Marketing Excellence Awards: Garver's 95th Anniversary Campaign

Garver, LLC (North Little Rock, AR), a 375-person multidiscipline engineering firm, is taking home fifth place in the Integrated Marketing category of Zweig Group’s 2015 Marketing Excellence Awards for its 95^th anniversary campaign. 2014 marked Garver’s 95^th year of doing business. To celebrate this milestone, the firm initiated a new marketing campaign to strengthen the Garver brand and advertise its longevity and reliability. Six of the firm’s past presidents were interviewed to gain insight into the company’s history and values. To prepare for the campaign, a comprehensive “tool kit” was created and sent to all project leaders within Garver, providing key talking points about the firm’s history and values to pass on to their teams and clients. Talking points were also incorporated into sales training at the firm’s Aviation Summit and through Garver University, the firm’s in-house training program. The purpose of the campaign was to reinforce the firm’s branding – a 95-year-old business is strong. The firm wanted to use the campaign to continue to expand into new markets where the Garver brand wasn’t already well established. In order to reach target audiences the firm used a digital and print approach. This included a unique logo and tagline, a video of the firm’s president/CEO speaking about the new campaign, and the integration of a “Throwback Thursday” campaign on the firm’s social media. As a result of the campaign, new clients were gained and the firm’s project win-rate increased from 43 percent to 47 percent in 2014. The firm also noticed competitors using their own years of service in their logos, even though they were much younger than Garver. The firm was selected for a major aviation project based on its 95 campaign. The campaign was so successful firm leadership has decided to implement a similar campaign for Garver's 100-year milestone. For more info on the Marketing Excellence Awards click here.