This was such a cool project we don’t know where to start the story…
OK, so the initial brief went something like this “we’ve designed our own grapple and it’s mean”. A brief brief but in some ways the best brief because Shout was able to develop the brand strategy from scratch (and we did get all the information we needed when we got into the brand development process). Opportunities to help commercialise a product don’t come along very often so they when they do, they are special projects to work on.
The name
Coming up with the name was quite straightforward. Because we’d been thinking about the product for a while, we decided to collectively throw some names in the ring and agreed that if none stuck, we would then go through a more formal name development process like we did for 3D’s existing product, SpoolPro. Long story short, product designer and Director, Matt Field, suggested LumberLIFT. We did a quick desktop search* including ONECheck (great tool BTW; check it out if you haven’t already) and all agreed LumberLIFT was the one. Shout Marketing pitched “Greaseless Log Grapple” as the strapline to make the brand more descriptive.
*we always advise clients to get specialist advice from an IP lawyer
The logo
Designing the logo was also very straight forward! Shout Marketing always writes a creative brief for the graphic designer to be both inspired by and work within. We find this has a significant influence on the ability of the graphic designer to come up with a range of quality of designs we can present to clients. In this case, the graphic designer definitely nailed it with 3 strong concepts that were hard to decide between. We are all very happy with the chosen concept, particularly the clever use of the grapple icon demonstrating that it is designed to lift.
Next steps
Photography, a PDF brochure and a webpage were required before heading into the launch so they are all sorted. We will cover them and the launch itself in another project but for a quick look at how it’s all come together so far, check out the webpage.
What we have loved about this project:
- LumberLIFT’s unique design provides a solution to the problem of how to get grease into a grapple and eliminates the cost of labour and grease cartridges required to maintain a typical grapple.
- We believe this design is a world first!
- 3D has drip fed a few prototypes into the market to validate the idea, and contractors are loving it.
- We think it’s a good-looking product. Lots of clean lines for a heavy-duty attachment.
- The foundations for LumberLIFT are strong. The group brand, 3D Industrial is well established and looking good and SpoolPro, the other product in the 3D stable, was launched in 2017 so we did a bit of grunt work which LumberLIFT can now just slot in alongside.