Superior Technical Ceramics

The Challenge

Bob Church, a leading figure in the ceramics industry, had led the company for many decades.  His outgoing nature and extensive industry contacts essentially served as the marketing function of the firm.  His death left a large void.

Our Approach

We used our Brandthropology Process to step back and do our homework on the brand, the competitive context of the industry, and the insights that drive engineers’ choices in selecting technical ceramics partners.  This research would inform our development of the brand and a new & updated marketing ecosystem to support it.

Superior Technical Ceramics Brand Pyramid

Our Solution

Our extensive research showed that STC faced massively large multi-billion dollar competitors, including firms such as Kyocera, Saint-Gobain & Morgan. These firms could undercut pricing by producing ceramics in volume via large contracts. We observed that STC could make a virtue of its small size and deep well of materials expertise to concentrate on smaller, higher value components, often in high tech industries such as aerospace, defense contracting and nuclear energy. 

The Result

STC’s web presence was rudimentary (and that’s putting it kindly).  The founder believed that the best marketing was personal connections, and hadn’t embraced the opportunities the web could offer.  We invested in creating a powerful site that now has the strongest SEO in the industry for key technical ceramics terms.  In fact, after over ten years of work, we’re proud to now have over 30 top keyword terms for which we have the number one position in Google organic search.