Project Overview
For over 160 years, Wajax has played a role in Canada’s industrial sector growth, with humble beginnings as a simple blacksmith shop in Montreal before growing into one of the country’s top suppliers of industrial goods and services it is today. Wajax caters to a spectrum of industries, serving over 32,000 clients ranging from mining to transportation.
Wajax prioritizes sustainability by encouraging customers to adopt energy-efficient items and emissions-reducing services to lessen environmental harm while effectively achieving operational objectives. Beyond technology and equipment, the company’s dedication strives to leave a positive impact on its surrounding communities.
Under the guidance of CEO Iggy Domagalski, Wajax has nurtured a culture centered around prioritizing people, emphasizing the importance of employee welfare and strong customer connections as pillars contributing to the company’s prosperity. Domagalski is a leader committed to developing businesses and fostering leadership while contributing to community growth and development initiatives. He aims to uphold a tradition of transformation as Wajax progresses, ensuring that the company’s influence positively impacts communities, employees, and the environment for generations.
Domagalski knows how businesses can have an impact by prioritizing the well-being and development of employees who dedicate a significant amount of time to their work each day. As CEO, he has advocated for programs that emphasize staff satisfaction and growth, leading to a motivated team providing outstanding service. This strategy has led to remarkable business expansion, with revenue increasing by 30 percent and profits rising by 60 percent over the past two years, highlighting the importance of prioritizing people and principles.
Under Domagalski’s guidance and innovative leadership, Wajax has become a company that extends beyond the mere products and services it provides to customers — it upholds a shared obligation to enact global change with grassroots initiatives in every community it reaches. Wajax is dedicated to empowering its clientele and building relationships while contributing to societal improvements that enhance livelihood and drive industry evolution.
The Problem
Upon reaching out to Otter PR, Wajax expressed its intentions to broaden its reach throughout Canada without compromising its established reputation as an industrial goods and services authority. Our team understood that the company’s desire to extend its influence through comprehensive media coverage, required a meticulous and delicate management of its preceded reputation in Canadian alongside expanding its story on a global scale.
With this in mind, our team knew that we would have to significantly boost Wajax’s brand recognition across international publications while reaffirming its heritage and significance in Canada by presenting the company as a trailblazer in its domestic market. Navigating this expansion while maintaining and bolstering Wajax’s reputation required us to heavily rely on communicating Domagalski’s people-first initiatives as the company’s CEO and establishing his executive team as visionary thought leaders within their respective niches.

The Strategy
Our team immediately got to work by utilizing our extensive PR services to create a flow of content for print publications. These included feature articles and educational, journalistic pieces highlighting Wajax’s expertise in various sectors and its presence in Canada with opportunities for expansion into the US markets.
At the same time, our team engaged in targeted communications by contacting local media sources in Canada and the US with access to leading print and digital platforms that would target Wajax’s primary consumer audiences and highlight its organizational specialties. To achieve this, we regularly contacted news outlets and trade publications across industries to effectively showcase the broad expertise of the company’s leadership, including Domagalski, Janice Radosevic (VP of Marketing), and Mark Edgar (Chief People Officer), amongst others.
Through this approach, our team was able to utilize various niche experts to exemplify the expertise of Wajax’s team as visionary thought leaders and experts within their industry. One result of this approach was Domagalski receiving a film interview for BNN Bloomberg.
Once coordinated, these opportunities also offered perspectives on Wajax’s progress and its pioneering role in technological advancements and community support efforts within the manufacturing industry. These opportunities, including Domagalski being interviewed for an article with Chief Executive and Mark Edgar receiving a thought leadership byline in HR Magazine, allowed us to improve Wajax’s brand identity while underlining its solid reputation in the market as a people-first organization.
Whenever our team approached the media throughout Wajax’s PR campaign, it was critical that we followed trending news and stories that could position Wajax at the forefront the manufacturing industry’s inner workings, including ways to improve its workforce and address ongoing staffing shortages. We carefully studied trends in various industries to deliver timely media pitches that resonated with Wajax’s areas of expertise and unlock opportunities for responsive commentary. These pitches highlighted Wajax’s as an organization, its experienced past, the specialties of its team members, and its pioneering innovation and societal endeavors to further grow the company’s positive reputation across Canadian, US, and international markets.
One of the final keys was collaborating closely with Wajax’s social media and marketing teams to create PR content that aligned with the company’s social media strategy. This required pinpoint precision in planning content calendars to maintain a digital presence across various platforms to communicate the company’s people-first vision, strengthen its core messaging throughout media channels, and enhance engagement with followers and stakeholders alike.

Business Impact (Results)
By implementing each strategy outlined above in unison​, our team was able to successfully help Wajax further enhance its presence in Canada and effectively venture into the US market​. As a result, the company not only experienced a significant improvement to its position as an advanced industrial manufacturer but also its impact as a global leader with a people-first vision.
To date, our comprehensive media campaign for Wajax has resulting in over 2,000 pieces of coverage with nearly 14 million views from a global audience of approximately 1.66 billion people. Venturing forward, Otter PR plans to build upon this initial momentum and further develop Wajax’s PR campaign to maximize its media coverage in the future.
Tags: thought leadership