Helping an 87-year-old company get ready for the workday
Cintas (NASDAQ: CTAS) is a $4B+ company that provides support services to over 900,000 North American businesses, including uniform rentals, facility services, cleaning, first aid and safety, fire protection and compliance training. As the company grew and diversified, its legacy as a uniform company (driven in part by their tagline “The Uniform People” and highly recognizable uniform delivery trucks) had become a limiting challenge to customer and investor understanding.
Cintas approached Lippincott to help define the business with a broadened focus, elevate the emotional benefit they deliver and position them in the market with a clarifying tagline.
To understand the frontline customer experience, we conducted a deep exploration of the cultural truths within the organization, points of competitive distinction, and in-market visits (complete with truck delivery ridealongs). Based on these insights, we developed a brand positioning that elevated Cintas’ range of services to a core emotional benefit – its caring service. Our brand architecture recommendations further clarified and unified the suite of offerings around the master brand.
The internal positioning and architecture strategy was translated to an external marketing tagline. “Ready for the Workday” channels the benefits of caring knowhow into a customer-centered emotional promise of readiness and all the confidence that comes along with it. It aligns Cintas around an emotional promise, providing employees with a rallying cry to be ready themselves, and do whatever it takes to help customers feel ready, too.
A robust internal launch aligned Cintas’ broad network of service professionals around the new positioning and tagline, uniting over 30,000+ employees around an inspiring purpose.
And thanks to a greater understanding of their breadth of service, Cintas’ has reported 11% revenue growth in non-uniform business lines since 2014.
The new brand was launched to the public in Q1’2016 with the company’s first national advertising campaign in 87 years. Cintas used the launch to engage internal teams in each market, showcasing employee photos across social media with the hashtag #READY.