A Leadership Company Disguised as a Contractor

Deliverables

The Film

The WRS film was crafted to capture the essence of who WRS is, showcase their expertise, and tell their story in a compelling and authentic way. It was designed to highlight their values, demonstrate their industry leadership, and create a deeper connection with their audience.

Paid Ads

We produced :30 and :15 spots for YouTube, Hulu, and Disney+ to assist with WRS’s recruitment efforts and their residential paving division.

Client: Western Refinery Services (WRS)

Project Overview

Western Refinery Services does work in refineries, civil construction, paving, industrial maintenance, landscaping, hydro excavating, and more. Their logo is on trucks all over the region. After 30 years and 250-plus employees, WRS is hard to miss.

But as Lyss Kuik, their Marketing and Communications Manager, described it plainly: nobody knew their story.

“We had a problem. We do all these really cool projects and all this amazing work, and we have just the coolest people working here. And so many people don’t know about it.”

— Lyss Kuik, Marketing Manager, WRS

That gap — between a company’s visible presence and its invisible identity — is exactly what we exist to close.

What We Found

During our strategy workshop, something became clear quickly. WRS isn’t really a construction company. It’s a leadership development company that happens to do construction.

Of their 57 leaders at the time of filming, 46 came from within the organization — promoted from ground level, not recruited from outside. They don’t hire leaders. They build them. That’s not a talking point. It’s a culture, built deliberately over three decades.

The film had one job: show that culture from the inside out — not through leadership talking about their vision, but through the people who lived it.

The team at WRS was looking to capture the unique culture they have in a compelling way that felt true to them in order to attract and retain talent.

“We really wanted that story to be told through the lens of the people — not just the ones running it, but the ones that are boots on the ground every single day.”

— Lyss Kuik

The Work (Before The Work) 

Before we ever turn on a camera, we spend time learning who a company actually is. For WRS, that meant our strategy workshop with leadership, marketing, and key team members — getting ideas on paper, aligning on what the story should be and who it should reach.

Ryan Likkel, CEO, came into the workshop with a clear-eyed reason for why this preparation matters:

“There are perceptions about business all the time. My perception of my business is different maybe than your perception. It’s important to get that feedback from outside people — for you to come in, get to know us, and then say: this is what I’m seeing.”

— Ryan Likkel, CEO, WRS

COO Billy VanZanten described what that preparation made possible on set:

“You come into our lives and know it. Instead of doing a video and thinking ‘this is who we are’ — you knew who we were, our goals, where we came from. The two or three hours on the front end pays dividends on the back end.”

— Billy VanZanten, COO, WRS

Lyss captured what that workshop made possible that no amount of brief-reading could replace:

“We needed that workshop to properly convey who those people are to Flannel — why they matter, why we love them, why they make WRS what it is today and what it will be tomorrow.”

— Lyss Kuik

What The Film Did 

The result wasn’t just external. When WRS shared the film internally, something happened that no recruitment metric can fully capture. CFO Cody Bormuth described it:

“People here felt like we had represented them well — represented who they are and the type of people they are. They’re proud to be part of this company because it represents them very well.”

— Cody Bormuth, CFO, WRS

That internal pride is the first ripple. The external one followed: people who share WRS’s values finding them because the film finally showed the world who WRS is. As Cody put it:

“It just helped us articulate what we already were — and then let people who want to be like that come to you.”

— Cody Bormuth

What We Learned

Every company thinks it knows its own story. Most are telling a version that’s accurate but incomplete — the official story, polished, listing services and credentials. The real story lives in the people, in the way they talk about their work when nobody’s performing.

WRS knew who they were. They just hadn’t shown it yet.

“Not only was I happy to do it — we will look forward to doing it again. You are helping us communicate our story and put our brand out there in a very positive way.”

— Ryan Likkel, CEO, WRS

To trust somebody to tell your story and your brand the way you want it to be told — it just made a great product. There are some things you have to step up and do right.”

— Billy VanZanten, COO, WRS

“Taylor didn’t expect us to have everything figured out already. He was there to guide us — not to tell us what our project should be, but to unearth what was already there and create that into a story that could be told and celebrated.” — Lyss Kuik, Marketing Manager, WRS