MEK WORK: CREATIVE
Creating award-winning brand visuals for Smithville
CLIENT: Smithville – Indiana’s largest privately owned telecom, featuring business and residential services. At the time of the MEK project, Smithville offered a wide range of B2B and B2C services, including voice, linear TV, high-speed internet, security & home automation, cellular, and two retail operations. The new brand visuals needed to serve all of these operations.
ADVANTAGES: Smithville assets included an established reputation as a technology innovator, particularly with the adoption and development of gigabit (1,000 Mbps) broadband service. The company had successfully served a growing base of customers for nearly 100 years in south central and southern Indiana communities, and enjoyed widespread community support. MEK helped Smithville secure national recognition as a top 100 broadband company, which reflected Smithville’s innovative and reliable service offerings. In an industry where (at the time) customer service was typically ranked in the terrible range, Smithville stood out with superb customer service.
CHALLENGES: At the time of the project, Comcast was in the midst of a major proposed acquisition that was featured in a major ad campaign and AT&T was offering a then-new hybrid service offering — both directly competing with Smithville. Smithville visual assets then featured an old look and didn’t truly reflect the innovative and vibrant nature of the company.
THE MEK FOCUS: Drawing on research and industry experts, MEK proposed a comprehensive creative overhaul of Smithville’s visual brand elements, including a data-driven recommendation to add “Fiber” to Smithville’s brand presence to help differentiate Smithville from its much larger competitors. With direct engagement from Smithville executives, MEK then collaboratively designed a new colorful logo with a stylized “S” and an energetic corporate design scheme, which was applied through all facets of customer facing materials, including online digital elements (digital display ads, web and e-mail newsletters), and print-related collateral and ads (billboards, corporate and customer collateral, phonebooks for rural areas, service fleet graphics and signage, stationery, and event materials, including a major stadium sponsorship for Indiana University’s football, basketball and baseball sports programs). While Smithville’s brand has since undergone additional changes and evolution, the strength of the MEK-developed branding campaign became an enduring foundation for Smithville. The campaign subsequently earned a top Pinnacle Award from PRSA.
