Within each main category of product offerings in the firearms industry, there are only a handful of key innovators and leaders who truly drive the advancement of modern weapon systems. Sig Sauer is the only industry leader with world-renown claim in manufacturing complete weapons systems, ranging from their proprietary platforms (In both pistol and rifle), ammunition, and a full-catalog of accessories including silencers and electro-optics.

United was brought on board as Agency of Record to assist Sig Sauer in various marketing and media-content capacities, as well as advertisement campaigns involving various printed collateral material. Since 2017, United has seen Sig Sauer through three product launches and numerous social media programs for advertisement and educational purposes.

Sig Sauer was looking to streamline their media operations, in terms of content production regarding their extensive product offerings, to more appropriately address how they present themselves in an increasingly dynamic international firearms industry.

As with any large manufacturer, undergoing a brand transition requires time and insight to gather the most suitable resources to do so. At this time, with Sig Sauer’s current program and creative assets already in place, United worked with existing photography and imagery, while developing creative ways to elevate the brand into its next steps.

In order to bring Sig Sauer, the main over arching brand, to the forefront of their many divisions within the brand, United conducted a much needed deep-dive audit of both the internal operations of the brand, its visual language, and its core audience—the personas of their prospective market. This meant entirely new media programs to create Sig Sauer the tools necessary to compete in the market, with a clearer and more calculated message, and a unified voice across all product categories in their extensive catalog.

Unboxing the brief

Born in Europe, perfected in America. Sig Sauer has been a staple brand of quality reliable firearms for over 50 years, most notably in the small arms category, when they entered the US market in 1985.

The business was looking to grow its brand, taking it into completely new territory for the company. Having established an unmatched reputation in non-consumer circles (such as armed professionals, military and police), Sig Sauer needed a voice to accompany its image amongst firearms enthusiasts on a larger scale.

However, despite their superior product offering, as well as a wide range of accessories already available to buy, the levels of consumer brand recognition required, were low and unresponsive.

We needed to understand why...

Carrying out a full audience and competitor audit, we analyzed how the existing brand was being perceived and why. This offered three key areas for consideration to drive our creative and strategic direction. Creating a lifestyle element for the Sig Sauer brand, complimented with a more meaningful story.

1. Marketing Culture

Despite their incredible heritage and reputation, Sig Sauer possessed limited organizational understanding of how to leverage the brand’s key qualities, and had outdated tools and assets in place required to do so. We therefore needed to support their team (from top to bottom) in terms of developing a consumer marketing culture, fit for a firearms manufacturer.

2. Category Trends

With so many manufacturers of military-grade products in the small arms market, Sig Sauer’s underdeveloped lifestyle messaging was being drowned out by more effectively marketed, consumer-savvy brands. Therefore, it was vital that we identified Sig Sauer’s true brand DNA and tell a clearer, more meaningful story.

3. Audience Insight

Sig Sauer hadn’t identified what today’s diverse and influential community of shooters really expected from a lifestyle brand. We knew this meant they needed to rationalize their product purpose more clearly, and present themselves from a more aspirational point of view.

The Launch of the Sig Sauer P320 campaign saw the brand through a celebratory season, having won the U.S. Army Modular Handgun Contract, which involved beating out one of the world’s largest and most recognizable pistol manufacturer.

United, continuing from the success of the Sig Sauer overarching brand campaign, further drew upon this accomplishment to bring an entire program to life for Sig Sauer’s latest development.

The P320 set the stage for Sig Sauer’s mark in the modular striker-fired pistol category, a completely new concept which gives the end user ultimate customization ability, in terms of grip size, and frame size. United then developed the, “My P320” campaign, which enabled Sig Sauer to engage with its audience worldwide, through social media and interactive campaigns through their website.

Building upon the Sig Sauer brand as a whole, the, “My P320” campaign generated many creative outlets for the program to grow into. This involved photography and video assets that would allow Sig Sauer to reinforce their new lifestyle approach.

From its launch, the P320 creative program placed an emphasis on speaking to the core of Sig Sauer’s consumer personas. This meant utilizing less-traveled avenues to a more disruptive approach than what Sig has presented to the world in the past.

This led to a shift in focal point, from the P320 (M17) as the newly contracted U.S. Army modular pistol, to the concept of maximum end user-compatibility; achievable through the pistol’s primary modular design.

The EDC (Everyday Carry) category in a general sense is deeply saturated, steeped in gear ranging from pocket tools, keychain solutions, wallets, and defensive weapons; all of which are widley popular across the globe. However in The United States, EDC takes on one predominant form, firearms.

Sig Sauer had been seemingly positioned by the market itself to produce a small frame concealable pistol, building off of the release of the P320 as a modular pistol design. In order to bring this product to market in a similarly successful fashion, Sig Sauer needed to navigate an on-ramp that would be most suitable for the EDC category.

This required United to craft a campaign that would answer the questions that would inevitably arise when Sig Sauer’s newest product hits the shelves of gun shops across the U.S. Not only would this campaign need to serve the most utilitarian of capacities, such as educating the audience about the P365’s subcompact frame and unique attribute of having full-size capacity, but also present a visual language that would match the disruptive nature of this product coming from one of the largest names in firearms.

The branding systems that United established within Sig Sauer’s consumer identity, in terms of the P365 product launch, were then further developed into campaigns created specifically for web and social media.

United developed a striking and disruptive visual language to cut through the noise of the EDC market, resulting in the use of bold graphic elements and motion graphics animation. This was a branding opportunity that United sought to utilize, which would begin to shape and increase Sig Sauer’s visual problem solving capabilities.

The challenge in conceptualizing the Sig Sauer brand as one entity, is the vast product offerings in their catalog, spanning across the spectrum of firearms and accessories. United addressed the campaign to speak boldly and uniquely in its initial presentation, but behave in such a manner as to not conflict with the elevated sophistication that Sig Sauer was actively folding into their brand identity

Through many developments, the P365 campaign as a whole, created space for Sig Sauer’s brand to develop even further. The language used, the visual messaging, and the conceptualization of brand values, all play a significant role in adequately presenting the brand in the smartest and most productive light.

As the complete weapons system provider, Sig Sauer has garnered the praise of many of the world’s top competitive shooting professionals, as well as the armed professionals who critically rely on the weapons themselves. With the advancements in modern shooting, and the rise in the popularity of long-range precision shooting, Sig Sauer’s Electro Optics division had been keen on developing the next generation of long-range shooting technology.

United was tasked with creating a new product launch campaign for the Sig Sauer BDX System, one that would both set the product aside as a completely new type of shooting experience, but would coincide with the existing Sig Sauer brand identity.

Unboxing the brief

The impact that the BDX system would have in the world of long rand precision shooting, would be dependent on the market reception and understanding exactly what this product is capable of.

Sig Sauer needed to adapt its new brand identity, to create clear and simplified solutions in launching such a revolutionary product. This required Sig Sauer to Expand its reach into more creative channels to meet this challenge.

United created a product education campaign, that would answer the various questions surrounding the BDX system. With no other products in the market like it, there would be no short supply of questions.

We needed to know how the BDX system works, and how it could impact the long range shooting sports as a whole.

Carrying out a full category competitor audit, within the world of technology-assisted shooting solutions. We saw how the existing brand could act dynamically as well as key areas of the brand that should remain unaffected. This offered a field of focus for consideration to drive our creative support, a product launch campaign with both consumer education and lifestyle aspiration at the forefront.

Challenging Assumptions

There are questions that arise when addressing a two part program consisting of product education and awareness, balanced with a true sense of brand aspiration. Sig Sauer understood that answering those questions would be paramount. How to talk about the BDX system, what visual language will be best suited for the main messaging, and how do we ensure the audience of the research and development that goes into the BDX line of products. These points of contact would help ground the framework that would become the BDX campaign.

United leveraged its learnings from previous campaigns to draw solutions, for a more systematic approach to roll out the creative assets in a more dynamic fashion. This manifested in a multi-wave campaign that would utilize the new tools developed within the Sig Sauer brand identity.

This multi-wave campaign would involve a full gamut of photography and video assets, as well as conceptual motion graphics to support the awareness aspects of the campaign. Ultimately the scope of the work would lend itself directly to the retail experience, which required support materials to address campaign challenges at the counter.

With the newly developed Sig Sauer brand identity in place, it was important to delegate the rolls each creative outlet within the BDX campaign would play and how they were to behave. The brand entire, and all the various product divisions needed to know exactly which touch points of the campaign they were to observe and ultimately act upon.

United worked closely with Sig Sauer’s Electro-Optics division, as the main delivery route, to ensure a seamless experience when delivering the creative assets to the website, social media platforms, as well as traditional print advertising.

The Sig Sauer brand gleaned much insight from its previous campaigns, where education on a new type of product was just as important as the support imagery and over all visual design. United put these brand values in place as a guide, to ensure that all the design elements were answering very specific questions that Sig Sauer was being asked by its customers.

At the time of its arrival in the gun shop counter, the Sig Sauer BDX system was already being talked about within the firearms industry and its wider reaches through web and social media. This brought about a couple key observations to act on in a timely manner.

United realized that the web and social media avenues through which the customers and industry commentators were addressing Sig Sauer, would be the most productive arena to clarify their product messaging and broaden its reach proactively.

The BDX system product launch, was met with success in trade shows and hands-on-product experiences with customers. However there were still questions and misinformation regarding compatibility, durability of the electronic components, and the various configurations an individual could utilize the BDX system in part or as a whole.

United created the next wave of support media in the form of motion graphics for both the Sig Sauer website as well as across their various social media outlets, which allowed Sig Sauer to directly clarify any confusion about the revolutionary attributes of the BDX system.

Sig Sauer BDX Social Media Campaign

With the creation of the Sig Sauer BDX launch campaign, United sought to bring another element into the program which would further support the brand identity and visual language moving forward. United developed a series of web and social media specific animations, keeping product information and awareness as the main purpose.