To facilitate the next phase of the firm’s growth strategy, Straughan engaged Substance151 to more accurately pinpoint and communicate its competitive advantage.

The Insight

We began with extensive client interviews to better understand current perceptions and uncover hidden needs. The interview process revealed several key insights:

• Straughan’s most compelling points of difference were significantly underplayed, which left primary audiences unsure of what made the firm truly unique.
• The vast majority of attributes viewed by Straughan as critical were, in fact, undifferentiating and would risk putting Straughan in commodity territory, rather than helping the firm stand apart.
• Straughan’s larger vision and purpose (its stance around sustainability) didn’t fully resonate with primary audiences who perceived “better world” messaging as disconnected from the practical applications and project outcomes that truly matter.

The Brand

What became clear was that Straughan needed a brand platform that would communicate its larger vision but in a more relevant way.

Additionally, the firm needed a brand platform flexible enough to serve as an umbrella for all its unique strengths and points of difference – now and in the future.

To achieve this, we looked at Straughan’s philosophy, its work product and the value it provides for clients and asked:

What concept or message will not only capture Straughan’s contribution to project outcomes but also resonate with the firm’s very bottomline-focused clients? Clients who care deeply about the impact of their projects, but who resent the flowery language of “better world.”

The answer resulted in a brand platform with emotional bite, strategic muscle and not a chance of falling into the commodity danger zone.

Straughan Environmental’s new brand platform is a true evolution of the perception we helped them create through the original website re-design project. Only now, the underlying message is more relevant and meaningful, and Straughan will be able to build upon that relevancy and meaning as the customer, the world and environmental engineering, itself, continue to change.

The Website

Straughan Environmental was looking to dramatically improve its online presence and align its website with the firm’s desired position as a larger, more mature and more capable organization, ensuring that its brand would be accurately represented online.

The new website creates a more dynamic user experience, rich with relevant content and timely information. The design strikes a critical balance between the image of a highly capable engineering firm and Straughan’s mission, which is created around protecting our natural environment and creating better outcomes for projects, people and the environment.

The administrative portion was designed to make it easy for Straughan’s internal marketing staff to manage the new website and keep it current.

As our business continued to evolve and mature, we realized we needed a new website to more accurately communicate our brand. We are very pleased that we chose Substance151 for this monumental task. The Substance151 team showed the same balance of creativity and commonsense logic that they have for other projects for Straughan Environmental in the past. They were able to synthesize many different ideas and opinions to create a website that accurately reflects where we are as a business and where we are going. The back-end functionality is every bit as impressive as the front end. This website will serve us well for years to come.

Tim Trumbauer, Marketing Manager, Straughan Environmental