Marketing Built to ScaleJust Like You
We Know How to Market the Makers
Here’s what’s changed in manufacturing marketing, and it happened faster than most shops expected. The procurement manager evaluating you doesn’t call three references anymore. They open a browser, look at four suppliers, and quietly eliminate two before anyone picks up a phone. Meanwhile the skilled machinist you need on second shift is scrolling past your job post because it looks exactly like the eleven others in the feed.
Both of those are marketing problems, and they’re the two we solve most often. For more than twenty years, Ocreative has worked with precision fabricators, contract packagers, OEM suppliers, and global appliance brands to build identities that command respect, websites that convert research into RFQs, and recruitment campaigns that actually fill hard-to-fill roles. We translate complex capabilities into language buyers understand, without dumbing down what you do or pretending it’s simpler than it is.
From Family-Owned Shops to Global Brands
We’ve worked with manufacturers at nearly every scale, and the marketing problem is rarely the same twice. A 40-person fabrication shop competing for local talent needs something fundamentally different than a sub-brand inside a publicly traded parent company.
- Precision Fabrication & Machining – Sheet metal, welding, CNC, assembly, and engineering shops that need to look as capable as they are, to both prospective customers and prospective employees.
- Contract Manufacturing & Packaging – Co-packers and contract partners serving major CPG brands, where credentials, certifications, and capability breadth have to be immediately legible to procurement teams.
- OEM Suppliers & Distribution Partners – Component suppliers and supply chain partners serving agriculture, construction, automotive, and industrial OEMs, where the sale runs long and trust is the whole game.
- Consumer & Commercial Product Brands – Appliance, equipment, and product manufacturers selling through dealers, designers, and specifiers, often as one brand inside a larger corporate portfolio.
The Problems We Solve Most Often
These come up in nearly every first conversation we have with a manufacturer.
We can’t find people, and our job posts aren’t working. 
Recruitment is where most of our manufacturing relationships start. Sjoberg Tool first came to us for targeted Facebook and Instagram ads to fill skilled roles in a tight labor market. The fix wasn’t a bigger budget, it was giving their job ads a signature look, one that was rugged, time-tested, and unmistakably theirs, so they stopped blending into recruitment feeds. That work generated real applicant pipelines, then grew into full social management, product photography, and a website redesign.
Our brand looks like everyone else’s in the industry. 
We’ve now run competitive research in two separate manufacturing categories and found the same thing both times: a sea of navy blue. It’s the safe choice, and it’s why nobody remembers anybody. For Components Company we anchored in a deep navy for credibility, then broke convention with teals, aquas, and pops of orange and yellow. For Sjoberg Tool we added bold oranges and greens to their heritage blue. Differentiation in this industry is available, and it’s cheaper than you’d think.
We’ve grown on referrals and never needed a website. 
Bolke Miller Company built a national contract packaging business on word-of-mouth alone, with no digital presence at all. That worked until brand managers and packaging engineers at major food CPGs started their vendor research online. If buyers can’t validate you before the first call, you’re not in the consideration set, regardless of how good your reputation is among people who already know you.
Our capabilities are complicated and nobody understands them. 
Showing only your simplest work makes you look limited. Showing only your most complex work makes you look expensive. We solve this through architecture, organizing capabilities by how buyers actually think about them, so a prospect can find themselves in your offering without you having to narrow it.
We’re one brand inside a much bigger corporation. 
Sub-brand work has its own constraints: corporate brand standards, sibling brands you can’t cannibalize, and marketing teams you have to coordinate with. We’ve navigated this for Marvel Refrigeration and for Middleby Refrigeration, where two merged sub-brands needed a unified voice that explained how they complement each other rather than compete.
Full-Service Manufacturing Marketing, All Under One Roof
Every discipline below is handled in-house by our own team, which means tighter coordination, faster turnarounds, and one point of accountability from concept through execution.
Branding & Visual Identity
Logos, color systems, typography standards, and comprehensive brand standards guides. Manufacturing brands carry a specific tension: you need to signal decades of reliability and forward-looking innovation at the same time. Our certified color consultant builds palettes that hold both, and that work as hard embroidered on a uniform or wrapped on a trade show booth as they do on screen.
What’s included: Logo design and logomark systems · Color consulting · Brand voice and messaging platforms · Brand standards guides covering apparel, signage, vehicles, and trade show applications · Capability statements and sell sheets
Website Design & Development
Custom WordPress sites built around how industrial buyers actually research: capability depth, credentials up front, clear quote pathways, and content organized by the buyer’s mental model rather than your org chart.
What’s included: UX/UI strategy and site architecture · Custom design and front-end development · Capability and service page systems · Certification and credential presentation · Strategic RFQ and quote request forms · Careers sections built to convert candidates · Industry-language SEO, GEO, and AEO optimization · Ongoing hosting and stewardship
Recruitment & Employer Brand Marketing
This is one of our deepest specialties, and it’s where manufacturers see the fastest return. Targeted paid campaigns, careers content, culture storytelling, and recruitment creative built to stand out in a feed rather than blend into it.
What’s included: Targeted recruitment advertising on Meta and LinkedIn · Signature job ad creative systems · Careers page design and content · Employer brand storytelling · Recruitment video · Facility and team photography
B2B Social Media & Digital Marketing
Organic programs and paid campaigns aimed at the specific decision-makers who matter like specifiers, designers, procurement managers, hospitality planners, and plant leadership. We handle strategy, content, execution, and reporting.
What’s included: Channel strategy and profile optimization · Content development and design · Paid campaigns on LinkedIn and Meta · Blog and newsletter programs · Reporting and optimization · Coordination with internal corporate marketing teams
Manufacturing Work We’re Proud Of
Sjoberg Tool Manufacturing
One Recruitment Campaign Became a Multi-Year Brand Partnership
Sjoberg Tool came to us to fill skilled manufacturing roles in a tight Wisconsin labor market. We built a signature look for their job ads, both rugged and attention-grabbing, unified their presence across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, expanded their palette with bold oranges and greens alongside their heritage blue, and brought in professional facility and team photography. Recruitment ads generated strong applicant pipelines for hard-to-fill roles, posts about team culture outperformed industry benchmarks, and their social presence became a retention tool as much as a hiring one. The work has since expanded into major product photography and a full website redesign.
Components Company
A Contemporary Identity for a 90-Year Legacy
Since 1934, Components Company has served OEMs across agriculture, construction, and automotive, but nine decades of growth had outpaced their visual identity. Through stakeholder surveys across departments and competitive research in the vendor consolidation space, we found an opening to break from the industry’s default blues. The resulting logomark layers three ideas at once: a cable end for technical expertise, a lightbulb for innovation in a slower-moving industry, and a target with an arrow at the bullseye for their focused methodology.
AWARD WINNER
2025 MARCOM AWARDS, GOLD
Branding Refresh
Bolke Miller Company
From Zero Online Presence to Industry Authority
BMC is a contract packaging partner for major North American food brands that had never had a website. We built their entire digital foundation from scratch, structured around three objectives: define who they are, showcase capability breadth without appearing limited, and drive qualified leads. Service pages are organized by packaging type rather than internal structure, credentials like SQF, Kosher, Organic, and Contract Manufacturer of the Year are given prominence, and quote request forms are positioned throughout. The site now serves prospective clients and job candidates alike.
AWARD WINNER
2025 MARCOM AWARDS, PLATINUM
Mascot/Characters, Illustration/Graphic Design
Why Manufacturers
Organizations Stay with Us
20+ Years in business
78 Industry awards
2 MarCom Golds for manufacturing work in 2025 alone
In-house for Every discipline
One expert team
We Treat Recruitment as a Marketing Problem, Because it is.
Most agencies will build you a careers page and call it employer branding. We’ve run the actual campaigns that fill second-shift roles, and we know that the difference between a job post that works and one that doesn’t is usually creative, not budget. For manufacturers competing in a tight labor market, this is often the single highest-return work we do.
We Know the Industry Defaults, and We Know How to Break Them.
We’ve now done competitive positioning research across multiple manufacturing categories, and the pattern holds: your competitors all look alike, most of them in navy. That’s an opportunity, not a constraint. Distinctiveness in this industry costs no more than sameness.
We Make One Production Budget Do Several Jobs.
When we filmed EK Machine, we captured everything for a recruitment video and a sales video in a single production schedule, and the surplus footage went on to populate their website. That’s how we think about every shoot, every photo session, and every asset library we build.
We Can Work Inside a Corporate Structure.
For Marvel and Middleby Refrigeration, we work alongside internal marketing teams, adapt to corporate brand standards mid-project, and handle the positioning nuance required when sibling brands share a parent. If you have a corporate marketing group you need us to coordinate with, that’s familiar territory.
Manufacturers
We’ve Partnered With
Testimonials
We partnered with Ocreative for a brand refresh and new website, and the experience was excellent. Their team took the time to understand our business and delivered creative ideas that captured our identity perfectly. The result is a modern, professional brand and a website that’s both beautiful and easy to use. We’ve already seen great engagement and couldn’t be happier.
Jenny Nathan, Sales Associate,
Components Company Inc.
Andrea, Jerrie, Caylin, and the team at Ocreative have been awesome to work with. They help our brand create professional content that looks fantastic while increasing our audience. If you’re looking for a great social media partner, check out Ocreative!
Jess, Group Marketing Director,
Middleby Refrigeration
We truly value the work your team has done in maintaining Sjoberg’s online presence and showcasing our culture!
Jessica, Human Resources,
Sjoberg Tool
2025 MarCom Awards,
Gold
2025 MarCom Awards,
Gold
What Working Together
Actually Looks Like
Discovery & Strategy – We start by understanding your business, your buyers, and your competitive set. For manufacturers this usually means stakeholder surveys across operations, sales, and HR, because the people who know why customers choose you and the people who know why candidates choose you are rarely the same people.
Creative Development – Concepts grounded in that strategy, presented with the reasoning behind them. You’ll always know why we made a choice, not just what we made.
Collaborative Refinement – Structured revision rounds designed to work around production schedules and the reality that your team has a plant to run. We keep the process moving without requiring your leadership to live in it.
Execution & Launch – Production, distribution, and launch handled end to end, with training so your team can confidently manage what we build.
Ongoing Partnership – Most of our manufacturing relationships start with one project and grow. Recruitment leads to social, social leads to photography, photography
Let’s Build Something That Scales
Whether you’re modernizing a brand that’s fallen behind, building your first real website, filling roles you can’t seem to fill, or launching a product into a crowded market, we’d like to hear about it.
