Remaking the name of a national manufacturer
In the fast paced society we live in where innovation constantly supersedes the status quo and products quickly become redundant, a 40th anniversary is a remarkable milestone. No matter how reliable a product is, brands don’t last 40 years without adaptation and reinvention.
One tenacious Italian couple with an enduring commitment to quality and customer service were at the heart of it all.
The SPITWATER high pressure water cleaner was first made in Australia in 1982, though its origins in Italy date back to the 1960s. Today, SPITWATER is one of the few remaining manufacturers with its own distribution network stretching the width and breadth of Australia.
Decades later on farms, workshops, mine sites and factories across the nation, their brand and product is still going strong. But in order to survive from decade to decade, particularly in the manufacturing industry in Australia, the brand has had to evolve and innovate to adapt to changing times.
On the eve of their fortieth year in business, the SPITWATER team came to DAIS to manage their brand evolution.
“In conjunction with an extensive business transformation, SPITWATER required a brand strategy that would future-proof their ability to be agile and innovate to meet changing market opportunities. The new brand also needed to respect, capture, and celebrate their 40 year brand legacy and rich family history,” Jack Perlinski explained.
“Through workshops and interviews we worked with the SPITWATER stakeholders and their business consultants to build a future-proofed brand strategy that would drive their new business direction.”
The objective was to pay respects to the brand history and the tenacity of the Martinotti family, establish an architecture of entity and product positioning that allows for product diversification and market share growth, and clarify ‘who’ they are.
“Meeting that objective would allow them to claim a brand market position with a new visual identity, reignite culture and network engagement to expand market and customer share, and create a new entity brand that would bring together their ever-diversifying product lines, service offerings, distributor and dealer network.”
We had to marry the Martinotti family legacy of passion and persistence together with SPITWATER’s reputation and culture as a high quality manufacturer confidently striving for best-in-class performance.
What eventuated was two linking graphic elements that represent these core foundations of SPITWATER and are built into the new brand logo and visual DNA.
But the real linking happened when both the factory team and the distributors – business owners in their own right – came together through DAIS to find common purpose and values upon which to redeploy their new brand.
Prue Martinotti, the General Manager at SPITWATER Australia, appreciated that diving deep into the brand history and, involving the people who have created its success along the way was central to devising a brand for the future.
The new entity brand needed to represent the Martinotti family history while capturing SPITWATER’s existing company culture and reputation. The result is ‘OTTICO’, a brand identity that achieves diverse project objectives while claiming a market position for future growth.
“DAIS ‘got it’ and everything they have done for us including logo redesign, storyboard, word usage, brand promise, photography, style guide, numerous brand assets and even a new name for our 40 year old factory, have all been 100% on point.“
Prue Martinotti | General Manager, SPITWATER Australia
DAIS developed a brand promise: “tough + ready” as a brand positioning statement that started the journey. The campaign ‘Working, since 1982’ was created to capture an authentic and proud brand personality, strengthening their well-established reputation while aligning with their new brand identity.
A credentialing and brand transition strategy were developed to take stakeholders successfully and sustainably on the brand transition journey. The credentialing structure leverages the brand equity of SPITWATER, while creating a perception and awareness of the new OTTICO brand and offerings, separating the factory and the distribution arms of the brand to allow for greater innovation into the future.
The outcome was a future-proofed and extensive brand strategy that evolved the visual identities, created a new entity brand, and restructured their brand architecture to align to their business strategy. With renewed energy, focus and drive, they launched their new brand strategy and in the following 12 months had their best performing year since they started over 40 years ago.
“We trusted DAIS with our brands and are continually learning from them as well. We have a brand new look that is world-class and something we are extremely proud of,“ Prue said.
In addition to the commercial success of the project, in 2022 SPITWATER was awarded Bronze in the ‘Best visual identity’ category for the industrial and basic materials sector at the industry recognised Transform Awards.
See the full SPITWATER case study here.
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