Brand Aid

What the remodeler said: “Clients want our commitment to quality workmanship.” What the clients said: “They cleaned, swept, and vacuumed the jobsite. They didn't swear. We felt like we could leave our 10-year-old at home with them if we needed to run to the store.”

“Not a single customer [we spoke to] said anything about quality,” says Greg Stine of marketing firm Polaris, which worked on the branding strategy for Harrell Remodeling of Mountain View, Calif., (www.harrell-remodeling.com). “The reality is that unless something cracks, clients can't really judge quality, but they can judge how well they're taken care of.” For Harrell Remodeling, the tagline became, “We never forget it's your home,” which resonated with employees and clients alike.

This is the essence of branding. It's not just about brochures or logos — often the first thing people think of when they hear the word — but about how well promises are supported by actions. Defining your company's promise takes research to create a strategic framework that can help you understand what your business is all about, who your clients are, and how best to reach them.

“Your brand is the promise you keep, not the one you make,” says Kristin Zhivago, marketing consultant and author of Rivers of Revenue: What to Do When the Money Stops Flowing. In the book, Zhivago lists what she calls “promise-keeping resources”: your product or service, your people doing the work, your processes, your policies, and your procedures. Basically, everything your company does reinforces your brand. “It's what people say about you when you're not in the room,” she adds.

Blackdog's Dave Bryan with Marley. The Labrador retriever in the company's logo connotes trust and approachability.

Credit: Blackdog Design / Build / Remodel

How do you find out what your promise should be? “Ask your clients,” Zhivago says. “Ask them what the success scenario is. Then you can turn around and look at who you are and what you do. ‘What resources do I have to bring to bear on this scenario?'”

It sounds easy, but although clients like to be helpful, they may not answer honestly. Getting an outsider to canvass previous clients will get them to open up more. Client feedback will also help you differentiate your company from its competitors.

From the outside, remodelers all look alike to clients. So how do you set yourself apart from the competition? Joaquin Erazo, vice president of marketing and public relations for Case Design/ Remodeling, points to Starbucks and Subway as good examples of successful branding. The former made a cup of coffee into an experience and the latter has defined “healthy” fast food. Erazo suggests doing the following at least once a year to help differentiate your company by coming up with or by maintaining your brand:

• A basic, competitive market analysis. Find out what your direct and indirect competitors offer and how they offer it. What are their processes? Look at their advertising.
• A gap analysis. What's missing? Mystery shop competitors if possible.
• Look internally. Do my people have special certifications? Is my process different? Why? Am I faster? More thorough? Is my scope of work unique?

• Dave Alpert, owner of Continuum Marketing Group in Great Falls, Va., offers a good example of differentiation. His client, Silver Bullet Design & Build in Minneapolis (www.silverbulletdb.com), has two specific areas that it has branded: The Silver Bullet Perfect Project Program, a trademarked process carrying clients from pre-design to post-construction, and the Silver Bullet 2+6+10 Year Limited Warranty. These differentiators are prominent on the company's Web site, and Silver Bullet's logo and text is consistent with the professional position the company has staked out.

  Silver Bullet is trying to differentiate itself from its competitors, but marketing professionals, including Erazo, warn that in positioning your company you don't want to be too extreme. “You don't want to position yourself as too cheap, too expensive, too diversified. You don't want to carve out too small a niche where there's no room for future growth.”

  Once you've defined and differentiated the company, you can develop a position or a brand statement — a succinct way of saying what your organization is best at, for whom, and why.

The logo, along with the distilled brand statement or tag line, has the important job of conveying the brand visually — a tall order for a little icon. There are many memorable logos — think Coca Cola's red and white graphics or Nike's swoosh symbol — but “a mediocre logo used effectively,” Alpert says, “may be better than a logo that's nice graphically but isn't backed up with any kind of representation of the company's attributes.”

Using a logo effectively means using it consistently. Everything from truck panels and job signs to advertisements, brochures, change order forms, stationery, and company clothing should have a uniform logo.

“Over time, our logo use had gotten sloppy,” says Dave Bryan of Blackdog Design/Build/Remodel in Salem, N.H., (www.blackdogbuilders.com). There were different fonts and point sizes in the text. Bryan now has a full-time marketing -coordinator who recently revamped and standardized the logo and its black Labrador retriever — now in his third incarnation after 16 years in business. Customers ask to keep job signs and want to buy sportswear with the Blackdog logo.

Case, the well-known Washington, D.C.-metro-area remodeling company (www.casedesign.com), has a logo that even after 20 years still gets tweaked. The graphic is a pair of hands, long fingers intertwined, surrounding a house. Just this year, Erazo says, the company chose a darker red color for the house on the logo to soften the design and give it a more upscale feel. The font has also been updated over the years.

Because Case has developed three distinct business entities — Case Handyman Services, Case Handyman and Remodeling, and Case Design/Remodeling — the company has been developing a new tagline to position itself as full-service, from small projects to major additions.

Case's logo is visible everywhere — on job signs, trucks, and clothing. More importantly, the company's culture and workmanship reinforce the logo, whose hands convey a sense of caring as well as building and structure.

A brand and its associated logo can't simply be tacked onto a business; they have to evolve, growing from the company's core values. Every remodeler has a different reason for creating a brand and a different goal to pursue with that brand. Here are five examples:

A new business can be relatively easy to brand because it has no “baggage” and the team is small, Erazo says. A new owner can set standards and goals from the beginning. “It's more difficult to change the perception of an existing brand.”

Alpert agrees, adding that new-business owners should also figure out what kinds of people they will work best with: “Do you want a homeowner who's a full partner or someone who hires a professional and then moves out of the way? One who doesn't care about quality or one who's particular? Do you want to sell based on price? On quality? A fixed-price product? Cater to a middle-class market or an upscale market?”

In Houston, Ben Crawford set up shop five years ago with a marketing plan, a target clientele, and a brand in mind. “We're selling lifestyle,” VP of marketing for Crawford Renovation, Phae Emert, says. From the beginning, Crawford Renovation (www.crghomes.com) defined its target market: realtors. “We've built a brand image around a lifestyle, and we take that to real estate agents to help them think about possibilities,” says Craw-ford, who recognizes that when people buy a home there is always something about it that they would like to change or improve. “Who are real estate agents going to call to go mano a mano with that doctor or attorney [client] to illuminate the possibilities? We're all about easing their client's lifestyle.”

Joaquin Erazo, Case's VP of marketing and public relations, says that after 20 years the company still tweaks its logo.

Having a clear focus from the outset has been key to Crawford's multimillion dollar success, and the company has backed up its promise with attention to detail and careful workmanship. “You can create a brand based on where you aspire to be,” Alpert says, “but it doesn't make sense to create a brand [based] on something you're never going to get to. People will be unhappy with what you're providing.”

To improve its lead quality, R.L. Connelly & Co. (www.connellyremodeling.com) in Atlanta hired Polaris. “We first had to understand which clients they were after — high-end homeowners, super-care customers — [and if] that matched the actual delivery of the product. They really are high-end,” says Stine, whose firm helped the remodeling company deliver its brand message by upgrading its Web site, switching to embossed letterhead, and generally “making the company look and feel more valuable.” The company identified attorneys as a client segment it liked working with, and Polaris specifically marketed to them.

“If you re-brand because the company crashed and burned, you may want to get away from any connection to the old company,” Alpert says. “But if you have brand equity, you might want a gradual change.” As an example, he points to the Levine Group (formerly WL Architect–Builder), which serves metro Washington, D.C.

“We wanted to maintain some of the brand equity connected with [principal] Jerry Levine,” Alpert says. Levine, a builder, acquired the interest of his architect partner, Bruce Wentworth, who went out on his own. The company's Web site (www.thelevinegroup.com), designed by Alpert's firm, is a modification of WL's site. In the lower-right corner is the WL logo and the words “formerly WL Architect–Builder.” “This is a launching point for the company that's built on everything there was before, and now is even better,” Alpert says.

Dan and Mary Tibma recently shifted the focus of their company from remodeling to design/build. The name changed from Tibma Construction to Tibma Design Build. “We needed to change our name and look to reflect our capabilities,” Mary says. Since the seven-year-old company already had brand equity, a defined clientele, and good recognition with job signs, it didn't want to stray far from the old logo. “We wanted to give it more impact and more of a design essence.”

Continuum Marketing Group's Dave Alpert helped to differentiate Silver Bullet Design & Build's Web site from its competitors.

Their original black and white logo conveyed, in Mary's words, “a solid, traditional presence.” The new logo has more “flair,” with a swoosh that adds energy and color. “It helps the company look to the future, but with elements from its previous logo,” their marketing consultant Patricia Lynn of RT Inc., says.

Rasmussen Siding and Roofing has a 52-year history in Grand Rapids, Mich. Owner Jamie Kuiper, who bought the siding and roofing company 6 years ago, wanted to maintain brand equity while expanding the business to other markets and regions. To this end, Kuiper did some corporate restructuring, changed the name of the parent company to Your Home Design Co. (www.yourhdc.com), and began marketing aggressively in outlying areas.

Because of the often negative impression of the siding industry, Kuiper defines what his company is selling to the homeowner as “a company they can trust and not be afraid of. We want to become a brand that provides professional, competent services and does so with integrity and respect for the homeowner.”

Almost a year ago, Your Home Design Co., purchased All Gutter Systems, a local Grand Rapids gutter protection business. The changes Kuiper has made with Your Home Design Co., allow the company to extend its brand and market in new areas while gradually phasing out the locally recognized names, such as Rasmussen and All Gutter Systems, without losing core clients.

Forward Motion

Why should well-established companies that gain most of their clients by referral worry about spending money on branding?

“The value of doing branding right,” says Stine of Polaris, “is that your past customers will refer you correctly. If your brand is ‘We're really expensive but we take care of you,' then you want clients to refer you to people who are going to appreciate that. Let clients carry the message out and be your marketing team.”

Finding what your company does best and communicating that to the right clientele will help steer your company more successfully toward its goals.

“I look at branding as a warm blanket that insulates you from the harsh weather of the world,” Blackdog's Bryan says. “If you're doing a good job with it, it can tone down the peaks and valleys in your lead flow and make the process easier in securing new business.”