Services: Brand Strategy, Collateral Materials, Event Planning, Logo & Identity, Messaging, Naming, Signage & Wayfinding, Social Media Strategy, Website
Iron Fireman Collective
The Iron Fireman Collective is a fully renovated facility for modern day production.
Project Goals
After a substantial investment in upgrades and improvements, ownership approached Think Joule to reposition the former PECO building as a Maker/Creative Industrial space. The building was already in a prime eastside location, but in order to appeal to the target market, we needed the brand to reinforce trust and evoke the feeling and spirit of collaboration.
Naming
In collaboration with ownership, Think Joule recommended naming the building after the original product that was produced there, the Iron Fireman, to honor the long history of industriousness and innovation as well as inspire a new era of modern manufacturing.
The Brand
The brand was inspired by the architectural qualities and textures found throughout the building. The logo is a clean graphic representation of the building itself, honoring a history of hard work. We chose the color palette to mirror the painted walls, rusted exterior, exposed wood and brushed steel, resulting in a memorable and dynamic brand.
Working with photographer Emily Fitzgerald, we chose to photograph the building at various stages of renovation to capture the essence, features and textures that informed the brand identity.
Once renovations were complete, we partnered with photographer Aaron Lee to capture the diverse and growing maker community at work in their spaces.
A New Approach to Broker Materials
Inspired by baseball trading cards, we transformed a standard leasing deck into a collection of modular brochure cards. Each card features a particular quality of the building and can be distributed as a set or individually, as determined by the prospect’s interests. Eventually, cards will feature the building tenants so that the collective of makers comes to embody the brand.
Web & Social Media
First, we designed a customized responsive marketing website. The maker community is a savvy target market, emphasizing the need to create an authentic, experiential marketing campaign. We crafted an editorial calendar utilizing social media, primarily Instagram, to build and leverage relationships with the creative community and promote the brand through viral marketing.
Pop-up Party
In partnership with Kelley Roy and her team at ADX, we conceived of a progressive pop-up party, activating 5 different leasable spaces in the building with local producers, libation crafters, food purveyors and music makers.
We crafted a series of HTML emails to appeal to the target market, reinforcing outreach on our social media channels. Through these combined approaches we garnered immense awareness, resulting in a sold-out event filled with prospective tenants.
Branded wayfinding signage led party goers through the facility, advertising the square footage and amenities of each leasable space. Many connections were made that night, generating a momentum of inquiries about leasing space in the building.
The exposure from the pop-up party coupled with an ongoing active social media presence have resulted in the successful repositioning of a historic industrial space.
