An industrial safety leader, Justrite needed to streamline its brand structure after rapid expansion. But not without hard data to support the strategy.
Justrite has been an industrial safety leader for over 100 years. From 2013 to 2018, Justrite made a series of acquisitions, rapidly growing the organization from one business entity to 16 and from 200 employees to 1,300.
During this acquisitive period, the branding strategy was business-as-usual, leaving Justrite with multiple brands to manage around the world. Without a comprehensive communications plan, employees were unsure about internal structure and customers were unaware of the breadth of Justrite’s safety portfolio.
Justrite needed a soup-to-nuts revitalization of their brand, including an analysis of the most effective brand architecture. The executive team had a sense of which acquired brands held equity, but they wanted to base their corporate architecture on fact. Duality performed extensive interviews and designed a global quantitative survey to measure brand equity across acquisitions.
Duality presented a streamlined architecture based on brand equity scores, which helped to determine which portfolio brands to keep and which to sunset.
Justrite Safety Group is now positioned as an umbrella organization that runs a collection of top-notch safety companies. Justrite continues on as a portfolio brand at the transactional level, selling high quality safety solutions to distributors and customers.
Duality recommended changing Justrite Manufacturing to Justrite Safety Group. It was crucial to continue on with the Justrite name—Justrite has a century-long history and a legacy of performance. The new descriptor, “Safety Group,” better describes Justrite, its structure as a company and the overall market it competes in.
Duality’s design team performed an extensive identity exploration. In collaboration, Duality and Justrite agreed that there was considerable equity in the current Justrite logo, and an evolution would be most effective for brand stability during a growth period. The new logo was adjusted for color and shape, most notably nodding to the company’s expertise in environmental containment.
The new tagline reinforces the fact that at Justrite Safety Group everything starts with safety—it’s at the heart of every action and decision within the company. The tagline also provides a strong call to action for customers.
Working closely with Justrite, Duality developed a full verbal platform, including a brand promise, positioning statement and detailed key messages. The platform gives the Justrite team tools to consistently apply messaging across written and verbal communications.
Duality designed a robust visual brand platform for Justrite Safety Group, including typography, color palette, photography guidance, brand guidelines and a consistent endorsed logo system for sub-brands. The Duality team also worked closely with the internal Justrite team to develop comprehensive brand materials, bringing the new system to life.
Justrite Safety Group launched with an internal brand roadshow. Duality designed and coordinate brand materials for 12 global locations, from Des Plaines, Illinois to Wuxi, China. A coordinated email campaign reached all employees leading up to, and after, the launch events.
In October 2018, the brand launched externally at the NSC tradeshow with a prominent, newly designed booth. Customer education will continue throughout 2019.
