FUEL | PIECO Case Study | Brand Strategy, Brand Identity, Brand Expression, Illustration, Packaging Design, Collateral Design, Environmental Design, Advertising, Website Design, Social Media & Photography

PIECO

Brand Strategy / Brand Identity / Brand Expression / Illustration / Packaging / Collateral / Environmental / Advertising / Web Design / Social Media / Photography

Incremental Gains

The Brief
Can good design generate growth in a highly discreet industry?

The Opportunity

At its core, PIECO is an engineering company. It exists to solve problems and builds products and systems that help meat processors operate more safely and efficiently. In addition, it’s a global supplier of off-the-shelf and customized OEM components. Its main obstacle? Promoting itself while navigating the compartmentalized realities of the industry. FUEL welcomed the challenge to build a brand platform for this small business based in Manchester, Iowa, and prepare it to compete on a global stage.

Brand Strategy

PIECO generates incremental gains for the meat processing industry. How? By helping ensure processors work in the most efficient manner possible, and workers have a safe environment to work in. This also carries over to the quality of the products that makes their way to people’s tables. The result? A brand built on safety, effectiveness, sustainability, and above all, collaboration. It all ladders up to a promise to, “Get Better. Every Day.”

Brand Identity

PIECO had operated for years with a home-grown logo designed by its engineers. New ownership recognized a logo refresh would be needed to move the company forward. To communicate precision, FUEL designers customized a slab font and introduced angular elements. The logotype delivers on the company’s industrial roots, with the slants and interesting angles communicating a sense of feel and attention to detail.

Before

After

For colors, orange is an energetic and positive hue that represents safety in addition to enthusiasm and ideas. Grey is rooted in industry and gives a nod to the metal PIECO uses to build its products. As for typography, the team selected a sans serif font that’s timeless and clean and allows for easy digestion of information – especially the technical.

Brand Expression

As an engineering company supporting producers of our nation’s food supply, empathy is major point of emphasis for the PIECO brand. Its innovations boost worker safety and help create efficiencies and a better tasting product. The Brand Expression is tailored to draw connections to these differing needs.

Energetic orange works in concert with industrial grays. Custom iconography and interesting patterns add texture to the presentation. And engaging photography draws attention to the human element as well as the quality and craftsmanship of the company’s products.

Illustration

Meat processing is a technical, guarded, and compartmentalized industry. To help navigate some of these realities, FUEL utilized symbols and illustrations to communicate complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way. This also provided an additional visual option for the Brand Expression toolkit besides photography.

Packaging

Most industrial products in the meat processing industry arrive crated or in a plain cardboard box. So why bother dressing up consumable B2B products that never see a retail shelf? Because it provides another opportunity to show that PIECO is different. FUEL introduced a clean design featuring pops of color to distinguish these products from others in the plant.

Collateral

For the collateral system design, FUEL handled product photography for each of the one-sheets and developed a typographic hierarchy to maintain a consistent look for the brand. When PIECO introduced the STR to the market, FUEL used a custom die to help draw attention to this first-of-its-kind plant safety equipment. Together, the photography, typography, and emphasis on the brand’s orange helped create an impactful library of marketing collateral.

Environmental

To help PIECO stand out at industry gatherings, FUEL designed a hard-working trade show booth with an emphasis on portability and versatility. From messaging to imagery and even the curvature of the wall, the presentation aligns with PIECO’s positioning as an engineering company that is flexible and responsive by design, and always working with the end customer in mind.

Advertising

FUEL developed advertising to help PIECO break into the pet food processing market, as well as an eye-catching belly band for Meating Place, one of the top industry publications.

Web Design

If you look at websites across the meat processing industry, you’ll see they’re largely devoid of people. With this web design, FUEL struck a stronger balance between industry and humanity. Other enhancements? The addition of more cross selling of products throughout the site to demonstrate the full breadth of offerings. While an emphasis was placed on visuals, hard-working copy was optimized for SEO not just for PIECO products, but to also generate traffic via searches for compatible grinding equipment and accessories.

Social

FUEL helped fill the content stream in Social Media with creative that leveraged the value-added side of the PIECO business: teaching the importance of safety, efficiency and product quality; recognition for the humanity of the plant workers; and highlighting company culture to help with recruiting.

Photography

Skillful lighting brought sophistication and a high-tech feel to product shots. In addition, utilizing a lower angle helped to retain the sense of how durable and heavy duty these systems are.

Since injuries are a reality in packing plants, PIECO is always thinking about how to improve operators lives through thoughtful innovation. With it being so challenging to access actual production environments, FUEL simulated these human interactions in studio to build out the asset library.

“FUEL has been instrumental in shaping our brand identity with their exceptional creativity and professionalism. Their expertise in crafting our Mission and Vision Statements, along with the cohesive design of our website and marketing materials, has elevated our business presence. We highly value their commitment to delivering outstanding results on every project.”

— Jesse Lewin

Design Success™

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