Huskie Tools serves the utility lineman, building battery-powered utility tools that are built for everything that’s on the line.

Born & raised in Chicago, the idea of Huskie Tools started with father & son Tom and Joe Itrich back in 1976. Experienced with the utility industry and the brotherhood that supported it, Tom & Joe were driven to create a customer-first culture—knowing the industry and understanding the needs of the linemen, this duo began to engineer products that were safety first in their design and fit specific needs to a “T.”

Since introducing the industry’s first battery-powered hydraulic tools in 1989, Huskie Tools has been dedicated to serving utility linemen—developing products that help ensure linemen safely and efficiently perform some of the most dangerous and demanding jobs on the planet. They came to Willful to help refresh the Huskie Tools brand and tell their story to the masses—and further the connection they have with the linemen they serve.

The Challenge

Huskie Tools is a small fish in a big pond, competing with bigger brands and bigger budgets. We needed to define a direction that would allow them to make some noise with small budgets, great tactics, and incredible creativity that would get them noticed and heard above the dull drum of everyday tool marketing.

This led to the realization that we needed to position them as the brand that is Built to Serve Linemen, with the history, experience, and industry-leading products to back up that premise.

Huskie Tools isn’t about 734 different consumer tool choices and a few linemen tools in the mix. It’s about making Huskie Tools the linemen’s tool of choice for one simple reason: everything they do is to serve linemen.

Our Solution

Our answer was to reposition Huskie Tools as a specialist in the utility linemen tool industry against all the other major brands in the market—and doing so with a fraction of what the competitors have allocated to their brand's market exposure.

We developed impactful brand-driven creative and nomenclature that drives home the perspective of “Made In Chicago” and “We only create tools for linemen's specific needs.”

Utilizing messaging like “Born & Raised in Chicago” and “Built For Everything That’s On The Line” allowed Huskie Tools to narrow their focus on creating a true relationship with the end user. We chose to create photography that would emulate the “Cowboy” attitude of linemen and first responders in a way that would allow the brand to rise above pricing and relegate the decision-making to a targeted aspiration of the intended users.

These images, headlines, taglines, and various inspirational content creations were incorporated into trade show booths, catalogs, collateral materials, social marketing, and digital campaigns that have begun to create increased exposure for the brand and have started to push sales up in a post-Covid world.