8-minute read
Key takeaways:
- NewGround International’s 111-year-old brand was well established, but the architecture, engineering, and construction firm wanted to break into new industries.
- They worked with ArtSpeak to develop a new unified brand strategy with fresh messaging and used leadership coaching to realign their team.
- Now, they’re serving more Groundbreakers in more industries. See their work for Starbucks, CFG Bank, DIOR, Panda Express, and OilChangers at the NewGround website.
100+ years of innovation
NewGround International is the industry leader in designing and building financial institutions.
And in 2019, after taking on retail clients like Starbucks, Blue Nile, and Oil Changers, they were ready to tackle another vertical: hospitality.
But Kevin Blair, CEO of NewGround International, had a wake-up moment on a call with a prospective client in the hospitality industry.
When the prospect pulled up NewGround’s website—one that still prominently featured financial institutions—he didn’t think NewGround was serious about his industry. Kevin knew it was time for a new brand message and website.
Who is NewGround International?
NewGround International is a 111-year-old architecture, engineering, and construction firm with offices in St. Louis, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. They’ve been the industry leaders for financial institutions since 1913 and have historically served retail, hospitality, and medical verticals.
NewGround was first to market with architectural banking game-changers like these:
- Bank branches
- Drive-throughs
- Universal bankers
- Using multimedia as part of interior design
However, they’ve always worked on projects outside of financial institutions too. They designed the iconic Howard Johnson roof, created the 1-800-Flowers logo, and recently moved into retail design with Starbucks and Panda Express.
In 2019, Kevin was ready to get serious about the hospitality industry, designing for hotels and fast-casual restaurants:
“We realized that the financial-service sector was going through considerable consolidation. In the long term, it was difficult for us to sustain the growth strategies and goals that we had established within a consolidating and shrinking market.” — Kevin Blair, President and CEO
But like with many other companies, two years of COVID-19 chaos sidelined NewGround’s expansion plans.
When the markets began to rebound in 2022, Kevin was ready to reignite NewGround’s expansion outside the financial sector—to help groundbreaking leaders in the retail, hospitality, and private equity industries build branded spaces.
There was just one problem.
The way forward: Confident leadership and collaboration
Kevin said that in 2022, “We were already trying to penetrate hospitality. I was talking to a large development firm on the West Coast that was doing hotels. And while I’m on the call with the head of this development group, he says, ‘Well, what’s your website?’ He pulls up our website and ends the conversation with, ‘When you’re serious about hospitality, let me know.’”
Though their old website showed the breadth and depth of their work expertise, it showed who NewGround used to be rather than who they had become. The design and messaging didn’t showcase the beautiful retail environments NewGround could build or the innovative workplaces and hotels they could design.
It was still mostly banks and credit unions.
But Kevin was determined. He believed in NewGround’s capabilities as a premier design/build partner for any industry leader. NewGround’s external messaging and branding needed to convey the same confidence.
Kevin also wanted to standardize internal messaging. He said, “At the time, we had multiple operating divisions within the company that were all acting independently with their own voices, their own audiences, their own tones—almost like sub-brands of NewGround. They were not in alignment, and it was not scalable across our various verticals.”
Kevin knew they needed consistent messaging and clearer service offerings to break into new markets and create airtight consistency across every NewGround department.
That’s when Kevin brought ArtSpeak Creative into the project.
Breaking new ground with brand strategy
To learn more about NewGround’s history, ArtSpeak interviewed over 20 key leaders across the company. We wanted to know how they felt about NewGround’s current messaging and offerings. What was clear and unclear? What about their messaging didn’t work? What were they telling prospective clients?
We also wanted to hear from NewGround’s clients themselves, so we sent surveys and collected testimonials from some of their best customers. After sifting through many pages of notes, we crafted a new brand strategy that unified their core offerings into four services, four areas of expertise, and four industries:
- Services: Strategy, Design, Build, and Interiors
- Expertise: Workplaces, Prototypes, Rollouts, and Renovations
- Industries: Financial, Retail, Hospitality
Differentiated services, expertise, and industries meant NewGround’s brand could expand beyond building banks and credit unions. If a retail client needed a new prototype, NewGround could now communicate that they could help strategize, design, build, and furnish it. They could build a workplace for anyone. They could renovate anything.
The clarity this new brand strategy provided was exactly what Kevin was hoping for:
“Out of that exercise, it really defined our core offerings that were scalable across all the new verticals we wanted to serve.” — Kevin Blair, President and CEO
Clarified messaging for Groundbreakers
Once the internal brand strategy was in place, we helped NewGround clearly communicate their offerings through outward-facing messaging. We started by defining their audience:
- We built nine audience personas within their industries that outlined the kinds of leaders they’d likely run into and what those leaders care about.
- We gave their target audience a name: Groundbreakers, those transformational leaders in any industry positioned to speed their brands into the future.
NewGround’s corporate communications specialist, Jordan Knudsen, loved the Groundbreaker breakthrough:
“Identifying what a Groundbreaker was and using that term to identify potential clients was revolutionary for our new branding, messaging, and communication. It shifted our focus from trying to land every little project to searching for clients who want to change the market and do the next great, innovative thing.
These Groundbreakers don’t mind that we work in multiple verticals because they appreciate the expertise and insights we bring from other markets.” — Jordan Knudsen, Corporate Communications Specialist
NewGround even cast actors that looked like the Groundbreaker photos we chose in their new brand launch video. The newfound clarity was energizing.
Finally, we crafted a new brand promise, a core story, and dozens of top-line value propositions to embed in their website, marketing, and social media.
Brand promise
“Plan, design, and build ___________.”
your branded space
for growth
for innovation
with confidence
Value propositions
“100+ years of innovation on your side.”
“Build your brand experience.”
“One team, on your team, start to finish.”
“Prioritize people and maximize growth.”
One-liner
“NewGround International helps brands plan, design, and build innovative spaces that turn heads and accelerate growth.”
Additional messaging
We helped develop further messaging for each of their verticals and across all of their web pages. NewGround’s leadership loved the new messaging so much that they built a “brand book” and handed it to each of their business development team members, saying, “This is who we are, who we serve, and what we offer now. Use this messaging on all of your prospect calls.”
About the results, Kevin said:
“Too many companies project a message that isn’t consistent with their internal team, creating a disconnect when clients or prospects get deeper into a relationship with the firm. The ArtSpeak process of understanding who we are and translating that to an external voice has helped bridge that gap and prevent disconnects.” — Kevin Blair, President and CEO
Rolling out the new strategy and messaging
Kevin’s first step in aligning the whole company to the new brand strategy and messaging was restructuring their teams around the strategy. That created a new stratum of executive leaders with new direct reports, and Kevin wanted each leader to feel confident about ingraining the messaging into their teams.
Once the leaders felt confident, we hosted two company-wide rollout events alongside Experience Fresh and Black Raven AFC, two other agencies supporting NewGround’s brand launch. We contributed web copy, collaborated on web strategy, and collaborated with the other agencies throughout web design and development.
But before we wrapped up the project, Kevin asked if we could provide one more service: one-on-one coaching for his executive leaders.
Coaching NewGround’s leaders
Once the new strategy and messaging were officially launched, Kevin knew that his executive leaders would need support and guidance in the months that followed. So our team scheduled regular one-on-one coaching with each of NewGround’s leaders.
Our coaches helped the leaders understand the new messaging on a deeper level. We helped them brainstorm ways to connect NewGround’s core values to the new strategy and embed the messaging in the layers of staff they were charged with leading:
“It wasn’t just something happening with the brand ‘over there.’ We each individually got coached on how to think about it, how to talk about it with our teams, and I think that’s one of the reasons it was successful.” — Paul Courter, CFO
These coaching relationships naturally evolved into high-level leadership coaching discussions, giving these leaders a safe space to discuss staff challenges and changes and grow their skills as organizational leaders:
“It broke down some barriers that we had with being more compartmentalized. People focused on specific tasks or projects, specific departments. This helped us create a more collaborative environment and allowed people to see their contributions to the company and the projects as well.” — Mike Crane, COO
Now, every person across every department is speaking the same language. There’s less confusion, fewer silos, and more collaboration. This new sense of synergy has helped NewGround earn larger contracts with bigger brands and businesses across all of their verticals.
And with a unified strategy and clear messaging in hand, our team continues to support NewGround’s growth efforts by writing one-pagers and white papers to use at conventions and as lead-generating downloads.
The next 100 years? “The sky’s the limit.”
“The sky’s kind of the limit now. In the past 111 years, we’ve talked about ourselves in a certain way that didn’t really reflect who we are now or who we want to be. We’re able to target the clients we want to go after in a better way with more succinct messaging that makes my job in marketing and business development a lot easier and a lot more exciting.” — Cody Goodrich, Director of Marketing
“ArtSpeak has been incredible to work with from start to finish. They’ve supported everything we’ve done and wanted to do, making my job easier and making it feel like I have a bigger team.” — Jordan Knudsen, Corporate Communications Specialist
“If you are considering working with a partner for strategic messaging, I highly recommend ArtSpeak. They do a really great job of thinking outside the box, understanding your needs, and helping you tell your story in a very clear and concise manner for the world to see.” — Susan Fischer, SVP of Interiors
“The work with ArtSpeak was instrumental in achieving our objectives. From the beginning, when we started thinking about repositioning, we needed a firm that understood our DNA with a Christian focus. ArtSpeak was the perfect partner, immediately understanding and connecting with our vision. The results have been fantastic, exactly what we thought, and the future looks even brighter than we anticipated.” — Kevin Blair, President and CEO
Clarify your message. Align your team. Reach more people.
Looking to bring your vision to life too? Brand strategy, strategic messaging, and team coaching can help unlock that future. Let’s team up!
