Carpenter Technology
Recasting a global enterprise for success in the new digital era.
Founded in 1889, Carpenter Technology is a global company with a revered history as a manufacturer of specialty steels. It has evolved into a $2.1 billion global leader in highly innovative specialty alloys, but perceptions remained stuck in the past. And understanding of the company and the brand was fragmented and confused internally and externally.
The challenge was best expressed by our client.
“We have to embrace and unleash the power of digital to lead the industry with a fully integrated platform that follows and supports our customers throughout the entire relationship lifecycle.”
strategy
- Customer Insight Research
- Corporate Narrative & Messaging
- Digital Strategy
- ESG brand integration
- User Experience Mapping and Analysis
- UX/UI
DESIGN
- Brand Development
- Brand Voice
- Content Strategy & Development
- CGI and Image Library
- Digital Tools
- Launch Planning
- Sales Engagement
- Website
ACTIVATION
- Video & Brand Animations
- Brand-based Marketing Systems
- Brand Standards & Guidelines
- Brand Voice
- CGI
- Collateral Systems
- Digital & Website Maintenance
- ESG Report
- Work Safe Manual
OTTO Brand Lab created a Brand Vision for Carpenter Technology that aligned customer, partner, employee and investor communications with their business strategy.
Now Carpenter Technology looks like the company that created special alloys for the Mars Rover and the Apple Watch.
The Carpenter website is an inbound marketing machine, as well as a rich industry resource featuring killer tools such as the Alloy Finder, Application Spotlight, Resource Library and Innovation Center.
During the heart of the lockdown, OTTO put all hands on deck to help Carpenter Technology create their Work Safe Manual. It aligns the whole company from offices to the forge, with safety insights, protocols and tools, as well as industry- leading COVID safety guidelines.
OTTO helped the Carpenter team to develop a sustainability strategy as part of their brand platform. We started with a hand-picked a C-Suite advisory team. Then we developed a platform for collecting, measuring and managing ESG communications. The end result is a long-term corporate vision, with a messaging framework for employees, partners, customers and Wall Street.
Challenge
Founded in 1889, Carpenter Technology has evolved into a $2.1billion global leader in specialty alloys but perceptions of the company remained rooted in the past. Our challenge was to re-engineer a fragmented Carpenter brand experience and align it with the organization’s new reality and then reconnect it with both customers and employees.
Digging beneath the surface we saw a global enterprise that spans two worlds. In one world there is the 130 year-plus specialty steel manufacturer. In the other, we saw a modern, dynamic leader in high-performance, specialty materials for critical applications in many diverse industries. Everything, in fact, from materials in the Apple Watch to the Mars Rover.
The challenge for OTTO Brand Lab was to integrate the two business worlds in a single, cohesive brand with an entirely new brand expression.
Strategy
In an intensive discovery workshop we worked with the client team to understand their business goals and aspirations. What we saw was a great company without a clear brand vision. Carpenter Technology had to move away from the existing brand expression and what it communicated – a manufacturing company – and recast it as a cutting edge, solutions partner.
As the client expressed it: “We have to embrace and unleash the power of digital to lead the industry with a fully integrated platform that follows and supports our customers throughout the entire relationship lifecycle.”
We created an over-arching, flexible Brand Vision – an entirely new visual system – that met the immediate needs of the client and also allowed them grow into in the future. This was embedded in four customer engagement strategies with both internal and external relevance. We also developed a corporate ESG strategy.
Outcome
The result is a unified organization with a fully integrated digital experience – a central resource for marketing, HR, customer resource, customer and partner education, together, positioned the company as a forward-looking global leader. A functioning brand reality in the digital world.
To activate the brand, OTTO Brand Lab created a digital delivery system that unified all marketing, HR and customer management platforms.
We also created digital tools to support current and prospective customers and reconfigured the website to become an inbound marketing machine, enabling the website to be answer customer questions and educate users automatically.
The perception of Carpenter has been entirely recast. Today the brand is positioned and acknowledged as a materials science leader that touches many aspects of modern life.
