Jones Road & Bridge Rebrand
I started this project with Boring Contractors and ended it with Jones Road & Bridge - same company, new name!
We set out on a journey to develop branding that could take this Abingdon, VA company into the next generation. My rebrand process included brand strategy, brand identity design, brand photography, drone videography with my colleague Jared Hull, a company website, and collaboration with Branded for swag and apparel/uniforms.
What started as a small business in 1987 with one specialization had become a full-service general contractor by 2022. With the addition of services, an ongoing transition of leadership from father to son, and company growth, it was time for a rebrand (and a name change!).
I became a temporary team member to get to know their company and the civil construction industry as a whole. We are so proud of what we accomplished. Now, Jones Road & Bridge has branding that connects them with their community. They can move into the next generation of their company with purpose, consistency, and authenticity.
Brand Assessment
We started their rebrand with a brand assessment. An external brand assessment allows you to recognize your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. My assessment reviews core brand elements, published material on all marketing channels (digital and physical), and the customer experience. The assessment is helpful to establish a baseline and gain leadership buy-in, but it’s also extremely helpful to know what collateral needs to be updated during the rebranding process.
Brand Strategy
After the brand assessment, we moved into strategy development. I met in-person with vice president Turner Jones to complete two brand strategy interviews. Together, we identified:
What makes them unique and set apart from their competition
Their company history and background
What they want to be known for
Their ideal customer details (backgrounds, passions, desires, motivations, goals, etc.)
What problems their ideal customers are facing
How they solve those problems
Topics that relate to both them and their ideal customers
An ideal customer path/funnel (leading a potential customer to be their biggest fan)
Platforms/media to use to reach their ideal customers
Opportunities to serve their ideal customers and meet their needs
They received a 35 page PDF brand strategy guide that combined their initial insights with my research and guidance for creating community with their ideal customers.
Competitor Brand Analysis
Industries are constantly changing, and each time a new company enters your space, they are doing a competitor analysis on your business. It's important to continually evaluate your competitors businesses, and in our case, narrowing down and evaluating their brand image. When you take the time to analyze your competition, you may find there are things they are doing well and things you’d do differently. Understanding where they fit and where you fit gives you space to stand out and grow without running into them.
During the brand strategy phase, I performed an analysis of their competition (other businesses in their industry and market). I provided an analysis for each of the three chosen competitors. I included notes and screenshots in various categories of analysis and summarized lessons to learn from each brand.
Collaborator Analysis
During our brand strategy phase, I also performed an analysis of their collaborators to identify collaboration opportunities with other businesses and community organizations. Collaboration with other businesses can provide valuable awareness for your brand, establish you as a leader in your space, and help you reach your ideal customers.
Brand Messaging
Formerly, their name was Boring Contractors since they specialized in pipe boring (the only company I have ever worked with that could say they did “boring work”). We made the decision to change the name to Turner’s suggestion of Jones Road & Bridge based on shared family values between the company and customers, as well as the name being a concise way to describe their additional service offerings in the civil construction industry.
Once we decided on the name, it was important that we develop messaging that spoke to both their brand vision as well as the desires of their ideal customers. I was able to develop a full suite of messaging, including (but not limited to) the items below. I also spent time crafting a written history of their company. I even scanned in a printed photos from old albums to preserve them on their website!
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Their tagline focuses on their benefits and imparts positive feelings about their brand.
Respecting the past. Building the future.
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These service descriptors focus on their features and services to quickly communicate what they do to someone unfamiliar with their business. These descriptors will be used throughout their branding to impart additional clarity to their business name.
Civil Construction | Excavation | Pipe Boring
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Family-owned Jones Road & Bridge has been providing civil construction, excavation, and pipe boring services across Southwest Virginia since 1987.
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Family-owned Jones Road & Bridge provides civil construction, excavation, and pipe boring services across Southwest Virginia. We’ve made our way through every county in the region since 1987, embracing our decades of diligence and our forward-thinking mentality to provide solutions to our clients’ needs: respecting the past while building the future.
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We are family owned.
We are dedicated to improving the civil infrastructure of Southwest Virginia because our family lives here, too. Decades of family ownership have built strong relationships with our clients and employees.We are full service.
We work year-round tackling all kinds of road, bridge, and pipe work with our large fleet of well-maintained, versatile equipment. We stay versatile, and we stay busy.We are team focused.
We invest in diligent, dependable employees for the long-haul and promote an engaging environment. -
Quality: We take pride in our team’s ability to excel with a broad range of heavy civil construction projects.
Safety: We embed safety into all we do, crediting our responsible employees for our good safety record.
Hard work: We love a good challenge and see it as a chance to creatively solve a problem.
Ambition: We are driven to do our best work today as we anticipate what we can achieve tomorrow.
Community: We protect and support landowner civility, client partnerships, and our families at home.
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Responsible: safe, caring, straight-forward
Casual: relaxed, friendly, personable, laid-back
Reputable: professional, ambitious, knowledgeable, confident
Logo Design
Brand identity design is what makes brands instantly recognizable to your customers. It’s where the brand strategy starts to come together visually. The logo, color palette, and typography all play a part in bringing branding to life through design. Here’s a look at the breakdown of each element’s symbolism that combines to create the Jones Road & Bridge logo.
Consistency is key to creating a strong brand identity to build recognition and trust, so I amended the brand strategy with guidelines for applying the brand identity design.
Business Cards
I developed a standard business card template for all employees, and coordinated production with Wordsprint to establish a relationship between Jones Road & Bridge and a local printing company.
Photography
I always advocate for brands to include photography from the get-go because it really does add another level of trust and authenticity that can’t be replicated without seeing the faces behind the company. I was able to use their brand strategy to inform the style, colors, and shot list for the photography needed to establish them as a legit business.
To show the scale of their projects, I was even able to hire a colleague to produce drone videography for use on their website.
Website
Oftentimes, branding really feels real once it’s all combined onto a website. Since I knew the brand so well and had been involved since inception, I was able to build the site and supply nearly all of the written and visual content, making the entire branding process from start to finish extremely hands-off for the business.
Apparel and Swag
In addition to my typical branding process, I added on apparel and swag coordination. We ordered reflective gear, Richardson trucker caps, hard hat stickers, pens, and more. You can see a few of the items below.
Results
“I knew we needed some someone to guide us through a full rebrand, but I have been burned in the past with service providers fizzling out or abandoning projects over time. That was not the case here: our rebrand was a tall order, but Briana was just as helpful the last day as she was the first.
Before we started, I was nervous and already overwhelmed with work, but Briana kept a positive attitude and was always timely. I enjoyed the strategy interviews, and she did a great job listening to my thoughts and ideas. The ideal customer personas she developed as part of our strategy guide were especially helpful in understanding the decisions she made for our website.
Our logo is well-loved by everyone. It has a modern but old school look that aligns with our new messaging to describe our company perfectly and looks great on our vehicles and swag.
Briana’s process was a GREAT, unquantifiable investment for our business. It has given our entire company a totally new level of confidence. In fact, we thought our company would was a bid-only company, but now that we have a more established and clear presence, we have had more than one agency reach out to us.”
Does your business need a level-up like Jones Road & Bridge?
I’d love to hear about your vision and where you’re currently at in the branding process. Let’s hop on a quick call to chat! Want to learn more about the branding process they went through first? Just click the button below.
