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Building a Stronger Brand

PROJECT: BRAND REPOSITIONING
CLIENT: MONTGOMERY HOMES

BACKGROUND

Montgomery Homes is a building company established in Newcastle, now with offices in Sydney and the Central Coast. Employing a team of more than 50 people, the business designs and constructs quality homes for level and sloping sites. Montgomery established themselves in the market as the 'sloping site specialist' and have dominated this market throughout their 30 years of operation.

Throughout the years, their logo retained the gold 'M' and 'sloping' brand mark, reinforcing the perception of Montgomery Homes as a builder who only constructs on sloping sites. Consequently, the high level of brand association as 'the sloping site specialist' was extremely high and in recent years the dominance of this tagline and reputation, meant Montgomery Homes was often discounted by potential clients looking to build on level sites.

Our brief was to reposition and refresh the brand, while preserving their reputation as a quality builder with a long-standing, reliable and successful history. The key part of the brief was to communicate the expertise in building homes on both level and sloping sites.

Montgomery also wanted to improve brand consistency across all branding and advertising, creating a cohesive and professional image with a logo that had strength and reflected a modern company.

Before

The challenge

Our biggest challenge was communicating the message that Montgomery Homes is not only the sloping site specialist but also a specialist builder for level sites. The exisiting sub-brands, 'Urban' for the level sites range, and 'Alpine' for the sloping sites range were developed to address this, but they presented their own challenges. They were unable to stand alone due to their lack of visual relationship to the parent brand and need for their own taglines to explain their titles.

We overcame this by evolving the relationship between the parent brand and the sub-brands, paring back the sub-brands so that they became self-explanatory and ensuring they had an aesthetic relationship to the parent brand, allowing them to stand alone.

logos

Our solution modernised the visual identity of Montgomery Homes moving from a logo that aesthetically conjured up 'sloping' imagery and a connection to the 'sloping site specialists' tagline. We also developed a new tagline 'Building on Every Level' to associate with the brand.

We ensured the logo was bold when placed among competitors and was able to be applied in both horizontal and stacked lockups, both shortcomings of the historic logo.

Iconography

Our objective overall was consistency in corporate identity and branding across a large volume of literature, templates, advertising, signage and brochures. The team created a simple yet distinct and ownable icon style that was executed across all collateral adding to the brand strength.

Brand guidelines

The Brand Identity was completed with the finalisation of comprehensive brand guidelines with accompanying tool kit.

These are used internally and shared with partners and suppliers to ensure accurate and consistent execution of the brand in any use.

colours

primary

NavyPantone 295c
C100 M82 Y34 K57
R000 G031 B065
#001632

OrangePantone 1665c
C10 M81 Y42 K1
R218 G085 B049
#CD3E25

secondry

WhitePantone 151c
C0 M0 Y0 K0
R255 G255 B255
#FFFFFF

Light Grey
C0 M0 Y0 K7
R230 G232 B237
#E6E8ED

Mid Grey
C0 M0 Y0 K25
R196 G201 B206
#C4C9CE

fonts

Primary

Body copy:

Helvetica Neue Lt Pro 55 Roman

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Sub Heading:

Helvetica Neue Lt Pro 75 Bold

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Heading:

Helvetica Neue Lt Pro 85 Heavy

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Heading:

Helvetica Neue Lt Pro 56 Italic

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Secondery

Body Copy:

Arial Regular

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Sub Heading:

Arial Bold

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyz1234567890

Print

Design templates were created and supplied so Montgomery could create, update and print their Home Design brochures for all sales offices and display homes.

This provided their team with an economical way forward for producing brochures in-house.

Stationery

Business cards, with compliment slips, letterhead, envelopes, lined note pads and folders were all designed and supplied for print.

Ad Template

Engineroom liaised with Montgomery's marketing team to design two types of ad templates: a traditional press ad as well as a real estate layout.

The ad templates are used by the team regularly in different publications and allow Montgomery to manage these creatives in-house.

Signage

The identity was rolled out across all signage at display homes, sales and admin offices, and all vehicles were given branding wraps.

Digital

The new brand positioning was also translated across digital platforms including social media branding, post templates and a HTML email signature to ensure consistency across all employees.

WEB

As part of the branding refresh we designed and built a new custom website for Montgomery Homes. The existing website was a goldmine of useful information for clients, but the layout and navigation restricted them finding it!

The new site placed user experience at the forefront. The new website has seen positive results with a 40% increase in sessions and a 12% reduction in bounce rate.

After

See more on Montgomery Homes Website

Montgomery Homes began working with Engineroom in 2016 when we were looking to modernise our brand and enhance the way we communicated our product offering.

After meeting with several creative agencies, we chose Engineroom based on their clear message and clean design concept. Their no-nonsense, get-things-done approach also really resonated with our practical builders' mentality. Their willingness to collaborate, their professionalism and understanding of the needs of the business resulted in a fantastic outcome.

Engineroom helped roll out the branding across signage, traditional and digital media, internal and external collateral, as well as on to a new website which they built specifically for our needs. The new brand and functional website has helped to increase sales and drive enquiries on our Level Site homes.

Engineroom supported us throughout the rollout of the rebrand and their team continues to be an extension of our own team as they offer technical support for our website and prompt and creative services for ongoing design projects.

We're so appreciative of Engineroom's creative efforts and rapid response to our needs. They're always super friendly, solution-oriented and a pleasure to work with.