Harper Pit Works & BBQ
When the Harper crew first approached us, what we instantly recognized was that they had a uniquely made, quality product, but were missing the mark on that other vital component to business success… savvy marketing.
That’s where we led the charge, first identifying that the two streams of the business, the pit works - that manufactured first-class food smoking equipment - and the restaurant - that was to serve up delicious barbecue style eating options - had two distinct audiences.
So we split these out while maintaining a cohesive feel by having similar logos that both gave off an “old school” aesthetic but simply changed the main wording and flipped the same retro color palette around the other way.
Similarly we built separate websites for each, with the manufacturing arm housed at HarperPitWorks.com, while the restaurant sat at HarperBarbecue.com, but each utilized a similar landing page at the start to make users aware of the other stream of the business and gave the option to visit there too.
The main thing the Harper brand was lacking though was a strong “reason to believe” and so we set about creating the brand story to highlight what was unique about their product offering and that would work to convince barbecue aficionados to fork out $5000 without blinking to have the ultimate smoker in their backyard!
We achieved this by taking the consumer on an emotional journey and had the website telling them the story of the upcycled propane tanks that are repurposed as rustic-style smokers, and the hand crafted work of the artisans who make them. We wanted to espouse the time-honored traditions of the manufacturing process, and highlight the old school patina look of the units. We portrayed that these products would allow the audience to cook just like in the “old days”, playing up the romance of the “low and slow” tradition of smoked cooking.
We then set about getting the technical components in place, formulating an easy to digest website structure, and creating an e-commerce store for their smokers, fire pits and grills, complete with features and specifications on each individual product, plus shipping automatically calculated for all parts of the US.
The end result was something both ourselves and the Harper guys were really proud of, with a brand and web presence that glistened like a well basted serve of ribs!
(Click any image to enlarge)