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Mathiowetz Construction

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Nearing 100 years in business, a family-owned construction company navigates changes in leadership, ownership, and key messaging.

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Project Overview

Mathiowetz Construction is a 4th generation, family-owned construction company in Sleepy Eye, MN. Their current president and patriarch was preparing to transition out of his day to day role. The company had been evolving to a team leadership model and was ready to announce a change in leadership and ownership. Team retention, recruiting, and community messaging were top priorities. With these transitions in mind, the Mathiowetz leadership team recognized that their brand look, feel, and messaging needed to align in order to successfully move forward.   The Vice President at Mathiowetz reached out to Justin because he was familiar with the brand work that Mercury had previously done with AGC (Associate General Contractors) and wanted to pick his brain on developing a new website. Of course, Justin started talking strategy first. Brand strategy and a strong communication plan would be important as Mathiowetz prepared to announce all of the exciting changes that were taking place. Discovery conversations with this team made it clear that Mathiowetz Construction is always thinking ahead, whether it be planning for constructing a new highway or planning for business growth. Working in both the public and private sectors and ensuring proper staffing on job sites meant that their brand guide would need to be expanded to include multiple audiences.

Client Goals​

  • Communicate leadership and ownership changes to our team, our clients, and our community
  • Define how we do business and why it makes us different
  • Create a brand story that builds on our history and helps drive recruiting
  • Create brand elements, including a new website, that modernizes our look, tells our story, and brings our differentiator to life
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Project Focus

Mercury was tasked first with gaining alignment among 3 strong leaders who are also family members. Next, we needed to equip them with key messages and a communication plan that gave them a unified voice. 

Moving into team leadership has been an intentional focus for Mathiowetz as they approach their 100 year anniversary. They realized that it is rare to continue a successful, family-owned business for 4 generations, and they wanted to be sure that every member of their team, their clients, their associates, and their entire community received communications about the leadership and ownership changes with the utmost care.

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Creating an “Ideal Team Member” – Meet Tyler

A big part of creating a customized brand guide for our clients is digging deep into defining their ideal client so key messaging, brand voice, and design can be directed toward that one person. For Mathiowetz Construction, it was also necessary to define their ideal team member.

Mathiowetz competes against the challenge of seasonal employment, a rural location, and union-based companies. This year, with the added layers of Covid-19 implications and key positions open due to retirements, the leadership team understood that recruiting had become more important than ever. They needed to focus on attracting the right people who align best with their culture.

Mercury’s approach to defining ideal audiences starts in discovery. It’s a mix of art and science. We asked the team to tell us about their favorite employees. We listened intently to capture the demographic information as well as the personality and values of their ideal team member. Then we applied demographic research and story telling to create an avatar. We knew we had the right “person” when we introduced the Mathiowetz group to “Tyler”. 

The human resources leader asked, “How did you know to name our avatar Tyler?” The whole group started to chuckle. They told us, “You hit the nail on the head. We have three Tylers currently on the team, you described them as if they were one person, and we’d be thrilled to hire that avatar.”

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200

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hours of Brand Discovery

10

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leaders participating from across the organization

27

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surveys completed

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