Does your brand logo feel listless and outdated? If your early entrepreneur days were a lifetime ago and you haven’t thought about your logo since its birth, your business is probably overdue for a brand refresh. A refresh can retain years of brand history while repositioning your company for the future.
By 2018, Hoover Diesel service had reached forty-four years of thriving business. Melvin Hoover — fascinated by diesel engines — founded the business in 1974 primarily as a sales and service company for the local Amish community. This community depended heavily on diesel engines for living successfully off-grid.
As four of Melvin’s sons joined him in the enterprise, they realized their customer base and service offerings had changed considerably over time. Besides diesel engines for the Amish community, they were now rebuilding off-highway diesel engines, offering engine parts to repair shops, and repairing and installing stand-by gensets.
Their customers were mostly oblivious to the range of services they now offered. For example, after purchasing a diesel engine, a customer mentioned that a competitor was installing a generator for him. In further conversation, it became apparent that the customer had no idea that Hoover Diesel offered generators.
By the beginning of 2019, they were serious about a drastic brand refresh. Their logo and visual identity wasn’t connecting with their ideal client.
The Research
Researching various marketing agencies and conversing with a few of Rosewood’s clients helped the Hoover Diesel team choose Rosewood Marketing to lead their brand refresh.
“I believe the top reason we decided to go with Rosewood was because of everything they have to offer. They’re not just a website company, but they’re more of a marketing professional.” -Jonathan H., HooverTec
Hoover Diesel began consulting with Luke, one of our marketing guides, and filled out informational forms about their business. Meanwhile, others on our team researched Hoover Diesel’s brand, market, and potential customers. We googled their competitors, studied their clientele, and learned about the products Hoover Diesel Service has to offer. It was exhilarating to dream about creating a consistent brand identity that would be used on every piece of marketing collateral they owned.
The Naming Process
The naming session is an exciting time for both us and our client — in this case, Hoover Diesel Service. The creative team at Rosewood jumped in, ready to run with the project from here.
At the end of a naming session, we often have long lists of name suggestions on our dry erase walls. This session was different. With the COVID-19 germ circling the world, the traditional office naming session was replaced with a virtual meeting where both Rosewood’s and Hoover Diesel’s team spent a few hours brainstorming. After narrowing down the lists to their top 10 picks, they ran the names through various tests — making sure they were easy to pronounce, attractive to the ideal audience, and ranking well in the web world.
Finally, they had it.
HooverTec.
The name that stood tall and strong throughout the process. The name that best portrayed who they had become. It was official.
The Stylescape Stage
As a designer at Rosewood, this is where Lyndon’s fun truly began. Creating stylescapes — a design tool that expresses and steers the visual language for a project — gives him a foundation for building the logo and the rest of the brand elements. It keeps both the designer and the client from going in 101 different directions with the design process. When creating the stylescapes, Lyndon considers type, color, shapes, texture, and imagery.
He created two stylescapes and along with his design collaborator, Gary, visited HooverTec’s New Holland location to present them. HooverTec chose the first one shown below — which turned out to be Lyndon’s favorite as well.
The HooverTec team liked the clean and eye-catching color palette, especially how the red in the brand personality symbolized power and energy.
The Concept Design
The logo design came next. Guided by the chosen stylescape, Lyndon sketched creative ways to symbolize the essence of HooverTec. With three concepts on paper, he started working them out on the computer.
After design review and tweaks with Gary and other Rosewood designers, Lyndon presented the logo option to HooverTec. After some collaboration, HooverTec chose concept 2 as the winning logo. This logo consists of an iconic brand mark paired with a unique wordmark. The icon’s circular shape references a flywheel while an electrical spark communicates energy and creates the letter H. All of this comes together to create one image that represents the HooverTec brand. After a bit of fine-tuning, the new logo was ready to roll.
“I learned that there’s a lot of thought and work that goes into designing brand logos. It’s not just as simple as drawing something up without any meaning — quite a bit of background goes into something like this.” -Jonathan H., HooverTec
The Brand Application Phase
Rosewood issues a brand manual to every business who does a brand refresh. It’s a helpful guide for maintaining a consistent brand image.
With the brand roll-out stage, Rosewood designed these attractive applications for HooverTec:
- Business cards
- Stationary
- Email signatures
- Trade show booth signage
- Brand new website
Last month at the Eastool Expo in Quarryville, PA, the HooverTec team officially revealed their new brand. It was a transformational weekend for them as they answered questions and shared their vision for the future. They received positive feedback from both vendors and customers on their new look. We believe this is only the beginning of the inspiring transformation HooverTec will experience with their new identity.
Would you like to discuss a brand refresh for your business? Call Rosewood Marketing today.
“Prior to our brand refresh, we saw other companies changing their names and brands. I always thought, ‘Why would you do that?’ Today, I have a different perspective.” -Jonathan H., HooverTec