop it like so you deserve better your clients to serve better,
Joey Strawn:Deserve better. I love that. I love that you deserve a better brand.
Branon Jaggers:You deserve a better brand.
Joey Strawn:You've worked hard at your company, you've grown it you're your grandfather started at 80 years ago, you deserve a better brand. At this point, you deserve to be recognized. I love that. So Branon, as we wrap up here, if there could be one or two bits of like actionable things that like manufacturers, or marketing people or even some C suite people thinking about their vision, what could they do or think about or change their thinking on that would benefit them? This year this quarter even?
Branon Jaggers:Yeah, so I'm gonna just do a couple of things. First, as many as we can. Absolutely. I know that logo and brand overhauls are are hard. So I'm going to start with a really easy one. Look, walking, walk in tomorrow, walk into your facility. And I want you to look at the signage, the easy signage, we're talking posters, we're talking brochures, we're talking in any sort of materials, look at all those and look at the shirts everyone's wearing. If they don't look the same, fix that. That's the cheapest thing to fix. Fix it tomorrow, because that is gonna that's gonna leave a lasting impression. If your logo isn't updated yet, if it's not up to par. That's okay, you can get there. You don't have to spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars updating all your signage across America, no big deal. Start with the T shirts, the business cards, the brochures and the posters around the office, it is going to elevate you so much. And the effort you're gonna have to put in, it's gonna feel minimal.
Joey Strawn:I love that because it's, that's probably something that someone has thought I could do that, but it's not going to make a difference. You're saying it will make a difference?
Unknown:Absolutely. It's gonna look unified. Just because you're you have an acronym in your name. And people don't actually associate you with anything just yet. Just because your color says masculine and really you want to say trustworthy one day. It's okay, that's totally fine. You can get there. Take the easy step first. It's like the snowball. Everybody always talks about the snowball just have to start somewhere.
Joey Strawn:So we talked about consistency. We talked about consistency earlier in the episode between me and Nels. So I'm glad, I'm glad to see that be actionable represented. What else any, any other any other good tips that people can have before they leave.
Branon Jaggers:Yes, the other easy one. And this one's free. It just requires time. Make sure that you decide how you want your business to sound and how the people inside your business are supposed to talk about your business. And then make sure that's applied. I'm here to talk about logos and visuals. And that's wonderful. But the things you say about your company and the way you talk about your company, if it's all over the place, that's just as bad as a bunch of different shades of blue t shirts. That's just as bad. You need to have unified language around your company. And pair that with your brand new brochures and posters and one t shirt that everyone wears. You're gonna have a great
Joey Strawn:I, I so honestly the fact that you wrap that back around like that. It's almost as if we planned it, and we didn't. But I'm very happy that you did that. Because ultimately, if there's one takeaway for me that I want everyone listening to this podcast to understand is that branding is more than the logo and how it looks, how things look. There's so much more to it than that. And it is vitally important to understand how you sound and how you write, and the touch points that those images are used in and the ways that those images are used in and how your salespeople are trained. All of that is branding and the the visual identification of it all the way we brought Branon on here to talk about and he did so eloquently is the the frontward facing the fun part of it. But there's so much more and I want people to walk away from at least this episode knowing that if you have a pretty logo that helps, but that's not everything.
Branon Jaggers:Well, I wouldn't have said it better myself.
Nels Jensen:I would like to double up on that I think Branon has given people actionable items here, you may have a very outdated name, you might not even have a logo. It's incredibly difficult to have the right visuals in the manufacturing space for your branding and marketing. But just starting with your staff, fixing the mismatch of brand visuals, and unifying how you talk about your business, your staff can help you hone those messages. And it would be a great exercise to go to your staff and say, Hey, if we were doing this from if this was a do over what would we name ourselves? What? How would we go to market? And I think Branon has just given a couple of bricks of the foundation that you can start with. And there's a lot you can go from there. Because we know it's, you know, these companies, many of them have been around a long time. And yeah, eventually they will need to rebrand your company name should mean something in Google. But Branon, really two really good tips for how to get started.
Joey Strawn:Thank you. Thank you, Branon for being here.
Branon Jaggers:I really appreciate it.
Joey Strawn:Well, we'll definitely have you. We'll definitely have you back. We're gonna get into more specific topics, you know, this season, and we're going to talk about, you know, different brand examples or how you can build a campaign through visual identities or you know, brand actually something that you and I chatted about off air was how to take a very technical concept, and actually make it visually represented representational. And I know you can talk for at length about that. So we have some episodes coming up this this season that you're going to be back on. So thank you for joining us today. We'll let you get back to your job now. But thank you so much for joining us.
Branon Jaggers:Yeah, thank you so much, guys. I'm happy to be here and stoked to come back and hang out with you guys.
Joey Strawn:Awesome. Well, industrial marketers, we've come to the end of another fantastic episode. As always, if this is your first time listening, thank you. Please subscribe. However you listen to podcasts, or whether this is on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the feed, follow us on social media by searching industrial marketer or you can always go to our website, industrial marketer comm to see more articles, blogs, tips, tricks and trends that all of us industrial marketers can use. Until next time, Nels, any fina parting words of wisdom
Nels Jensen:Just love what Branon had to say. It's fix the visuals unify the messaging and I'm all I'm excited to bring that to our shop.
Joey Strawn:I couldn't agree more. And until next week, guys, stay awesome.