Smoot

Smoot Construction started in the 1940’s as a family brick-laying venture that grew into a multi-regional company undertaking projects of national significance. The company is headquartered in Columbus, OH and expanded to Washington, DC in 1968. Since then, the SmootDC office has won bids on projects such as renovating the Capitol, National Air & Space Museum, and the MLK Jr. Library, as well as building the National African American Art Museum. Despite their numerous achievements and outstanding record of completing their projects under budget and ahead of schedule, Smoot Construction struggled to win larger bids as the lead developer.

Dozens of tenured employees with a habit of using the logo & color variation they prefer rather than the most current one, along with a lack of supervision and direction in social media and bid proposal design practices led to a brand that appeared disjointed at many touch points. Creating a system to empower all employees proved futile when they didn’t respect the significance of modern-day branding. A company-wide attitude of “if it isn’t broken, why fix it” prevented any meaningful changes from sticking for long as employees reverted to their old habits sooner or later.

I worked with Chrystal Stowe, Smoot’s Director of Development, to align the Smoot Construction Ohio brand with the D.C. branch, establish a cohesive social media strategy, and design & produce content that complements a redesigned construction bid proposal strategy. We limited ownership of all public and internal branding touchpoints to my creative and Chrystal's approval in order to ensure that up-to-date logos, fonts, and stylized photography was used. From there, I designed bid proposals, employee manuals and posters, social media content, and photographed staff as well as produced brand videos.