The Wheaton Chamber of Commerce has a strong reputation for being a friendly business community and their board identified a unique positioning among local chambers — big enough to meet new people, but small enough to develop deeper business relationships. Executive Director, Kerry O’Brien wanted to strengthen their brand and asked Jeffery James of Spire2 to help.
During our initial engagement, Spire2’s Channel Balancing revealed how disconnected the existing brand was from Wheaton Chamber’s brand values, and provided a road map on how to improve the brand experience by articulating a clear brand voice. Early on we identified that the visual brand needed to evolve. As part of the process of improving the brand experience, Spire2 updated their logo — making it more approachable and contemporary with a nod to the chamber’s history.
Communicating the chamber’s core brand value
The new logo system highlights the Wheaton business community’s long heritage, and visually communicates friendliness — the core brand value. The lettering evokes a historic and retro look but remains youthful by including a modern script. We kept the main brand colors red and blue, but selected friendly new tones that are a bit more welcoming.
A consistent brand voice to bring a cohesive brand experience
Spire2 also created a new brand voice and email templates to greatly enhance consistent brand messaging. Previous email messaging was a hodgepodge of member submitted information, events and logos; Spire2 sought to bring cohesion to the content by simplifying the format and created clear content delineations to make it easier for the reader to skim.
Bringing the brand together required overhauling the website. To stay inside a tight budget, Spire2 played a consultative role in upgrading the website. We made recommendations on site template and site architecture. Spire2 also recommended how to increase engagement of prospective members, and how to create more value for members while improving the engagement of the broader Wheaton community. Rolled out in the last quarter of 2019, we are excited to see the momentum it will build in 2020 and beyond.
Is your brand looking a little lost? If you gathered all the visual manifestations of your brand would it look like a unified family or like multiple different companies? Does your identity support your mission? Spire2 has a strong reputation of aligning branding with business goals. Connect with Jeffery James on LinkedIn or use our contact us form.
