Shaping Together
A Creative Engineering Collective in Portland, Maine
Our relationship with the engineering firm Sebago Technics all started with one of their senior VPs reading blogs she regularly received from a local commercial contractor. Note first, she actually read them. That's because they were actually worth the time they took to read. We took special care to create thoughtful, clear, and compelling writings that spoke more human and conversationally about things like project reflections and industry-wide norms. But most importantly they showed the inner life of a company that had clarity about their sense of purpose, a commitment to a way of working both internally and externally, and they were really good at communicating that ethos and purpose to the world.
Humanizing the “engineer”
At the same time, she had a growing frustration with the fact that in the engineering field, everybody looks at you like you're the same: dull, geeky, necessary, hopefully competent, and that's about it. But from the inside, Sebago was anything but that. They too had a way of working that was unique and needed articulating. Instead of a narrow focus on one branch of the field, they had a team of engineers from almost every relevant specialty. They also had a focus on relationships and a way of interweaving these different branches within the company which really made them a unique firm in the industry. From the outside, Sebago clients were satisfied with the work, but they had no idea the value they were getting as an interlocking web of different experts all mingled minds and skills to solve their problems. From the inside, their own people and staff retention rates testified to the fact that people were thriving working in such an environment. But how could they tell the world about it?
Over the course of a year we came alongside the leaders of Sebago Technics and helped them really understand and articulate something that was so natural to them that they hardly knew it was there, those things that made them unique. We honed in on key language that they needed to efficiently and clearly tell the world, and themselves for that matter, what made them so unique. We produced a comprehensive story document that told back to them, in language clear and compelling, what made Sebago so special.
A LIVING BRAND VERNACULAR
Together, we crystalized the phrase "Shaping Together" as the anthem for the Sebago Technics brand. This was developed around the table with the CEO, COO and marketing coordinator over a few months of refining. Once adopted and presented to the entire staff, we wrote a series of blogs to set the tone for their future communications that would help people outside the firm see the unique way they looked at engineering and also be good readers.
A New Description:
CREATIVE ENGINEERING COLLECTIVE
Additionally, we honed in on an accurate way to describe the company in the marketplace. They are anything but a traditional engineering firm, and so the title “Creative Engineering Collective” became forefront as a clear result of our discovery work. During the process, high-profile clients had continued to express this vague point of intense value regarding Sebago Technic’s services. Ultimately, developers and builders found value in the creative process being led by the engineering teams. Put simply, clients really valued the creative environment and the word was actually avoided in all the brand language. That all changed and now there is an upfront descriptor that’s priming rich conversations around one of the most valuable assets delivered by Maine’s most Creative Engineering Collective.
