A pioneer in power generation, including the development of our nation’s first electrical infrastructure, George Westinghouse was no stranger to bold innovation. His company was so successful, in fact, that, by the mid-20th century, phrases like “You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse” had implanted themselves into American lexicon long before IBM would ever use similar phrasing in its advertising.
Following decades of unrivaled growth, however, Westinghouse finally reached a point in its maturity; the company was too strongly associated with homeowners in the lifestyle and consumer products categories and margins were declining due to increased competition. As such, Westinghouse wanted to activate its brand among new audiences in less fragmented, business-to-business markets.
An analysis of the company’s existing assets and consumer research confirmed that most buyers trust Westinghouse as a dependable, high-quality brand. After dozens of internal interviews, we immediately began aligning its brand guidelines and sales arsenal to emphasize this strength; expressing their story in simple form was not acceptable! From market values to value proposition, brand expression, visual tonality, templates, packaging and more, everything was reconsidered and repositioned for a corporate buyer. Investment in newly developed content not only unified current licensees, but also provided a solid suite of sales tools to leverage the customer experience and brand perception.
During this transition, we enabled Westinghouse to pitch its newly refined value proposition to a select audience of building products manufacturers at the National Hardware Show (“NHS”) in hopes of converting several of them into licensee customers. Using the trade show exhibitor portal and LinkedIn Sales Navigator (read: zero list spend), 35 customer pre-show appointments were set up – all of them in categories previously unpursued by Westinghouse.
