Fry Reglet | Rebrand
PROJECT: Brand Strategy
STAKEHOLDERS: Fry Reglet
MY ROLE: Research, wrote base-line messaging, led executive meetings, and provided creative direction, art direction (graphic design, rendering), project management, technical resource roadmap, and more
SUMMARY: Fry Reglet was founded in 1949 and had built an incredibly successful brand in spite of never having a dedicated marketing team member. With plans to grow and scale, I came onboard to create a cohesive brand strategy, design system, messaging, refine marketing strategies, and more. This also led to me building out a technical resource pipeline to ensure accuracy and streamline content production to a scalable system. For the brand strategy work, I created an 85-page initial Fry Reglet bible (from copy style guides to competitor analyses to product features and benefits and more). This provided the business case for us to bring on a creative agency.
I was not a normal agency client in this case though. I needed them to supplement, not drive, the research, documentation, and messaging. They successfully picked up where I left off, so I could spend time executing ads, building out a rendering pipeline, and working with CAD to establish drawing standards. I provided very in-depth treatments and met for weeks to dial in the details for both the messaging and design system phases. The system above is the resulting design system presentation.
It was critical we communicated the refined sophistication of our product line in a way that came across as technically innovative and creative, yet not stuffy or pretentious. We serve vastly different audiences, from architects and designers to distributors and trade contractors. Think cocktails and Common Project sneakers versus Coors and mud on the boots. Finding a design system that could flex from aspirational/inspirational to technical/functional was challenging, but I believe we made something that meets both sets of clients exactly where they’re at.
The same was true for the messaging—ultimately we landed on a new tagline: the craft of precision. Additionally, we built out a robust and dynamic messaging platform.
Most manufacturers do extremely simple and basic product renderings, if any. This all-important visualization was key to a successful design system for Fry Reglet. Cheap renderings make the products feel like just another widget. Fry Reglet provides true design assists, though, and our products are the best in the industry. I was able to bring all rendering production in-house, saving the company over $300k in rendering costs and opening the door for us to greatly enhance rendering quality. We introduced drama and action through shadowing in silo images, and we began pushing architectural visualization to be aspirational/inspirational, no matter which client base you’re a part of. The result was an elevated look and feel that matches the core of the brand ethos.
The complete system will now be used to overhaul every piece of content we own. This involved me creating a 3-year plan involving over 50 team members. From the precise steps for technical drawings overhauls to template design for new literature to swag, every detail has been accounted for, a budget set, and processes established.