Brand Taglines and Why We Chose Ours
Earlier this year, we went through a re-branding of ICOMold. It consisted of a new logo, with new colors, and a refresh of our website. A notable change to our logo is that we changed our tagline from “Low Cost. Fast Parts.” to “Custom Digital Manufacturing.” This was no trivial decision, as a tagline is very important to a brand’s identity in conveying the essence of what the company does. So what is digital manufacturing, and why did we choose that tagline to go with our logo?
A tagline accompanies a brand name or logo to concisely communicate the fundamental nature of the organization. An established, well-known brand may not need to use a tagline in order for people to immediately recognize who they are and what they do, especially if what they do is evident by their name. Emerging, startup and lesser-known brands, however, need a tagline if the company name is not already descriptive of what it does.
While thinking about taglines, I noticed a local strip mall sign for the Springvalley Shops (pictured), and was impressed to see that they had all done it right. Subway and T-Mobile both have what they do in their names (“Sub” and “Mobile”), and who isn’t already familiar with Subway and T-Mobile?
Most people wouldn’t know what type of business Pride is without the word “Cleaners,” nor would Central be obviously a travel agency without the word “Travel.” Lady Jane’s Haircuts for Men – good. The Toledo Clinic Urgent Care – branding, plus the function of this particular facility.
As one of the top 10 pizza franchises in the United States, with over 900 locations, Marco’s Pizza would most likely be fine with not having “Pizza” in their name today, but not so when they started in 1978.
Kudos to the chiropractor for wisely checking his ego enough to forego putting his name on his little sliver of the sign. The simple word “Chiropractor” best accomplishes letting motorists know in two seconds (which is all you have) that the service is available here.
So what about ICOMold – why a tagline of “Custom Digital Manufacturing?” Basically, it breaks down into two parts, “Custom” and “Digital Manufacturing.”
The “Custom” comes from the fact that we make custom plastic parts for our customers by injection molding, CNC machining and urethane casting. The customer provides us with a 3D CAD model of their part, and we make the parts and ship them to the customer. We do not make our own parts or stock anything on the shelf.
“Digital Manufacturing” is a term that is still emerging and growing in usage and awareness. It is becoming more familiar, but not yet understood by all, especially those outside the inner circles of manufacturing. Digital manufacturing is what we do at ICOMold, so choosing it as our tagline is representative of the present, and capable of being relevant into the future.
According to Wikipedia, “Digital Manufacturing is an integrated approach to manufacturing that is centered around a computer system.” That’s a simplistic definition, as it’s hard to imagine modern manufacturing that’s not controlled by computers in some way. A broad understanding encompasses many elements of manufacturing – machines communicate with each other, send maintenance notifications, and relay information up and down the supply chain.
In our case, it is the unbroken chain of digital information that adds value for the customer. It begins with the customer uploading a 3D CAD model of the part to be injection molded to our instant online quotation system. There, it is automatically analyzed by our proprietary database of part sizes, dimensions and features, and produces a price quote, instantly.
Should the customer choose to accept the quote and proceed with the project, the quote system becomes a project management system through which every process is automated. Once the project is launched, the digital manufacturing stream is in motion and progresses through the manufacturing, payment and shipping processes.
That is not to say that human interaction is never needed. There are often discussions around materials, the best process to manufacture a particular part, and Design for Manufacturability (DFM). This is accomplished through a discussion board built into the online system where the customer can communicate directly with the U.S. sales/project engineer about the project, and directly with the injection mold engineer to discuss things like DFM.
Overall, the connected digital chain greatly improves the customer experience. It provides a quick and easy-to-use online quotation system, project management platform with a discussion board, and quick turnaround due to the system automation and connectivity.
Maybe someday we’ll be well-known enough to just be ICOMold and everyone will know what we do, but for now we’ll stick with the tagline, Custom Digital Manufacturing.
