This week we are speaking with Paul Kiesche, founder of Aviate Creative. They focus on branding and digital marketing for manufacturers. Paul shares an amazing case study from a client whose branding was given an upgrade while not abandoning their rich history.
About Aviate Creative
A New Jersey based creative agency that elevates manufacturing brands to new heights with high-quality branding and marketing. They are problem solvers, creative thinkers, artists and technology specialists—who are naturally curious and creative. As good as each of them is alone, there’s no stopping them when they put their heads together to solve your challenges. They bring an energy to the table that leads to exciting work and successful outcomes.
908-509-4442 | https://www.aviatecreative.com/
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Transcript:
David Caron:
I’m here today with Paul from Aviate Creative and they are a digital marketing agency doing some really amazing things in the manufacturing space. Paul, let’s go ahead and dive in. Tell us about yourself, where… your background, what you’ve been up to and about your agency, what you guys really enjoy doing.
Paul Kiesche:
Sure. Thanks for having me, David. My agency is a marketing agency, but we heavily specialize in branding websites, creating different creative promotions for manufacturers and for technology companies. We focus on that niche. We’ve been in business for just almost about 15 years now. Over the years we found that we had a lot of clients in the manufacturing industry and we were doing a lot of strong work there. We started to niche down over the last few years to really narrow it down into more manufacturers than anything else.
David Caron:
That’s really exciting. On the branding side of things, tell us a little bit about, maybe go into some more detail, like what does that look like when when someone hires your agency to handle their different branding?
Paul Kiesche:
Sure. We see all different levels of branding in manufacturing. We get a lot of companies that have been in business for a long time. Maybe they’ve been in business for 30 to 50, maybe a hundred or 200 years and they have an outdated look. They need a refreshing feel. They need to look more modern. What will help with is we’ll help with the logo, we’ll help with possibly renaming them if they want. We’ll help with the tagline and then that moves into the visuals of business cards, stationary, website, brochures, all the collateral catalogs, all that stuff. Sometimes companies need more clarification and so we back up even further and we start with positioning mission, vision, values, try to better understand their target audience and market differentiation.
David Caron:
Nice. Nice. Yeah. The more and more we’re seeing a lot of these, we’ll say historic well-founded manufacturing organizations trying to attract talent, a lot of millennials are entering the space and when they come to a website they have a certain expectation of what it needs to look like or the different collateral, what it needs to look like. I think that we’ll be seeing more and more manufacturers putting a higher emphasis on brand on their design and different elements here coming up.
Paul Kiesche:
I agree completely. Yeah, so it’s interesting. I work a lot with technology companies too, and technology companies are often new and they’re creating a new brand or trying to concentrate mostly on sales. What I found with manufacturers, which was fascinating to me, was a lot of them, when I talked to them, they were like, “Well, we have enough sales. That’s not a concern.” But then I talked to them about employees and recruitment and they struggle. They’re having difficulty finding employees. Lately I’ve been opening that conversation up a lot of how branding or rebranding can refreshen your company and make you more attractive. There’s other marketing methods as well that can help attract those employees certainly. That’s very exciting.
David Caron:
Sure. Yeah, I love hearing all these different capabilities and stories and where brands are going. It’s really fascinating stuff. Let’s dive in. Let’s talk a little bit about how your agency has really delivered the results and what that means really to a manufacturer or organization in the industrial, automation or manufacturing space is typically what leads clients, revenue customers, let’s dive in and see what you guys did.
Paul Kiesche:
Sure. We’ll talk about one of the cases that reflects a lot on what I was just talking about with, we had a manufacturer come to us, they’ve been a leading metal manufacturer for 63 years and they needed a rebranding. Basically they had a solid look, but it was very outdated. It looked like it was from the sixties or seventies they needed it refreshed and then they wanted it elevated. What was interesting was that they came to us and they were looking just for a logo and website and some materials and we asked… We started our process off with a bunch of questions and a questionnaire and some meetings. Basically, in that process we started asking them questions about positioning, differentiation, asked them questions about their personality as a company. All different kinds of things to help us better understand how to design a logo for them.
Paul Kiesche:
In that process they had trouble answering a lot of questions. They never really thought of it too much before. They didn’t really have a clear vision, mission, values statement, they didn’t have a clear direction. We realized that we needed to do that first. We reversed, we went backwards a few steps and started that process and we did some workshops with them. We did… We met with them in person for three times and did all sorts of different workshops to define their personality, their positioning, their differentiation, a lot of the things that we needed to find out.
Paul Kiesche:
Then after that we actually took it a step further and interviewed quite a few of their clients. That helped us not only understand what they thought of themselves but what their clients thought of them. And that gave us a really good insight to find out what needed improvement and what mattered. In that process we realized that they really narrowed their interests down into a strut metal. Strut metal if you don’t know what that is, is it’s all the metal beams that make up bridges, tunnels, buildings. It’s used all over the place, but no one really knows about it. It’s not very sexy. It’s very practical and it’s boring.
David Caron:
We hear about that a lot.
Paul Kiesche:
Yeah. So we wanted to try and change it from the mindset of the commodity, which it is to talk more about their customer service to drive home the differentiations of why they’re a better strut metal manufacturer, that they deliver faster, that they’re more reliable, that kind of stuff. A lot of that was the focus at the time. Then that led us into the next phase, which would be the visuals, the logo, the tagline, that kind of stuff. Yeah, in the logo process… In the meetings it was really interesting, one of the things that I found a lot of fun coming out of it was, in the meetings we were asking them, “What’s different about you?” Somebody in the background shouts out and they go, “We just get shit done. I was like, “That’s your tagline.” They’re like, “What?
Paul Kiesche:
We can’t have get shit done.” I was like, “It’s not get shit done.” I was like, “Your tagline is get strut done.” It took him a second, but it just clicked.
David Caron:
Yeah, agreed.
Paul Kiesche:
Everybody was like, “How did you do that?” I was like, “Well, we didn’t do it just magically, we did it because we had these meetings, we had the discussions, we understood what you needed, the personality you had, the differentiations and in that tagline and everybody loved it. Now we’ve heard from other companies and all sorts of stuff in the industry that love it. In that tagline, it delivers a lot of stuff. It delivers a brand promise, it has an attitude and the personality, it tells exactly what they do, which is a strut, but it’s real simple, real catchy. That was one of my favorite things that came out of those meetings was their tagline. That moved into the logo.
Paul Kiesche:
The logo, we wanted to embrace the fact that they’ve been around for 63 years. We redesigned the whole logo, but we paid tribute to the old brand. We kept the blue color, they had a piece of strut metal that made an H, which was fine at the time, but we basically redesigned that to be much more modern, just fresh and cool looking.
Paul Kiesche:
It just has a nicer look. If anybody’s curious why I didn’t mention the company name, but this is Haydon Corporation. Haydon hired us to do this logo and tagline. Then of course once you’re done with the logo and tagline, it transitions into a lot of other material. But even the logo process, a lot of people think that that’s just a quick instant thing. But we’d go through a very thorough process to get that result, which requires everything from brainstorming, researching, sketching.
Paul Kiesche:
We come up with all sorts of designs. We probably come up with like 40, 50 designs and then we narrow that down to our best four to eight to present to the client. Then we go through revisions with them and so forth. It’s a pretty extensive process that gets really good results. At that point they had the logo and tagline and the next phase was moving into some of their materials. We did their catalog, we did their business cards, sell sheets and helped them with some of their website stuff.
Paul Kiesche:
It just made it consistent throughout, really elevated all of their look so they’d be much more confident, much bolder, just stronger presence. This, look, we want to go for something that’s going to last another 63 years so maybe they don’t have to go back to a branding agency for a long time. They were really proud of the work that we created for them there.
David Caron:
It sounds like it’s a very fascinating process and very detail-oriented. It’s not just, “Oh, we’re going to… Oh we want a new logo, cool. 99 designs and bam, we’ve got ourselves a logo.” There’s actually a lot that goes into, goes behind a great logo and now there’s also a great story. Having the value of having everyone in the room, all the stakeholders in the room actually discussing and thinking through why do we do what we do, what makes us different?
David Caron:
It’s in the land of commodity and everything’s the same and you can get your steel strut beams from probably a lot of different companies. The power of brand, is what sets you apart. I’m actually really happy to hear that they didn’t just stop at the logo and a business card or one of the brochures or something, but were able to expand it across all the different assets, both digital and physical because that brand consistency.
David Caron:
I’m not sure if they go to trade shows or go to other different marketing or sales activities-
Paul Kiesche:
Absolutely.
David Caron:
… or things like that. But when people recognize, “Oh wow, this is a great new logo, great branding, that color… ” We were in a meeting with the gentleman that’s been in the manufacturing industry for about 35 years and one of his big takeaways was the color, the paint color of the different scaffolding or conveyors or different systems inside the warehouses and how each brand needed its color.
David Caron:
Red was this company name. Everybody knew that whatever was painted red was that group. Yellow was this other group. Blue was this other one. Walking in he just said, “Look, you just needed to know who that brand was just from the color association.”
Paul Kiesche:
Sure, we’ve seen that a lot.
David Caron:
That’s very powerful. Yeah. I think that’s where, you know, people say, okay, “Well you guys did… You did this branding exercise, we got a new logo, we got some beautiful assets, it’s all updated.” What were those results? How did your client then specifically benefit from these different efforts?
Paul Kiesche:
Right, absolutely. Well I think it helped a lot in different areas and just starting from the very beginning, it helps a lot with internal morale with the team. Basically, it just got them very excited. They had internal communications about it. Employees start to feel renewed and excited.
Paul Kiesche:
People feel like the leadership of the company is investing into the company and that they’re thinking about the future. That goes internally and it also goes externally. Clients were saying, “It’s so nice to know that Haydon is moving with us into the future and just disappearing or becoming outdated type of thing.” That they want to stay modern and fresh. I’m amazed at how many manufacturers produce futuristic materials for crazy space and they’ll create it for the military, whatever and they have these crazy outdated look.
Paul Kiesche:
It helped them move into the future was good. It elevated their perception. That’s a big part of branding, is just changing the way people evaluate you. It now positions them to be a higher authority in their industry. They look like they’re the top of the industry and it sets a new standard instead of them trying to catch up to everybody, now they’re the ones that everybody you’re going to try and catch up to.
Paul Kiesche:
They apply this to everything, like you said, trade show booths and their trucks and everything else. Consistency is also a big part is that when someone sees a consistent brand, it builds confidence. It helps them to have more sense of reliability from that company and they just trust in it. They recognize it more. It’s just going to become a stronger brand in general, which leads to better marketing, which leads to better sales.
Paul Kiesche:
It’s not a quick instant process. It’s something that takes some time to do and then it takes time to gain momentum from. But there is a sense of instant elevation as soon as you rebrand that people start looking at you a different way.
Paul Kiesche:
We noticed that and we all of a sudden started getting calls from other manufacturers that were envious of them that said, “Now we want to have a rebrand. We, we want to now look like we’re a part of the future too, because Haydon’s making us look bad.” I think that that says a lot right there as well.
David Caron:
Yeah. It’s really interesting. I’m trying to remember here, one of the points you made, shoot, I’m losing it. Oh man. This was really good too. I’m losing it.
Paul Kiesche:
I was talking about perception, talking about confidence and consistency.
David Caron:
Yeah. It’s the perception. Let me just real quick… when you mentioned perception, okay, the way that people just perceive the brand. This is something that I don’t think very many organizations understand how powerful that is. Because just with perception, perception is your own reality. For your sales team, their prospects are able to project what they believe in terms of value, just based upon the perception of your brand.
Paul Kiesche:
Absolutely.
David Caron:
That means your sales team or your customer service team or whoever there is, is benefiting from that brand experience, that brand equity without saying a word and there’s really nothing more powerful than you making up your own mind. When you believe something and you understand it, that’s reality. That’s very powerful. It’s much harder to convince me otherwise. I think that’s a, that’s a massive benefit from a branding perspective that I don’t think… I didn’t really think about it until the way you were explaining it-
Paul Kiesche:
Yeah, absolutely.
David Caron:
… and it’s like, “Wow, this is actually really powerful.”
Paul Kiesche:
Yeah. It’s interesting because people don’t know how to put numbers to it because it… Perception is a very hard thing to put value to. But what happens is, is that if you have a bad perception, if people think you’re outdated or if they think you’re old, you don’t know it. No one tells you your company looks old and that they’re not going to use you. They just stop using you.
Paul Kiesche:
They start finding other people. They say, “Oh, this company is… they’re just falling apart over there. I’m going to go with the one over there that looks like they’re fresh and new.” You just would never know. But on the opposite side, when branding’s working, you don’t necessarily know that it’s exactly that either, but it changes perception. I love… I used to carry a press kit with me to meetings and I would hand them a press kit from my company and immediately they would look, they wouldn’t even really read it.
Paul Kiesche:
They would just open it real quick and shut it and they’d say, “I need one of these.” I’m like, “Excuse me.” They’re like, “This looks confident, this looks bold, this looks professional and I need my company to look like that.” They didn’t even realize what they were missing until they saw another company present it.
Paul Kiesche:
You go into a car company to look at a new car and they’ll hand you this nice super glossy brochure and it elevates the look of that car significantly just from the photographs, just from the catalog and stuff like that. A lot of people don’t realize how much that brand, that whole experience that you were saying influences their take on it. Perception is a crazy thing. You could talk about, you can get t-shirts at Walmart for, I don’t know what, a dollar or 50 cents a piece or something.
Paul Kiesche:
I’m not sure how much, and then you can get a tee shirt at a fancy mall for $100 but it’s all perception of brand. Because one person claimed it to be one thing and yes they might put in more threads and it might be made a little fancier. But in general it’s the perception of the brand that’s selling that. You have Coca Cola or Pepsi, which has the perception of quality and reliability. But there’s very little difference between that and ShopRite soda. In fact, it’s exactly the same product just rebranded for ShopRite. A lot of that’s all perception. A lot of people don’t realize that. I work with manufacturers, you take orange juice and you name it Tropicana or you can take that same orange juice and put it in America’s favorite in some supermarket. It’s the exact same orange juice. It’s just branding that’s the difference. It makes a big difference.
David Caron:
Yeah branding is extremely powerful and like you said, it’s hard to put that dollar sign, that value against it. But when you see those results just from those in the industry that are saying, “Wow, these guys, this looks amazing.” You got… And even, “Oh, we’re a 60 year old company and we’re thinking about the future. We’re thinking about our employees, the employees, the team.” When the employees are energized, that carries over into their work. It carries over into their interactions with your customers or your prospects. All of that has all these different ancillary values that maybe we didn’t realize at the beginning or we’re going to be the results or come out of this exercise. Yeah.
Paul Kiesche:
Absolutely. When you rebrand, you have to give it as much emphasis on quality and importance as your own product. Because if you cheap out and you go with a 99 designs thing or whatever that you mentioned earlier, you’re basically saying that your whole company is only worth that tiny little price of that cheap process.
Paul Kiesche:
You really need to put value on it and say that it’s worth something. It’s a real challenge for companies because they don’t necessarily have my background. They don’t know the true value of it, but what happens is if you do it wrong or if you go… If you don’t rebrand, you don’t realize the negative side of it as well. That if… Sometimes branding isn’t just… it’s not nice to have. Sometimes it’s an essential part of business that if you don’t rebrand, your business is going to start declining more and more every year and sometimes very quickly.
Paul Kiesche:
I’m not trying scare anybody out there, but that’s the other side of it is it might not be like just a nice to have. It’s a necessity a lot of times to stay relevant, to stay modern and to stay of high quality of caliber. If you want to say that you produce this high quality product, you can’t have your logo designed by some high schooler, that’s your nephew. You know what I mean? You need to have a good process and a high quality logo in order to have that same reflection of high quality.
David Caron:
Exactly. Exactly. Well, Paul, we got to wrap up here today. It’s been really amazing going through these different stories about what your agency has done to help different organizations, the power of branding. Can you maybe just leave us with your nugget of words of wisdom here and then how they can contact you if they have any branding questions?
Paul Kiesche:
Sure. I’m not sure what words of wisdom I have off the top of my head. But basically if we’re going to stay on the topic of branding, not only will it help change the perception of your company externally with clients and sales, but also internally.
Paul Kiesche:
Not just with employees that are existing so that they still stay rejuvenated and renewed on the whole idea, but it also helps with recruitment too. If you’re having trouble with getting new employees, rebranding is just one of the things that you should be considering to stay relevant and to stay new and fresh and so forth.
Paul Kiesche:
Then just to continue with my company, my company again is Aviate Creative. You can find us at aviatecreative.com. On social media, just look up Aviate Creative on all the different platforms and we’d love to get in touch with anybody that’s interested, not just in branding, but also marketing, any kind of creative work that they’re looking to do.
David Caron:
Wonderful. Thanks so much, Paul. Been great having you on the show.
Paul Kiesche:
Thank you. Thanks David. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.
Author: David Caron
Chief Marketing Officer, Partner at IndustrialSage Blends experience of digital marketing and operations. Known for creating dynamic marketing and brand strategies that drive customer acquisition.
