Words and deeds.
More than most other companies, HOF defines itself by its personal demeanour. We made this the foundation of the aligned brand that doesn’t only stand out but serves as a qualitative yardstick for the work of each and every employee.
HOF was founded in 1997. Since then, the company specialising in truss production and special solutions for stage construction firmly established itself in German commerce and is now expanding into other European countries. Against this backdrop, HOF commissioned us to professionalise its brand presence.
Approach
First, we defined the brand’s core values and its future positioning in a joint workshop. From this, we derived the brand core message as the basis for all future communications: “We have big mouths – because we know what we’re talking about!”
Effect
The brand core message reflects HOF’s nonconformist way of doing business: The employees have deleted formal vocabulary from their language and don’t even mince their words in front of clients. This may seem unprofessional at first glance but always leads directly to the best possible result for the respective individual requirements – and to the transformation of clients into partners and advocates.
Claim
In German industry jargon, Amtlich means as much as “made by a professional” or “indestructible”. A solution is only amtlich if even the oldest hand commends it with a nod of acknowledgement.
Therefore, HOF’s employees fuelled expectations by literally putting the writing on the wall by making the industry’s highest unofficial certification their claim – and consciously took the risk of losing credibility in case of failure. This is exactly what encouraged everyone at the company to perform even better than before. Thus, the claim isn’t just the backbone of an amtlich advertising concept but demonstrably contributes to improving the product and service quality.
We introduced the claim on condition that our whole team would be behind it and reassess each workflow. Since then, we’ve been aspiring to it every day. This resulted in a much more consistent quality throughout all production stages, and our already low complaint rate decreased by almost 35 percent!
Dennis Klostermann
CO-CEO
Campaign
Whereas HOF had barely made itself heard in the media before, now the aligned brand did so even louder – with an unusual campaign whose online and offline ads contained nothing but the words HOME OF HEISSER SCHEISS (“Home of the hot shit”) and a mysterious URL. Numerous curious users from the relevant target audiences were subsequently drawn to the website and shop where they got to know the new HOF brand. To this day, HOF’s regular image and product campaigns are based on the same pattern of unconventional and sometimes provocative communication followed by resolution.
