We make sure it lands. Since 1999, for mechanical engineering, medical technology and industry — ideas, design, print, video, photography, websites, trade fairs.
Your products need explaining. Your customers compare carefully, decide slowly and never forgive a promise that doesn’t hold. Those are the markets we have worked in since 1999.
On average, our clients stay with us for more than twenty years. It’s the most honest number an agency can put out. Nobody stays two decades with someone who only makes pretty pictures.
From Mexico to Bangkok, on four continents. A trade show is a date that won’t move: on the morning the doors open, the work is done or it isn’t. The hardest test an agency can face — and our normal year.
Design, animation, 3D visualisation, film, copy, community management. One team from the first sketch to the finished job — no hand-offs between three suppliers, and nothing lost in between.
No seven-stage phase model. Four things that always happen the same way here — and one line on why.
Before we design, we understand the product. What it does, for whom, and where the purchase is decided. If you cannot explain a machine, you cannot advertise it.
Show day, launch, print deadline — the final date comes first, then approval loops, print times and freight days line up before it. That is how plans hold.
Design, artwork, editing, print management — at one table. Time gets lost between three suppliers, not in the work itself.
Sorted, named, in the right format, to the right address — down to the pallet in Lisbon or East Africa. A file is not a result yet.
And when something does not work, we say so. Including when the answer is: you do not need this.
Four partnerships, four challenges. No campaign poetry — just what actually happened. The oldest of them began at ICS Media, which became ICOM in 2012.
1998
SML
28years
Our first SML catalog was made at ICS Media, when layouts were still assembled by hand. Today we deliver trade-fair films, photography and mailings worldwide – and the finest praise arrives in four words: "Thanks, that works." Thirty-five years of picking up the phone and getting an answer, across a change of name. That’s what trust sounds like in mechanical engineering.
Back then layouts were still assembled by hand.
1999
GE HealthCare
27years
A corporation like GE HealthCare changes structures, teams and tools – regularly. What has never changed — first as ICS Media, since 2012 as ICOM: when a direct mailing, a trade-show presence or community management is due, ICOM is the partner who was already there, and nothing surprises us. In industrial communication, reliability isn’t an extra. It’s the product.
The first job: a datasheet. Approved by fax.
2013
Natus Sensory
13years
When Natus needed new imagery for four medical devices at once, our studio ran a two-day production with sets, models and clinical scenes – and the head of global marketing flew in personally. That’s how the partnership has run for fifteen years: Natus brings the product, ICOM builds the stage – from brand film to sales deck.
For two shooting days the head of global marketing flew in personally.
2021
Baxter
5years
The youngest of the four partnerships — five years old. And already we make the films that carry the most feeling in any corporation: the employee awards, stories about people rather than products. Plus catalogs, print, and presentations. Trust like that doesn’t show up with the first job. It can be earned faster than people expect.
The youngest partnership — already trusted with the employee films.
Because we have sat on your side of the table. Both managing directors were once what you are now: the marketing lead looking for an agency and answering for a budget.
Johannes Wallmen ran marketing and sales before he moved to the agency side. Florian Maderebner was head of marketing at a manufacturer, carrying sales responsibility. Both know the meeting where a budget has to be defended.
Sabine Meissner has been designing since 1999 — layout, artwork, print production. She is the craftswoman of the house. Florian learned the agency side at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett. We speak your sales team’s language — and the printer’s.
Since 1999 everything has turned over twice: print, web, social, now AI. Each time we learned it rather than waited it out. A new channel is not a project here. It is a Tuesday.
We were never in show business.
— Johannes Wallmen, founder
Industry means serious information.
A conversation settles that faster than a quote. And we will tell you when something is no use to you.
We are glad about every enquiry — including the ones that never turn into a job. The exchange takes us further. Tell us the problem, we will listen and think it through with you. That is the least anyone should expect.
