Client: River Valley Pipe
A no-nonsense business needed no-nonsense messaging to connect to their audience.
Harold Poignant is not only the founder of River Valley Pipe (RVP), he’s also a customer. That’s why he understands consistent and no-nonsense service. This mentality is how RVP gained a loyal customer base, but they needed help portraying this identity in their marketing. When RVP first partnered with us, they were unfamiliar with the ins and outs of building a brand and marketing strategy. Over the years, we helped them cultivate their look, feel and messaging so customers understand their old school work ethic and quality service. And when RVP asked us to push them out of their comfort zone, we didn’t hold back.
  • Branding
  • Content Strategy
  • Business Strategy
  • Analytics
  • Creative Activation

Bridge

First things first: Listening
In the beginning, RVP had great service, but no outside brand presence or marketing readiness to help them grow. Our team began by digging deep into their business to truly understand RVP. We set up meetings with their team to listen, uncover challenges and create goals. From those, we developed a messaging strategy that was a true reflection of RVP: direct, honest, down to earth. The client left with a better understanding of the importance of marketing and a plan for the future.

Simantel’s brand strategy for RVP included new, direct and honest messaging used throughout their website, social media, brand book and more.

Build

Fighting comfort zones. Gaining connection.
When it was time to create a tagline around the messaging strategy, our goal was to help them own their voice and not sound “corporate” in their marketing speak. They were a brand that didn’t take themselves too seriously and they wanted to showcase that. We love shaking things up, so our team came up with countless outside-the-box ideas that we still laugh with the client about to this day. We landed on a more approachable tagline (that was still no nonsense): “Hit the Ground Running”. This tagline embraces the double meaning of pipe literally moving running water and their approach to responsive service. From there, we created marketing and branding assets to support it.

Simantel created brand guidelines for RVP’s new tagline “Hit the Ground Running” to help align the team.

Become

Hitting goals with strategy
With the help of a unified brand and messaging strategy, RVP has been able to expand into several new markets. This growth includes their move to Iowa, “a place they never imagined” operating from because of their humble beginnings. They are still using our designs, messaging and templates to this day. Beyond marketing, our team’s expertise also led to operating model upgrades within their business. By setting long-term goals, tracking them and analyzing results, we were able to push RVP to where they wanted to be.

A customer facing brand book was also created to help introduce the new tagline “Hit the Ground Running.”

Belong

It’s about the people
Today, RVP and Simantel help each other, as a two-way street of partnership and connection in the agricultural industry. Our owner Misty Klobucher even sits on RVP’s advisory board as an executive consultant. Our partnership has been full of honesty, both from the client and from us. We push each other to think bigger and more strategically. But what we love most about working with RVP is their people. It’s an opportunity to do great work while having some fun. Together, we were able to learn from each other and create a foundation for RVP to grow.
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