Background
Brightside St. Louis is Gorilla’s first partner in our 501cFREE program. The idea behind 501cFREE is to commit to a full-scale, one-year digital marketing relationship at no cost with one local nonprofit. As residents of the city of St. Louis (both our homes and our office), we see everyday the difference Brightside makes all around town, and we identified an opportunity to help them spread awareness and activate community members to get involved.
The problem at hand
Historically known as Operation Brightside, the organization has strong roots in St. Louis and would be celebrating its 30th anniversary of cleaning and greening St. Louis. One of the most glaring challenges was a lack of awareness of the brand and resonance among younger members of the community. The military-like look of the brand felt a bit stodgy and dated, and didn’t help out an organization that needed to feel fresh, young and active. It was time for a refresh.
Rebranding
We began with a logo redesign. Daffodils are a huge part of Brightside’s planting efforts throughout the city, and they really wanted to “own” the iconic flower. We breathed some life into their everyday business papers (letterhead, business cards, note cards, etc.) as well.
Website overhaul
Redesigning their website wasn’t just about that fresh look. We needed to provide Brightside with a sustainable online presence that they could manage moving forward.
We wanted to include a blog that would focus not only on event recaps, but also on educating the community on how they can make a difference in keeping St. Louis clean and beautiful, while providing resources to help do just that.
Calls-to-action were big. As an organization that leans so heavily on volunteer involvement and private grants, we made sure that it was as easy as possible for someone to get in touch by placing a call-to-action side bar on every page.
Social media strategy
We knew social media would play a big part in reaching the younger members of the community and in positioning Brightside as a progressive and forward-looking organization. We designed their strategy for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ around three specific goals. If every move they made in the social sphere worked toward accomplishing one of more of these three things, they’d be headed down the right path.
What’s next?
Now that branding, a fresh website and a social media strategy are in place, we’ll be helping Brightside promote their organization throughout the rest of the year while transitioning them to a place where their marketing efforts can be self-sustainable.
If you’re interested in our 501cFREE program or have a good candidate in mind for next year, visit this page or get in touch with us.