Tadano
In August 2019, Japanese crane maker Tadano purchased Terex Corporation’s Demag mobile cranes business. A $215 million transaction that took Tadano a big step forward on the journey to become the global leader in the lifting industry. Within weeks, W was asked to help to turn the brand strategy into reality for internal as well as external audiences. For customers, the first opportunity to experience the new Tadano family would be ConExpo in Las Vegas, where we also designed the visual surfaces of the 3,400 m2 exhibition area.
The brief was clear: “We want to keep the two separate product brands and build on their unique strengths while creating unity with their complementary values”. For team members, we developed transition presentations, dual branding guidelines, internal newsletter and more. We then ran a 2-day workshop with representatives from Germany and the US to define the platform for the external concept. The final message – Stronger Together – not only describes the powerful alliance between Demag and Tadano, but also the strong partnership with customers.
Visually, we proposed a new take on a regular line-up with an above angle of the new, unified offering. The new perspectives continued with a bird’s-eye image capturing cranes from Tadano and Demag, as well as employees and customers. An image that could be seen on billboards on Las Vegas strip, at the airport, on train platforms, inside trains, in ads and of course – in the booth.
In an industry with quite traditional marketing, Tadano had the courage to challenge the norm and trust with our ideas and proposals. Kudos to them. The feedback on the campaign and on the booth has only been positive. One of the unintended benefits is that the campaign was internalized by staff and had become a theme within the company. As a result of this success, Tadano decided to extend the campaign and internal theme beyond the initial time horizon.
