GeoSyntec knew it needed to plan its growth and that their marketing and market position did not sufficiently reflect the excellence of their offering. We conducted extensive practice area leader interviews which revealed that their clear, impassioned ideas did in fact clearly characterize the GeoSyntec culture and brand, but our extensive analysis of their competitors showed that the task of differentiating GeoSyntec would be very challenging. There was a lot of sameness throughout their peer competitor group as compared with their own sense of what made the GeoSyntec offering excellent. And, this sameness was motivated by the nature of client expectations. We determined that this was both a negative and a positive. While it represented a pressure to conform to conventional and expected expressions, it also indicated a glaring opportunity to stand out against all the sameness.
A new market positioning and brand identity was developed. We recommended a re-telling of the GeoSyntec story that differed from the previous position in that it utilized the complete set of GeoSyntec ’s positive attributes, but it expressed it as a philosophy; an intentional structure, rather than simply a statement saying “this is who we are and what we do”. The philosophy became the reason they are great. The philosophy explains how GeoSyntec manages to achieve a greater degree of excellence and innovation as compared to their competitors. The core of the new position leverages the strengths of GeoSyntec ’s horizontal structure, (what they called “sell-manage-do”), and the autonomy granted to GeoSyntec leaders and their team members. It says that the company’s structure, and the minimized bureaucracy it produces, is intentional. It says the purpose of GeoSyntec ’s structure is to optimize innovation.
GeoSyntec came out of the development process empowered. They understood something about their company that had eluded them. Now, they not only knew they were better than their competitors, they knew why.