Positioning a $5Billion Global Steel Giant for Growth Through Innovation
Positioning a $5Billion Global Steel Giant for Growth Through Innovation
Background
Samuel Son & Co is one of Canada’s largest private companies with a range of vertically and horizontally integrated steel businesses. With a keen eye on the future, they in 2015 bought Burloak Technologies, a small, highly regarded Burlington, Ontario-based advanced additive manufacturing company with big ambitions but limited awareness amongst manufacturing designers and procurement executives in industries like aerospace and automotive where Samuel is well known.
We needed to bring Burloak into the Samuel brand family to take advantage of existing customer relationships without compromising Burloak’s leading edge reputation for additive manufacturing science. And to create a coherent brand strategy for Burloak that elevates its profile and provides a marketing platform for new customer acquisition.
Charting a Course
We embarked on a series of senior management stakeholder sessions to define a unique brand purpose, and customer research and a competitive analysis to reveal competitive white space and the highest potential Burloak Technologies positioning. We provided customer journey mapping and persona building, which would inform a marketing strategy and a go-to-market approach. We also developed a brand video to introduce the new positioning, a B2B content strategy and a paid digital display campaign using vertical media to target senior leadership at global space, aerospace, automotive and energy organizations.
Arriving at the Destination
With the Samuel reputation and infrastructure behind them, Burloak is growing into one of the world’s leading additive manufacturing companies and one of the few that can deliver AM at scale. They have since opened operations in California, secured major contracts with some of the world’s leading space and aerospace companies.
‘There’s no shortage of global competition in the Additive Manufacturing space. Many are competing on the same promise. Blackjet really showed us how to differentiate our brand, focus on our core strengths and develop a compelling narrative to help support thought leadership, marketing and sales.’
