It’s exhausting to inform a profitable story about your group when audiences nonetheless have bigger, existential questions on your group’s mission and objective. At these junctures, a rigorously thought-about rebrand can have interaction inner and exterior audiences alike round a story that claims what you need it to.
Forward of her session at Ragan’s Model Storytelling Convention on April 13, we caught up with Michelle Russo, CCO on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to learn the way she holistically guided the establishment’s first main rebrand in 50 years by telling purposeful model tales rooted in authenticity and credibility.
Ragan: What do you think about essentially the most essential components of an efficient model story?
Russo: Begin together with your mission and objective, and the tales about your model will floor naturally from there.
This month, we’re celebrating the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 110th anniversary with an origin story that features the native chambers of commerce whose unique leaders had the foresight to create the powerhouse group we’re right this moment. As a result of the U.S. Chamber and state/native chambers sit on the intersection of enterprise, authorities and residents, our legacy of service to society spans America’s most difficult instances — from World Struggle II by means of the worldwide pandemic we’re recovering from now.
As a member service group, our model just isn’t solely about us and our work, but in addition a logo and manifestation of the vibrancy of the American enterprise neighborhood and the dynamism of the U.S. economic system.
Each model should resist the temptation to relaxation on the laurels of its legacy and make sure that it stays related for generations to come back. Over the previous yr, we leveraged the event of a brand new CEO to rework and modernize the Chamber into a company whose complete model fairness is bigger than the sum of its components.
As we proceed this transformation journey, the Chamber’s model story stays rooted in objective. We’ve got acquired this optimistic suggestions throughout our key stakeholder teams — from our Board of Administrators to our workers and from our company members to our companions throughout the nation and across the globe. We attribute that success to the authenticity and credibility the model has all the time had whereas we advanced it to maintain base with the tempo of enterprise.
Ragan: When beginning to inform the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s story about launching a contemporary model identification, what’s your first step?
Russo: We’re a strong participant in Washington on the intersection of enterprise, authorities and residents, however the way in which we had been displaying up [implied] that we had been a authorities establishment.
The Chamber’s previous brand was not doing the work of representing our story and it was not [representing our] objective in a digital world. We would have liked to make it possible for what we believed on the within was represented on the skin.
One of many first issues we did after we had been making our case for our new model identification was present individuals a slide cluttered with U.S. company logos, and ours was buried inside it. It was obvious to everybody how shortly we received misplaced throughout the many authorities seals.
Now, now we have a model identification throughout visuals and voice to assist convey the essential function we play in serving our members throughout the ecosystem of presidency, enterprise and society — on the world, nationwide, state, neighborhood and native ranges.
Ragan: What’s the largest storytelling lesson you discovered from the method of the rebrand?
Russo: First, a rebrand is simply as profitable as the facility you give it. Not solely ought to it change the way in which you look, but in addition it ought to change the way in which you behave.
For instance, we leveraged the brand new model in a holistic approach for our premier annual occasion, State of American Enterprise. We dropped at life our new CEO’s imaginative and prescient in myriad methods.
Not solely did the brand new model present up in our graphic design, but it surely was a muse for rethinking your complete occasion. We advanced from a podium speech to a Ted Discuss fashion presentation with a dynamic visible background. We modified our advertising and marketing technique and introduced in new audiences. We reached new ranges of engagement, re-energized our core audiences and impressed our workers to reimagine the affect of their work.
Hear extra from Michelle Russo throughout Ragan’s Model Storytelling Convention on April 13. Be taught extra and register right here.
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