We have been partnering with this facility for the past four years by deploying our food experienced Machine Operators, Material Handlers and Sanitation Technicians to their site located in a rural area where finding workers with these skill sets is challenging. Our client shared that they would not have been able to consistently meet production goals without the support of FlexTrades’ Technicians.
We recently deployed 10 of our Welders to an energy manufacturing facility to address a backlog caused by an increase in demand for their product and not enough skilled workers locally to address that demand. This client found that FlexTrades’ Technicians ramped up quickly and actually ended up outperforming the welds of their full-time workforce. FlexTrades’ Technicians were so productive that they extended the project beyond the original plans, allowing them to not only catch up on backlog, but also to build inventory.
Recently, the FlexTrades Marketing Team revamped and polished our brand personality, including the traits and archetypes that best align with our target audience. Any business that wants to make a meaningful connection to its audience should consider what their brand personality is. That includes billion-dollar, multi-national manufacturers who make the goods we all buy all the way down to the $1.00 lemonade stand at the corner in your neighborhood.
Brand personality is a set of human traits that helps to define a brand. Things like values, humor, candor, and sincerity. These traits are handpicked to build an emotional connection to a specific target audience with similar traits.
Building a brand personality can help any business with the following:
Now, I won’t be sharing the “secret sauce” of FlexTrades’ Brand Personality, but I will walk through the brand personality of my daughter’s lemonade stand. The steps below are the same basic steps any business can use to start this process.
Most people enjoy lemonade occasionally, but that’s far too wide of an audience. Our first target audience would be the parents who crack open their wallet or purse to purchase lemonade for their kids. Our second target audience are the kids who might pass by on their bikes, Razor scooters, or hover boards.
The most popular way to start building brand personality is by using the Aekers five-dimensional model. This model divides brands into primary traits of sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. Brands focus on one or two major personality dimensions while balancing and complimenting the others.
For our lemonade stand’s first target audience, parents, we’ll focus on Sincerity and being honest, wholesome, and positive in our messaging. When I see a lemonade stand as a parent, I see little entrepreneurs making their first buck and building a community in my neighborhood.
For our second target audience, kids, we’ll focus on Excitement while being lively, exciting, and imaginative. When I was a kid, seeing a lemonade stand was like hearing the jingle of an ice cream truck or going to get a Happy Meal. It’s fun and exciting to do something you don’t get to do very often!
The key to nailing brand personality is to specify the target market archetype and directly align it to the brand archetype. This way, you can resonate with your intended audience and position your brand intentionally. In marketing, it is generally agreed that there are 12 brand archetypes that are rooted in psychology. Each one is a categorization of a basic (and primal) human desire.
For our target audience of parents, we’ll focus on a dual archetype of Everyman Caregiver. The Everyman archetype highlights the hard-working and sincere staff of our lemonade stand, who bring refreshment to our community. The Caregiver archetype highlights the service being provided to thirsty kids and parents who just need a break. Brands like Johnsons Baby, Walmart and Target use these archetypes.
For our target audience of kids, we’ll focus on the Jester archetype. The Jester archetype is fun-loving, playful, and focused on enjoyment. Brands like M&M’s and Ben & Jerry’s use this archetype.
Once you’ve gone through the work of determining your brand personality traits and archetypes, it’s important to make brand guidelines. Brand guidelines are a resource for everyone in the organization to use as a tool to maintain consistent brand standards and brand integrity.
These guidelines include things like:
For our lemonade stand, this may include using bright colors with handwritten fonts to identify with kids. Maybe a superhero, princess, or dinosaur theme to further lean on the Jester archetype. Our voice and tone may be cheerful and welcoming to lean into our Everyman Caregiver archetypes.
The process of building a brand personality can be exciting, but it does take a lot of creative energy to do it right. Our marketing team had “homework” assignments before each meeting so that we all came prepared with our thoughts and suggestions on each step. It’s important to go into this process with an open mind and be ready to run with the best ideas!
As mentioned at the beginning, a business with a well-defined brand personality can more easily:
I challenge you to check out our website www.flextrades.com, and watch our social media pages to see if you can determine what our brand personality is!
Winter and winter driving. We all have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with it. The movies make it look like a magical time while our experiences often say otherwise: roads with no lanes, snow-covered stop signs, black ice, a dead car battery, or accidents. It’s even worse if you’re a first-timer to wintry weather and driving conditions. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of must-dos for winter weather and winter driving.
Include the following items:
In this kit, you should have:
Whether you do this yourself, or you take it to a mechanic, perform the following checks on your vehicle:
Tire Tread:
Tire Pressure:
Vehicle Fluids: Oil, Antifreeze/Coolant, Windshield Wiper Fluid:
Battery:
Wipers & Wiper Blades:
Brakes, Heater, Defroster, Belts, Hoses, Lights:
One of our Power Generation Production clients, won a major contract that required them to assemble and install 10 generators for a new 150,000 square foot data center. They needed to meet 2 separate delivery deadlines in their contract with their customer, or they would face significant financial repercussions. To meet their deadlines, they deployed 7 of our highly skilled Maintenance Technicians and Assemblers. Our technicians came in at such high levels of productivity that they were able to meet their customer deadlines, and was able to phase them out 6 weeks earlier than planned due to work being completed ahead of schedule.
Is your facility in need of highly skilled and productive technicians? Learn more here.
One of our clients, had been working with a different third party labor solution. They were not getting the skill level they were paying for from that competitor and were hesitant to give another company a try. This facility decided to partner with us, and we deployed 3 of our CNC Machinists and 1 of our Quality Inspectors. Upon arrival our client was instantly impressed with both the skill set and professionalism of our Technicians. Within a few weeks our Technicians were so productive compared to the other employees at their site, that our client decided to replace those employees with FlexTrades Technicians until they were caught up on production.
Check out how we have positively impacted other facilities by clicking the following link: Learn more here.
This Metalworking facility required additional Technicians to support a surge in their work orders. FlexTrades provided three highly skilled Tool & Die experts who ramped up after two weeks, allowing our client to deliver orders on time while keeping all work in-house. During the project, there was another third-party staffing service working alongside our technicians. According to the facility Manager, our technicians surpassed these workers through experience, production, and professional development.
Curious to know more about the skillsets we have on our technician bench? Learn more here.
One of our Industrial Motion clients was in dire need of a programmer for a new style of part they were unfamiliar with when they acquired a new product line. They contacted us for immediate support, and within a week we deployed Karl, one of our highly skilled programmers. Karl stepped in on day one and started running and programming complicated parts. Karl showed our client how to set up the parts. Our client was so impressed with Karl’s programming skills, they had him train their full-time programmers on Mastercam. In addition, Karl provided them with multiple tips and techniques that resulted in programming times being lowered by 20-30 minutes. If that wasn’t enough, Karl took existing programs they have run for years and made recommendations to reduce cycle times. Overall, Karl made a major positive impact on the operations and our client sent us a recommendation letter stating just that.
One of our agricultural machinery clients was experiencing material delays related to COVID-19 supply chain issues. As a result, they set up a new line dedicated to adding missing materials to machines once they came in. We deployed multi-skilled technicians specifically to work on the new line. This allowed our client to keep regular production lines moving while working through supply chain issues.
Curious to know more about the skillsets we have on our technician bench? Learn more here.
One of our clients who specializes in steel processing and production needed welders to get them caught up on a large backlog. FlexTrades deployed two of its tenured technicians, Stephen and Paul, to help with the workload. Our welders came in and contributed such high levels of productivity that they were able to help our client get caught up on their backlog 3 weeks ahead of schedule. Since this project, we continue to redeploy our technicians when this client experiences backlogs or large orders to help them meet production goals.
Want to learn more about how FlexTrades helps address production issues? Read more here.
