Wausau Rebrands to Blow Away the Competition

Client: Wausau Equipment Company, Inc.

Wausau Equipment Company’s strong reputation in the municipal and airport snow removal business was faltering. In recent years, the company’s image had become disjointed. It was marketing products under seven different brands with distinct identities. Wausau turned to Responsory to provide brand strategy and new marketing tools.

Responsory conducted a brand review and messaging workshop with key sales and marketing stakeholders to provide a solid foundation for a fresh identity and positioning. Our resulting recommendations included an approach that moves the company away from separate product brands (“house of brands” strategy) to one where the company brand is the dominant source of identification (“branded house”).

Uniting its product brands under the well-established Wausau brand underscores existing name recognition and creates the sense of a larger company with multiple solutions. Responsory developed a new logo retaining some of the existing logo’s qualities, including its blue color and rectangular shape, but also streamlining the look to signal a new era of progress. We created a new messaging platform to guide marketing endeavors, including trade show booth design, collateral and website updates. The company launched its new identity at the NEC/AAAE International Aviation Snow Symposium in New York.

With improvements and expansion underway at its headquarters and a cohesive new brand system and creative platform, Wausau is poised to strengthen its position in the market.