Shear brilliance

Rebuilding the buzz around a heritage sheep shearing brand

  • Brand strategy
  • Brand support
  • Naming
  • Verbal identity
  • Visual identity
  • Web development
Brand graphic for Lister Shearing with the tagline

A way of life

The client: Lister Shearing

Ask anyone in the global farming community – they’ll know the name. Lister animal shearing tools have been around for over 110 years. Shearing gangs have passed down their Listers for generations. But times change.

The process of refining the Lister brand logo by Mighty, brand agency
An advert for Lister Shearing with the headline Shear Passion – brand proposition developed by Mighty brand agency
A magazine spread for Lister Shearing by Mighty, brand agency

The Moment of Change: Waking up

The business, by its own admission, had been resting on its laurels and sleepwalking through life. Meanwhile, competitors were innovating – new products were surpassing that famous Lister quality.
 
To fight back, Lister invested in R&D. They pioneered some products that would reimagine the Lister name for the digital age. But they needed a brand that could do more than handle this progress. It needed to tell the world that Lister had changed.

We love helping heritage brands reinvent themselves for a new era. Our new brand positioning and packaging for Lister gave them the boost they needed to recapture the market.

The Mighty stamp
JamesManaging Partner
Brand poster for Lister Shearing with the text 'A Cut Above the Rest'. Designed by Mighty, brand agency

The plan we made

Shearing isn’t a nine-to-five. It has its own traditions, culture and way of life. We’d start there. Get under the skin/hats of the shearers themselves. Figure out what Lister means for cowboys and cowgirls in the 2020s.
 
We discovered something unexpected. Like the rest of the world, shearer gangs live on their phones. It makes sense, though. They’re constantly on the move – phones keep them connected.
 
The upshot: we needed to take a digital-first approach to anything we did. And we needed to make life easy for people who just want stuff to work. They want to find the right product, for the right job, in the right place. No nonsense. 

Brand concept for Lister Shearing by Mighty, brand agency A poster for Lister Shearing featuring a shearer inspecting a sheep and the headline "Look Sharp" - designed by Mighty, brand agency
Social media graphics for Lister showing different aspects of sheep shearing and the Lister identity. Developed by Mighty, brand strategy agency
Brand proposition piece for Lister Shearing, focusing on shearers in New Zealand. Designed by Mighty, brand agency

The story we told

We knew how we needed to deliver the brand, but what would that brand say? It had to go beyond a smart logo. It had to steal attention away from competitors and showcase the engineering. We wanted a reaction: wow, this is really Lister?
 
Our concepts were sleeker than anything Lister had done before. The Fusion and Outback handpiece branding spoke of innovation but kept a rugged edge of authenticity. We nodded to the shearer’s reality with our tagline: ‘A way of life’.
 
The names and packaging for the new combs took things up another level. With names selected by ambassadors from Down Under, we gave each comb a bold, easily identifiable look that would jump out at the audience. Then they would see the brand name. This was a brave new dawn.
 
We delivered it all with new categorisation tags that made it easy to filter by animal type. And we built a fully responsive website. Shearers could shop on their phone, out in the field.   

The Lister Shearing website designed by Mighty, digital brand agency
An advertising image of the Lister Fusion handpiece by Mighty, brand agency
An advert for Lister Shearing with the headline "Shear Grit' and a professional shearer at work. Designed by Mighty, brand agency

The Mighty change

In just six weeks, the company sold more combs than they had in the entire 12 months before. And they now had a brand foundation to keep building on. They were revitalised – ready for the next 110 years.

Brand development process for the Lister Outback shearing handpiece
The Lister Outback Handpiece
A double-page newspaper ad for Lister Shearing with the headline 'Rush Hour', advertising the Outback handpiece. Designed by Mighty, brand agency
An advert for the Lister Outback shearing handpiece by Mighty, brand agency
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more of the good stuff

Presto bus stop advert by Mighty, brand agency

Hey presto!

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A man and woman catch up in a business meeting with the Nephos logo in the background

Cloud-based confidence

Nephos

Ready for your moment of might?

We like a challenge. Tell us what you want to change and we'll be in touch.