United, one of three identities (see below) developed by Brainstorm for Abraham’s Oasis

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct.”

- Jenni Roberts Associate Creative Director, Brainstorm

The Oasis

In a tiny village in the arid and often perilous region of Ethiopia is a refuge called Grace Village, which was featured on NOVA’s A Walk to Beautiful. It is one of several initiatives of Abraham’s Oasis, an organization focused on farming, health and childcare projects in Ethiopia.

At Grace Village, dispossessed women—women labeled social pariahs—find significance in raising abandoned or forgotten refugee children. It’s a symbiotic relationship that offers the children a nurturing and sustaining resource sorely lacking in their lives.

Karin van den Bosch, the driving force behind the village, is emphatic that these are not outcasts and this is no forgotten outpost; it is an Oasis. She doesn’t intend for the women and children who live there to simply survive; she wants them to thrive. But ensuring that happens is a challenge.

“The uniforms and identities Brainstorm provided help the youth ‘belong to a group,’ to be able to play a sport and forget about their problems for a while, giving these children hope and a way to turn their frustration and pain into joy.”

- Karin van den Bosch Abraham’s Oasis

A Hedge Against Uncertainty

Another childcare project of Abraham’s Oasis is a refugee camp, where they are protecting, clothing, feeding and educating nearly 700 minors who fled Eritrea without relatives. With 1,500 more on the way in the coming months, their budget is stretched thin despite funding from UN’s UNHCR agency.

Soccer, Cows and Schoolhouses

During a speaking engagement in the US, van den Bosch was asked whether the children of Grace Village might be rescued by adoption. She replied, “We do not export Ethiopia’s most valuable resource.”

When asked what Grace Village needed most, her reply was “Prayer.” Eventually she was cajoled into disclosing more tangible needs and their relative costs.

“The milk of a single cow currently meets the village’s needs, but two or three more cows would allow us to meet the ongoing operational costs of our schoolhouse facility,” she said. “That and uniforms for three village soccer teams at our refugee camp: Athletic, United and Oasis.”

Athletic. United. Oasis. Brainstorm’s identity designs for the new faces of Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams.

If a Thing’s Worth Doing

Brainstorm wanted to get involved. Our experience in sports branding and connections to soccer made designing logos and providing the teams’ soccer uniforms seem like the perfect first step.

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct,” said Jenni Roberts, Associate Creative Director at Brainstorm. “We felt like the Abraham’s Oasis refugee soccer teams deserved identities of the same caliber as our corporate clients. Brand identities either add to, or detract from, any organization’s brand equity value. Large or small, we want to do it right.”

A Measured Significance

Playing before an audience of villagers, goats and milking cows, the Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams measure their brand’s significance by the confident smiles of their players. How do you measure your brand’s significance?

For more information or contributions visit the Abraham’s Oasis contact page.

High production value printed Case Statement and architectural fly-through package developed by Brainstorm for Bryan College’s one-on-one campaign meetings (featured in Graphis).

Support the ask with well-designed materials that clearly explain the institution’s needs and the benefits that will be realized—both institutionally and personally.

A Capital Idea

It’s an exciting time—the feasibility studies are complete and pre-campaign gifts have been committed. Now you’re faced with the equally daunting task of managing a public capital campaign, one that inspires each of your varied constituent groups enough to convince them to contribute to help reach the institution’s end goal.

Like any marketing initiative, strategy and planning are critical.

Do I Know You?

Different audiences—think recent graduates and retirees, for instance—are inspired to action by different inputs. From functional presentation to cultural considerations and aesthetic, your content and appeal must be relevant to your audience.

It’s important to understand the psychographic as well as the demographic data. What interests and inspires them; where and how do they spend time; and in which technologies and mediums are you most likely to engage?

“Dreams. Discovery. Direction.” A short highlight video (visit the site)

Tailor your message and deliver it in a medium that’s familiar and comfortable to each audience whether it’s one-on-one meetings or direct phone calls, the traditional Case Statement, a community or microsite, an email campaign, direct mail, iPhone app or a campaign that integrates these components and others.

Inform and Inspire

Capital campaigns must convey value to the institution as well as a personal benefit or return on investment for the donor. Offering information about tax benefits for younger donors or estate planning and endowment giving for older prospects can creates a philanthropic, emotional and financial return for the donor.

Audience Appropriate

Brainstorm designed and developed the Dreams. Discovery. Direction. site for Anderson University’s $110M capital campaign. Utilizing an emotive storyline and tiered audience appeal, the site engages visitors with interactive features and rich media elements.

Highlights include videos from students, faculty, and notable alumni; and secure online giving with campaign updates, milestones and time lines. Anderson directs potential donors to the site and uses it as a presentation tool for in-person meetings.

The site debuted at the public capital campaign kick-off gala and metrics proved that nearly every gala attendee visited the site that very night. A major gift was received via the secure online giving area soon after.

Integrated Initiatives

A Dreams. Discovery. Direction. subsidiary campaign dubbed UMatter was developed to reach young alumni. It emphasizes participation over the amount of donation and presents an underlying, “This is your campaign too,” message aimed at engagement now, and inclusion in the future.

Look Like a Million Bucks

When you’re asking for millions or even billions of dollars, be sure to look the part. Support the ask with well-designed materials that clearly explain the institution’s needs and the benefits that will be realized—both institutionally and personally—from a successful campaign.

Bart Caylor Brainstorm Principal, serves on the Anderson University National Campaign Cabinet and is a strategic communications advisor to the institution.

“Let’s get small.” -Steve Martin

Get Smart, Get Small

While worldwide mobile phone sales slowed in early 2009, media-rich smart phone sales are on the rise both globally and in the United States.

In ever-increasing numbers, across a wide spectrum of demographics, people are plying the web primarily on mobile devices. If your site and digital strategies are not mobile capable and/or optimized to load properly - your brand, for many, may not exist.

“Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.” - Gartner

Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 269.1 million units in the Q1 of 2009 - an 8.6 per cent decrease from Q1 2008. However, according to Gartner, Inc., “Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.”

In three days Apple sold over a million iPhone 3G S smartphones and 6 million people downloaded the new iPhone OS 3.0 update after it released.

Add sales of the iTouch and other portable phone-less devices to these statistics and you have a significant emerging market for your brand messaging.

2008 Smart Phone Sales (US)†

† RCRWireless | .think Nov 2009

A Medium in Motion

Many early adopters are opting to invest in mobile applications first - desktop applications second. In fact iPhone Facebook application interfaces have been said to navigate better than Facebook’s own standard web version.

And mobile-based interactive media delivery is here to stay. Flash Lite, Adobe’s mobile-ready Flash player, is already deployed on over a billion mobile devices - with plug-in versions licensed to many popular mobile browsers and an Apple iPhone version rumored in the works.

Just this past week, at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference, Adobe demoed CS5–the next version of it’s widely popular creative suite of applications. Flash CS5 will soon offer customers the ability to export Flash-developed content as native iPhone applications to be distributed through the iTunes app store. Just one more reason why any excuse to avoid mobilizing your brand just won’t fly.

Small Interfaces, Big Variations

Whether developing a mobile app or formatting your current site for mobile delivery it’s important to account for a wide range of mobile screen dimensions to ensure proper readability.

Additionally browsers have greatly varying abilities. Modern smartphones like the iPhone and phones running Google Android have fully functional browsers - other smartphones, do not. As with any digital development testing is crucial. Online emulators can be helpful in assuring your media is suited for delivery vehicles - your audiences’ preferred mobile devices.

Mobile Watering Holes, Captive Audiences

If your customer, constituent, or product base is built heavily on affinity groups, or community, developing a smartphone application can prove particularly beneficial in terms of engagement and retention.

Developing a branded smartphone-ready application or tool, such as an Phone app, can help promote your brand messaging via promotion platforms such as AdMob (mobile ad medium), AdWhirl (mobile ad aggregator) and Mdotm (iPhone app promotion), help facilitate a mobile extension of your brand, messaging and campaigns - often to a new mobile-inclined user base.

Get a Move On

The confluence of exploding smartphone use, video, music and text sharing popularity, and the proliferation of every imaginable mobile game, tool and app means your audience can encounter your brand messaging or purchase your wares just about anywhere.

Assuming you are there to greet them.

Contact Brainstorm for more information on taking your brand mobile.

Image: Miss Karen

A Mark Left

I live in an urban environment with a bus stop near the front of my house. One morning, my neighbors and I were dismayed to awake to graffiti. Our bus stop had symbols painted on it, store front windows were etched, a residential fence defaced, and the light post marked.

“The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.”

-Richard R. Grant

While I don’t think anyone in the neighborhood was surprised that it happened, we were grossly disappointed. We all work hard to maintain our beautiful space, but someone with a different connection to our space worked hard to mark it as their own. How hard they worked is debatable but they made their mark.

Leaving a Mark

Our identity is hugely important to our success, whether we’re a small business, an individual or a gang. We all create an identity, intentional or not. Some of us leave a mark and some of us don’t. I learned something from the “un-identified” (in my world) gang. They have an identity that means something to their audience, probably their enemies. It means something to me too – there is never an appropriate time to push an identity on someone, or a community, if they don’t want it.

Likewise, how your identity is imposed upon and received in today’s social media communities is a critical component of any brand design and marketing strategy.

Consider yours carefully, seek good counsel and identify yourself properly.

Image: Robyn Gallagher

Savoir faire:
A polished sureness in social settings

Indelible or invisible?

You know the adage about first impressions. People are always making quick assessments of you or your brand based on how you look, what you say, and what you do. Eyebrows may raise, ears may perk up, or you may be completely ignored. Even a non-reaction is a reaction. Unless you’re surveying your audience on a regular basis, you may not even realize the impressions you’re making, or consider their impact, good or bad.

An impressive following

Think about how this applies on Twitter—how you form impressions and make snap judgments about who you do or don’t follow. It usually starts with them following you, or recommendations from those you trust. How often do you check out the Tweeter before you follow them—their content, name, URL, bio, and, yes, their background image?

Care enough to do a background check

A small online poll provided these nuggets of information about who checks out backgrounds:

• 50% of respondents said they view background pages often, 28% said sometimes, for a total of 78% who view background pages.

• 73% of respondents use a Twitter app such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, or HooteSuite that normally precludes them from viewing an individual’s Twitter background image.

• Based on the total number of respondents who said they view background pages often or sometimes, 75% leave an app to do so.

• The remainder, slightly more than 24%, view Tweets—and backgrounds—in web view mode.

One respondent’s comment underscores the numbers:

“I use Seesmic Desktop and occasionally Seesmic Web. Still prefer to look at Twitter Web when evaluating followers and potential follows.”

Although the sample size was small and the poll was simple, it underscores the importance of a web background as the first step to a strong online brand in Twitter. That brand is the first and sometimes only impression potential followers get. That split second impression could impact the next rung of your success, no matter how you personally define it.

Image: alainelorza