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Refreshing Crystal Springs Uplands School’s visual identity
With a rich tradition and stellar academic reputation, Crystal Springs Uplands School (Crystal) is a Bay Area independent day school for grades 6-12. Significant growth resulted in an increasing number of permutations of the school’s logos and other visual elements, which provided Elevate Marketing an exciting opportunity to assess, streamline, and ultimately partner with an agency to refresh Crystal’s entire brand and visual identity system.
By deeply understanding the Crystal brand, the role of the various visual identities, and viewpoints of critical stakeholders, Elevate guided the process to create an updated and comprehensive visual identity system to effectively reflect the Crystal brand. In addition to helping vet and hire a graphic design agency, Elevate led the creation of logo usage guidelines, an easy to apply implementation roadmap and enforcement processes on how to utilize these assets going forward. The new visual identity system provides an enthused Crystal community with clear direction on how to represent its current brand in a cohesive and consistent manner.
Follow-on projects for Crystal included additional communications/PR strategies specific to the Athletics program, in addition to strategic guidance for an updated school website.
From idea to impact - developing and launching Women’s Coaching Alliance
The trends are clear - in sports, women coaches are underrepresented. And, in the boardroom, gender parity is a long way off. Youth sports are a clear proof point where only 25% of youth sports coaches are female. [source: The Aspen Institute, 2019] Inspired by her late husband’s dedication to his daughters’ youth sports teams, and his particular commitment to engaging women as coaches and role models, founder Pam Baker was determined to address this issue head on - how can we develop future female leaders through coaching youth sports? And the Women’s Coaching Alliance (WCA) was born! WCA connects female athletes with coaching opportunities, training, and mentorship, preparing them to be leaders within and outside of sports.
Elevate worked with Pam from inception to launch to help develop and articulate the offering, create a visual identity (including logo), build an impactful PR/Communications Launch Plan, and motivate potential female coaches and potential donors to engage through multichannel marketing strategy and messaging.
The WCA is off to a great start with clarity of mission, strong branding, and a solid foundation in Burlingame. Dozens of young women have coached teams across 5+ sports. Mentors are effectively mentoring. Leadership coaching summits and fundraising galas are happening. Furthermore, with expansion to other markets on the horizon, the word is out that this is an exciting time for the organization.
Follow-on projects for the WCA included updated positioning and messaging for market expansion initiatives.
Evolving the Family Connections brand
Family Connections has been providing high quality, free, co-op pre-school education to underserved families on the SF Peninsula for over twenty years . With an expanded mission and organization, it was time to evolve the organization’s visual identity to better reflect its energy, position and “grown up” reputation.
Family Connections hired Elevate to define its brand and positioning, upgrade its logo and tagline, and create visual identity standards to guide the non-profit for the next decade. In addition, Family Connections struggled with a clear and consistent message -- with so much to talk about, it was difficult for stakeholders to clearly articulate just what the organization was about. Elevate created a comprehensive messaging guide and provided messaging training.
Follow-on projects for Family Connections included an annual report, annual appeal outreach, and 25th anniversary marketing plan and execution.