Dig deep into your culture, and find the heart of your place, there lies a great story

Hertel are a global industrial services company providing construction and maintenance solutions for industrial plants around the world.

When we first met them they came to us armed with a brief to produce a film that could communicate their vision, values, and services to their staff... This was just the beginning.

The Hertel culture

We don’t see why B2B communications should be dry and functional, organisations are just people at the end of the day!

That’s why our first step was to don the hard hats and go on site at Stanlow Oil Refinery to meet some Hertel people, find out about their processes and teamwork, and gain a better understanding of what their business is all about.

We discovered that Hertel’s key assets are their people, who often work in challenging and dangerous environments to deliver on the company’s promise.

Further meetings with their CEO and senior management confirmed that they have strived to create a very people centric culture, not a “top down” one, an important insight which we wanted to bring to life in the film.

A new approach

The way industrial services companies communicate with their staff can be very homogenous; think stock imagery of power plants, oil rigs, and guys in hard hats! Originally Hertel wanted us to produce a “talking heads” style film, but we thought there was an opportunity for Hertel to stand out from other employers and really connect with their people by taking a different approach using animation.

By setting a lighter, more human tone, the final animated film proved to be a huge success in aiding employee understanding, and buy in at every level of the organisation.

The story of Hertel

The positive feedback and the sense that we “got” them led to a burgeoning client relationship and further commissions, including a lighthearted animated Christmas mailer, and a bespoke animated film to celebrate the 50th birthday of their CEO.

Evolving the Hertel identity

Our next brief was to refresh the Hertel brand identity and extend this “new approach” to their external communications and help them stand apart from industry competitors. Following a rethink of their business strategy, the company set a course that would focus upon 4 core industry sectors.

They needed a strong brand that could clarify this for their customers, and communicate the services and value they deliver across these sectors.

We designed a brand identity based upon a flexible graphic language. This gave them a system that could be customised for all their communication touch points across all their business sectors.

Bringing the new brand to life

To launch the refreshed brand identity we created a characterful animated film that built upon the people centric focus of the previous film, and aligned it to their core business sectors.

The simple visual language helped it to play across global regions and cultures.

Say hello to Hertel

We also brought the brand to life in three dimensions by creating an exhibition stand for a trade conference in Amsterdam.

Complete with a 3D stereoscopic film that illustrated one of their specialist services, the exhibition stand brought a touch of magic to their offer and helped distinguish them as innovators in the industry.