Brand Strategy that Breaks the Mould in Home Renovation
In 2023, three of London’s most well-known and highly skilled home construction and renovation leaders - Covenant Construction, McKaskell Haindl Design Build, and Millennium Construction and Design - made the exciting and strategic decision to unify as one company, with a new name and a new brand. With a vision to offer families in Southwestern Ontario a full suite of home design, construction, renovation, and cabinetry services, this team of the region’s best needed to articulate that vision through a comprehensive strategy and roll out.
They approached sagecomm for help developing everything from their internal communications and change management process, to their new name, brand, visual identity and all of the strategies and assets they needed to connect their exciting new vision with the market.
The goal of the work together was to honour the immense trust and legacies of each respective company, while reflecting their bold, industry-leading and thoughtful approach for the future - and then introduce it to the market with a bang.
The first step was to conduct a thorough research and discovery process to better understand market realities, the competitive landscape and to talk to clients from each company to understand what they had in common and what set them apart from others. This laid the foundation for a strategic and comprehensive naming process.
This creative and forward-thinking team was after something abstract, unique and that embodied their process. Ultimately, they chose CLAY. Given its deep rooted history in construction (much like this company has and will continue to have), versatility, strength, art and associations with renewal, CLAY was the perfect choice.
A new brand narrative and positioning helped bring this multi-layered promise to life, with headlines like Spaces Shaped for your Life and Built on Trust. Crafted with Care.
With a new name and position established, developing CLAY’s visual brand identity came next. The foundation of the CLAY logo is an abstract Monogram C shape inspired by the properties of clay itself, as well as the various spaces CLAY brings to life.
Clay as a material can be more shapely, flexible and rounded, but also strong and angular. It can be used as art, sculpturally, or as building material for small everyday objects and even large structures. The C combines both the rounded and angular possibilities of clay, and key components of building, like right angles angles, blocks, archways, curves and lines.
The shape plays on the idea of a home. Supported by a colour palette that anchors on the red undertones in clay, structural/geometric typography, and paired with custom photography and video, the CLAY brand was ready to stand out amongst the crowd.
As the new brand was created, sessions, surveys and other strategies were implemented for staff from each company to ensure they were kept informed and that their questions and feedback were being proactively addressed along the way.
After a special sneak peek reveal celebration for staff, CLAY was ready to be introduced to the community, including a new website, social media accounts, a digital, print and out-of-home advertising campaign, team and client celebrations, and more.
Campaign results and anecdotal feedback from this initial phase of our work together indicate this launch was a success. CLAY saw 1.69 million digital ad impressions and had over 14k page views. Staff engagement levels remain strong and their client feedback has been positive.
Services Delivered
- Research & Discovery
- Positioning & Key Message Development
- Brand Development
- Content Development & Copywriting
- Website Design & Development
- Material Design
- Digital Campaign
- Photo & Video Shoot
Sector
Featured work samples
sagecomm brought together our steering committee on several occasions, marking each milestone with research, collaboration and exercises that brought our new team closer together. All stakeholders felt heard, and the work they did made it possible to reach unanimous decisions. Then they managed an unbelievably complex and multi focused marketing plan, complete from trucks, to our new website, to customer and supplier information sessions, launch announcements, employee events, and swag. sagecomm focused on our shared values and brought together one name, with one image that captured all of us. It’s astounding, really. We are so grateful, and the proof is in the results.
Reach and Impressions
The Facebook ads reached 44,349 unique users with a total of 265,234 impressions.
Moderate Engagement
1,044 link clicks and 18,901 page engagements show user interest and interaction with the ads.
Conversions
68 conversions were achieved. This is a positive outcome that aligns with industry benchmarks.
The Brand System
The custom C icon and core brand palette pairings lend themselves to creating a recognizable, and flexible system. The C shape can evolve in width and height to act as a text or photo frame, or graphic accent. This sample depicts a job site sign where flexible messaging, palette and graphic elements all work together to create a unique and cohesive brand piece.
