Honoring a legacy, evolving a brand
Read the full story
THE BRIEF
SCOPE
Crafting a clear, authentic brand story and presence for a 100+ year-old family of natural resource companies, while creating a cohesive brand system that enabled future growth and diversification.
OUTCOME
An updated brand architecture with a new parent brand—NACCO Natural Resources, a clear brand story, and updated visual and verbal brand identities for all five companies; including new websites, videos, and marketing materials. The brand identities tie each sister company together in a way that accurately portrays the NACCO family of companies as trustworthy stewards of our planet’s resources while removing obstacles in the way of future growth for each brand.
Culture / Brand Design
Brand Strategy
Messaging & Voice
Video Production
Photography
Web Design and Development
The Brand Challenge
Challenge #1
Limited Brand Structure
The 100+ year-old legacy of North American Coal provided an incredible foundation of trust and credibility for its sister NACCO companies (North American Mining, Mitigation Resources of North America, and Catapult Mineral Partners) to leverage. As such, they operated as an extension of North American Coal. The lack of clarity around the overall brand structure and individual company identities was limiting the ability to effectively market the sister companies.
Challenge #2
Effectively Communicating Their Brand Promise
For over 100 years, NACCO has helped bring power and essential resources to communities across the country. They’ve done this with an unparalleled level of stewardship and care for the lands entrusted to them. While this promise was implicitly understood throughout the NACCO teams, outdated logos and branding were inhibiting their ability to effectively communicate this brand promise authentically with the rest of the world. It was time to tell their story through the eyes of their employees.
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE
The Brand Workshop
Positioning NACCO for the Future
We needed to ensure we had a complete understanding of NACCO’s legacy—its deeper purpose, common beliefs, and story—to properly position them for the future.
We conducted a virtual brand workshop with the senior leadership team, who were spread across the country. We uncovered the deeper purpose for NACCO Natural Resources and its four subsidiaries, while absorbing the central beliefs that the team relied on, and translating them into the company’s six core values.
-
Be good stewards.
We are caretakers of the land, people, and resources entrusted to us. We are committed to leaving things better than we found them. -
Do what's right.
We do whatever it takes to get the job done right and take care of people. Whether they’re a customer, employee, or vendor, we treat others with dignity and respect. -
Think long-term.
We are committed to building a reliable future to serve generations to come. We are deliberate, considerate, and strategic in our decision-making. -
Serve first.
Nobody is too good to get their hands dirty. We lead through humility and putting the needs of others first. -
Develop solutions.
We consider challenges to be opportunities for us to improve and develop better, longer-lasting solutions for everyone involved. -
Continue our legacy.
We celebrate where we came from and work each day to uphold our legacy of stability, reliability, and responsibility to the industries and people we serve.
Brand Design & Hierarchy
Forming a Cohesive Brand
Equipped with a thorough understanding of each company’s offerings and challenges within the existing brand structure, we set about creating a new brand structure that would form a cohesive brand narrative, while providing independence to each subsidiary brand. Leveraging the holding company name of NACCO, we introduced a new parent brand that tied the four subsidiaries together: NACCO Natural Resources.
In our efforts to modernize the brands and create a cohesive visual system, we designed unique logo marks for each company, but adhered to a common design system. The three NACCO pillars, inspired from the orignal NACCO Industires logo, form the basis of the logo system. The three pillars represent 1. The land and environment, and NACCO’s commitment to protecting it. 2. The people at NACCO and NACCO’s dedication to them. 3. Society and the relationship NACCO has with it by providing essential natural resources. The arc within the NACCO logotype represents curvature of the Earth, symbolizing the interconnected relationship NACCO Natural Resources and its companies have with the Earth.
This mark is derived from the pre-existing North American Coal logo. It incorporates the curvature of the Earth into the design and modernizes the original mark.
This mark incorporates the three NACCO pillars to form a strong outline of an "M". The two peaks in this design symbolize the physical geography of North American Mining’s operations. The upward direction of the pillars represents the valuable, positive impact mining natural resources has on the rest of society.
The mark incorporates the three NACCO pillars to form the soft outline of an "M". The curved top represents wetlands and streams. The upward direction of the pillars represents the positive impact of the company’s mitigation work.
The mark incorporates the three NACCO pillars to form the outline of "C". The rings represent the expanding, long-term potential of the resources Catapult manages. The negative space of the mark forms the outline of a person, representing Catapult’s focus on relationships.
Rebranding North American Coal
Maintaining Pride—Preserving Heritage
North American Coal has an established legacy of taking care of the lands entrusted to them, while providing essential resources to communities across the United States. For nearly 100 years, Chief Powhatan has been a symbol and constant reminder of this stewardship.
To preserve this legacy and strong source of pride, we transitioned the Chief Powhatan mark in their existing logo into an internal heritage mark for the North American Coal teams—allowing them to more effectively communicate their brand promise with the world.
Capturing the Story
Highlighting Unsung Heroes
Over the course of six months, BuildWitt’s field content team traveled across the country to capture the story of NACCO Natural Resources’s operations in some of the most grueling conditions. Our team visited over 15 of NACCO’s site operations across 5 states, sometimes in temperatures as low as 5 degrees.
During these site visits, authenticity was of the utmost importance. Our goal was to provide an unfiltered glimpse into the essential work that the men and women of NACCO Natural Resources do every day to keep our society running. In all, our team conducted 50+ interviews, recorded 3000+ hours of footage, and shot 1500 photos.
Building the Sites
Bringing the Brand to Life
With the brand story clarified, an updated visual system established, and authentic imagery captured, we got to work bringing everything to life. The biggest lift for our team was updating the digital presence of each company. We organized the site content around individual company needs while sharing the central legacy story that tied each company back to the roots of the newly-branded parent company, NACCO Natural Resources. Through countless hours of collaboration with NACCO’s team, we designed, developed, and launched five separate websites simultaneously (which is a lot, even for us!)
Purpose: We bring natural resources to life. By responsibly managing the resources entrusted to us, we deliver aggregates, minerals, reliable fuels and environmental solutions which help build our country and improve our environment.
Purpose: We mine coal for a better, more secure future. Our responsible management of coal resources helps our customers provide reliable, cost-effective energy to power our communities.
Purpose: We mine the resources needed for a better future. By responsibly delivering aggregates and minerals resources, we help build infrastructure, communities, and better lives.
Purpose: We restore and preserve streams and wetlands for a better future. By responsibly offsetting impacts to water resources, we help our country grow while improving the environment.
Purpose: We proactively invest in American minerals and energy. By responsibly managing these vital assets for the long term, we aim to build a secure and thriving foundation for our country’s growth.
“The team at BuildWitt was critical to helping us more clearly articulate our company’s brand and values. We could see that BuildWitt’s culture had many similarities to ours — safety first, people always, and driven by a passion for what we do. Our employees are fiercely proud of the legacy we’ve built over the last 100+ years, and we’re honored to tell our updated brand story through their eyes.“
Amanda Miller
Director of Communications
NACCO Industries
Conclusion
By bringing the NACCO Natural Resources brand to life and evolving the North American Coal, North American Mining, Mitigation Resources of North America, and Catapult Mineral Partners brands for the future, we’ve set NACCO up for the next 100 years of growing their legacy.
Conclusion
By bringing the NACCO Natural Resources brand to life and evolving the North American Coal, North American Mining, Mitigation Resources of North America, and Catapult Mineral Partners brands for the future, we’ve set NACCO up for the next 100 years of growing their legacy.