FOTH

Positioning and unifying an engineering leader for future success.

Since 1938, Foth has been solving its clients’ toughest science and engineering challenges.

Employee-owned and with 27 locations across the U.S. and Canada, Foth combines science, engineering, and technology to create dynamic project environments for clients. Its three primary business units—Environment, Infrastructure, and Production Solutions—have achieved great success in tackling the complex issues faced by a range of organizations, from airports and municipalities to mining and consumer-products companies.

Yet, when BrandingBusiness was introduced to Foth, this very success—the individual strength of the business units—led to a fragmented understanding of the organization as a whole, undermining its ability to compete collectively at the highest level and recruit top talent.

Foth leadership recognized the critical need to connect its business units under a unified Foth brand, without diluting these units’ market power. Yet it struggled with a central question: What story would “One Foth” tell the world—including its own employees? As a result, Foth called upon BrandingBusiness to refresh, assess, and redefine its brand and competitive positioning.

Our strategy team began the brand research process by personally interviewing a wide cross-section of both Foth leaders and customers, gaining valuable insights into the challenges, strengths, and common threads that transcended the business units. We augmented these findings by performing a deep-dive competitive audit and an anonymous employee survey that assessed internal attitudes about the current Foth and its future self.

During this intensive process, key messages emerged. We gained clarity on the organization’s connections internally and externally—factors that centered around Foth’s culture and values, and its employees’ exemplary work ethic and dedication to customer success. From this work, we developed brand pillars that would become the foundational elements of the re-invigorated, unified brand.

We were then able to create a strategically correct voice and look for “One Foth” that properly positioned the organization and its business units—while making each stronger. The building blocks of this clear new voice included:

• A full brand positioning platform and two-year brand roadmap
• Corporate narrative and messaging (including Purpose, Vision, and Mission)
• Business unit narrative and messaging that explained how the units related to Foth corporate, and to one another

And to refresh Foth’s visual presence, we created these elements:

• Re-imagined logo
• Updated visual identity
• Brand guidelines

It was now time to make the brand real. Working alongside the Foth branding team, we developed and participated in two successful launches, internally and to the marketplace. BrandingBusiness took on these key tasks:

• Brand launch planning – pre-event communications and event planning/participation
• Brand Ambassador (internal) training
• A “talk track” for explaining Foth’s refreshed brand to key customers
• Brand videos – internal and external