CASE STUDY

Eat. Learn. Play

Refreshing Eat. Learn. Play’s compelling brand to elevate their mission 

Challenge

Eat. Learn. Play. is an Oakland-based public charity dedicated to unleashing the amazing potential of every child. Founded in 2019 by four-time NBA champion and two-time MVP Stephen Curry and entrepreneur, host and two-time New York Times best-selling author Ayesha Curry, Eat. Learn. Play. launched with a focus on improving the lives of kids and families in Oakland, the Bay Area and across the country. Rooted in three of the most vital pillars for a healthy childhood—nutrition, education and physical activity — Eat. Learn. Play. works to ensure that every child in Oakland has access to the nutritious food they need to be healthy and thrive; resources to learn and love to read; and safe places and equitable opportunities to play. The organization has been on an amazing journey since their inception, creating meaningful impact for the community it serves. Nearing their four-year mark, they recognized the need to hone in and more effectively communicate the scope and scale of their work at the highest level—elevating their mission to tell a concise and compelling story about what makes them special, and their continued impact on the Oakland community.  

Solutions

To understand how similar organizations were talking about their work and missions, we underwent a deep immersion in the space. We also spoke with Eat. Learn. Play.’s stakeholders and staff to understand the organization’s impact to date and uncovered key themes that weren’t coming through in their current communications. To elevate these themes, we created a brand strategy that showcased the full scope of their mission to bring the uniqueness of Eat. Learn. Play.’s work to life. Then, to activate the refreshed strategy and drive content creation, we created a set of voice principles to guide their tone of voice and a set of key messages that could flex across primary audiences, such as donors and program partners. We included a range of updated content to demonstrate how this new voice and messaging could be activated across channels. We also developed a brand narrative, to tie together the strategy and verbal expression to tell the story of who Eat. Learn. Play is and highlight the meaningful work they are doing across the Oakland community.   

Using the brand strategy as a foundation, we then created a new visual system including a refreshed logo design and color palette. Eat. Learn. Play relaunched their brand and mission in 2023, as part of that, we produced a brand anthem video meant to not only inform and educate audiences, but also to build excitement about the refreshed mission and strategy. The video was produced to be used for donor presentations and eventually for their refreshed website.   

Results

The overall brand refresh and anthem video positions Eat. Learn. Play for their future growth, but also helps them deliver on their commitment to change the school experience for a generation of Oakland students. Across Eat. Learn. Play social media channels, the brand anthem video received over 4 million total impressions. Around the time of the video launch, Eat. Learn. Play announced their enhanced strategic vision and goal to raise $50 million in additional educational support and resources for students in Oakland by end of the 2026 school year.  

“We are so grateful for the work the Prophet team created for Eat. Learn. Play. They approached the overall project with an impressive level of passion, joy, care, and professionalism. Our brand narrative, voice, messaging, and visuals are much stronger now than when we started this work together. Their strategic and thoughtful approach helped to unlock so many invaluable insights for Eat. Learn. Play. I can’t recommend the Prophet team highly enough.”  

Chris Helfrich
Chief Executive Officer
Eat. Learn. Play.   

CASE STUDY

SafePlace International

Elevating the story of an organization on the ground with the global LGBTQI+ community 

Challenge

The LGBTQI+ community fights for space in this world. For a global community of queer persons, the simple act of living puts them at risk, and often causes them to flee their homelands in search of safety. SafePlace International is an organization dedicated to centering and amplifying the voices of LGBTQI+ people around the world.

The core of SafePlace International’s work centers on equipping their community members to find their purpose and thrive in their new environments. From welcoming someone who was recently displaced to supporting them as their goals change, the organization starts with a foundation of safety and stability, working side-by-side with global and local partners to protect people who need it. From there, they look to the future with The Dream Academy, a 10-week intensive virtual course focusing on leadership development, socio-emotional learning, and job skill training. Led by members of the LGBTQI+ community and available in English and French, the Dream Academy connects participants to purpose, power, and the new possibilities they need to heal from individual and collective traumas. The Dream Academy has over 1000 alumni from 19 countries to date, and as it’s virtual, it can be accessed from anywhere that web support is available.  

The organization played a unique and vital role in the global LGBTQI+ community, but audiences didn’t always understand or internalize it. SafePlace needed a more comprehensive, clear, and cohesive way to express its mission to attract more supporters, and ultimately reach more people. Its new positioning had to be powerful and profound as well as easy to understand and share with a wide audience, from donors to partners to community members. Their team also needed a visual system that would bring this positioning to life. 

From this, we created a new brand purpose, “We believe happiness comes from being in the flow in all activities we do at home.” We then created brand principles, tone of voice, and the tagline “Work. Flow. Home” to bring the brand to life in a unique and distinctive way against other competitors. The name “Beflo” came out of the idea of being “in the flow” when everything you do works seamlessly and effortlessly.  

Beflo began developing a desk prototype, combining motorized height-adjustable settings with modular tech accessories around cable management, charging features and other productivity tools. As part of that, we worked with them to create brand principles based on their new purpose that would have implications for their product design.

The visual identity also used the “flow” concept to create a simple and ergonomic-looking logotype with rounded letterforms and the curved ligature between the “f” and “l” that mimicked the side profile of the curve on the desk’s legs.

Solution

We started by analyzing the communications and visual systems of SafePlace International as well as peer and aspirational organizations and immersing ourselves in the organization’s strategies and materials.

Through collaborative workshops across three continents and interviews with several stakeholders, we found there was an opportunity for their mission to express not only the work SafePlace does, but also why it is so vital: expressing the lived realities of displaced LGBTQI+ persons as well as the broader implications and transformative impact these community members can have when in positions of leadership and influence.  

We also learned their original strategic pillars were only telling part of their story. So, we worked to evolve these pillars and put more context around what SafePlace International does—and what community members can expect as a result. We wanted to keep the impact and memorability of the original pillars, as well as describe the full journey: Reach, Protect, Connect, Invest.  

Bringing all of these elements together, we wrote an emotive narrative that acts as the foundation of articulating the strategy to community members, donors, and partners, and can be used in fundraising materials, video scripts, and anywhere they are trying to drive understanding of who they are and what they stand for.  

From there, we shifted our attention to the visual system. We began with a key question: do we modernize their existing rainbow tree logo, which was recognizable and held a lot of affinity? Or do we introduce a new symbol? We explored 20 concepts that ranged from minor modifications to their existing logo to bolder designs that could cut through the noise with simplicity and strong graphic elements.   

Results

The brand concept, name, visual identity and product design successfully came to market in 2023. The branding was recognized in the 2021 Transform Awards as the Best Visual Identity in Technology, Media and Telecommunications. 

Results

The SafePlace International team launched its bold new mission, story, and visual identity at a fundraiser in Prophet’s San Francisco office in October 2023 as well as on the organization’s newly re-designed website.  

A Story on a Mission: The Heart of the Strategy 

We worked closely with the SafePlace International team to co-create mission and belief statements that could celebrate the diversity, nuances, and humanity of their community members, balancing the urgency of the organization’s work with its inherent optimistic and inspiring view of the world.

The Rainbow Connection: A Bold, New Logo 

Ultimately, we landed on an abstracted rainbow, keeping the connection to a meaningful symbol embedded in their previous logo, while evoking a canopy, or safe place, through its shape. The design system celebrates the rainbow motif–one whose asymmetrical arcs illustrate the community’s intersectionality and SafePlace’s commitment to inclusivity. It is optimistic, simple, and flexible, while honoring the visual language of the LGBTQI+ community. 

“I’ve been fortunate to work with Prophet several times over my career as a global Chief Marketing Officer, but this was my first engagement with the pro bono practice, Prophet Impact. It’s an intense sprint, but one that always left me feeling like a valued client and partner. We have tested the new brand identity and voice with donors, influencers, community members and board members to name a few stakeholders and the feedback is positive and jubilant all around—and we are just getting started. Thank you again, Prophet! “

Maggie Lower
Board Chair
SafePlace International

“Going through this process with Prophet was an absolute delight and nothing short of transformational. They’ve not only provided us with a clean, beautiful new brand identity that reflects our warmth and professionalism, but also helped us refine the way that we communicate our layered and often complex work to the outside world. We’re so grateful and could not be happier with the results!“

Rachael LeClear
Executive Director
SafePlace International

CASE STUDY

St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Growing a donor base to help homeless women rebuild their lives

Challenge

Homelessness in the U.K. is on the rise as the cost of living crisis pushes more people onto the streets. Homeless women – often fleeing violence – are even more vulnerable on the street. St. Martin-in-the-Fields, a London-based charity, started the ambitious 18 Keys project to raise £1.8 million to re-develop a hostel in London to provide stable accommodation and services to help homeless women rebuild their lives.

To make this initiative a success, 18 Keys needed to reduce its dependence on institutional contributions and grow its donor base. The project needed a distinctive fundraising campaign strategy to expand its reach and mobilize new donors.

Solutions

Prophet started by analyzing the communications of other charities, isolating the best practices of the most successful fundraisers. With those insights, we interviewed current and potential donors to better understand why, when and how they donate and their perceptions about the explosion of homelessness in London. Then we huddled with the 18 Keys team, ideating new audience segments and key messages for each group. And we revisited the team’s approach to collecting testimonies, knowing that real women telling their stories will have more impact than any other form of marketing.

We distilled those diverse findings into a comprehensive new strategy. That included tone-of-voice principles and vital messages they could use going forward. We helped prioritize the highest-impact channels where they could achieve maximum ROI, and developed tools for creating future content.

Results

Armed with the thinking and tools to enable them to compete with the larger charities, the 18 Keys team has been using Prophet’s guidelines to create distinctive and motivating fundraising campaign messages that compassionately illuminate the plight of women struggling with long-term homelessness. In March 2023, the project surpassed its £500,000 donation target by 6%, keeping it on track to hit £1.8 million by the end of the year.

“This is revelatory. Such a clear and insightful strategy with a weight of detail we simply would not have had access to without your help.”

Caroline Muir
Major Gift Fundraiser at St Martin-in-the-Fields Trust

CASE STUDY

Cool Earth 

Developing a diversity, equity and inclusion playbook to unite employees around the world  

Challenge

Cool Earth, a UK rainforest conservation charity, needed to grow faster. It wanted to achieve that growth by increasing donations and working more effectively as a team. An inherently diverse organization, with active initiatives ranging from Peru to Papua New Guinea, it hoped to increase inclusion and connection to drive impact across its geographies.  

Solutions

We started with stakeholder interviews at all organizational levels, and in all regions. Those led to collaborative working sessions, where we helped co-create a revised set of corporate values and behaviors. With those clarified values, the team developed a new plan for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to unite employees around the world. And to help these new efforts take hold faster, we developed signature DEI experiences, such as a buddy system. Each employee now has a go-to support person, which improves engagement and increases communication and connection between local teams. 

Results

Cool Earth is putting this playbook and change roadmap to work, including initiatives to provide equal opportunities and localized and empowered leadership. With knowledge-sharing forums, DEI education policies, communication plans and processes to track employee engagement, it’s poised for faster growth. That means it can have more impact where it matters most: protecting the world’s rainforests and the indigenous people who live there. 

CASE STUDY

Resilience Education

Harnessing brand experience to help formerly incarcerated people

Challenge

Resilience Education is a nonprofit organization that aims to stop incarceration cycles by improving employment outcomes and re-entry success through high-quality business education. Since 2011, the organization has graduated 500+ individuals from five correctional facilities across New York and Virginia, with early data revealing that 93% of program graduates stay out of prison for at least three years.  

The nonprofit aspired to expand its program nationwide and build a new digital platform to support formerly incarcerated people on their reentry journeys. To achieve these long-term aspirations, the organization enlisted Prophet to help it develop an overarching brand strategy that codified a new vision for the organization and rethink the brand positioning, expression and onboarding experience for its new digital platform.  

Solutions

Over the course of several pro-bono projects, Prophet developed a holistic understanding of Resilience Education’s current state and aspirational trajectory. Prophet first interviewed Resilience Education employees, program students and graduates. The insights from these interviews were used to identify opportunities to craft a brand positioning framework highlighting the nonprofit’s purpose and vision.  

After establishing the overarching brand structure and strategy, the team shifted its focus to optimizing the organization’s digital platform experience. Prophet’s team hosted a hackathon with the nonprofit to understand how it acquires and onboards mentors and mentees for its programming. The insights gathered helped the team define an optimized user journey for both audiences in their digital platform. Finally, in collaboration with verbal and design teams, Prophet crafted a refreshed brand positioning for the digital platform accompanied by refocused messaging, voice, and a reconceptualized visual identity. 

Results

The new organization-wide brand structure defined how the nonprofit’s digital and post-release initiatives work in relation to the in-facility programming. In addition, the ideation of the optimized user experience and journey for both mentors and mentees not only influenced the organization’s digital platform but was also the basis for the organization’s mentorship program development.   

Follow-up interviews of formerly incarcerated users revealed how empowering their one-on-one mentorship relationships have been for their reentry journeys. Resilience Education is continuously refining the program to maximize participants’ benefits and will be launching its third pilot in early 2023.    

With a robust new positioning framework, design concept and verbal identity guiding the digital platform, Resilience Education has the brand structure and strategy to support its nationwide growth goals and better serve its formerly incarcerated users’ needs. 

Through Prophet’s pro-bono program, Propheteers lend their expertise to a select group of nonprofits, helping them achieve remarkable results. If you or a nonprofit you know is interested in working with us, reach out today.  

Client Testimonial

“We couldn’t do what we’re trying to accomplish – bringing the highest quality business education and professional support to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students – without Prophet’s dedication and insights!”

Tierney Fairchild
Executive Director and Cofounder

CASE STUDY

GAINS

Inspiring the next generation of girls with a new messaging strategy

Challenge

Though more women than ever are graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, men make up most of the workforce. This is because many young girls do not pursue a career in STEM, they have more barriers to getting there, they’re traditionally offered less encouragement and they have fewer female role models.

Girls Advancing in STEM (GAINS) Initiative is a nonprofit on a mission to break down barriers by empowering high school girls to envision, prepare for and pursue academic and professional futures in STEM. GAINS’ clubs and conferences tackle this head-on by helping students discover STEM topics and professions, connect with other like-minded girls and learn from industry professionals. To further its mission and expand its impact, GAINS needed a compelling messaging strategy that would resonate with a wide audience to grow its membership and clubs around the country.

Solutions

Drawing insights from a series of qualitative interviews with students and volunteers, we collaborated with the GAINS leadership team to define a new brand strategy framework for the organization. Prophet’s consultants added substantive detail to the framework—developing the context statement, brand promise and overarching theme, which formed the foundation of the work. 

Once these elements were in place, our team of strategists and verbal branding experts built out robust messaging guidelines to reinforce the core components of this newly defined strategy. We created three supporting messaging themes to spotlight the community, learning opportunities and networking benefits of GAINS. Through a rigorous creative process, we codified messaging guidelines to help bring the new strategy to life. The guidelines included sample words and phrases for each theme, guidance on when to leverage each theme and how to flex them by audience (current and prospective students, teachers and volunteers) and tips on how to ensure a consistent tone of voice across all copy.  

Results

The GAINS team has used this messaging across its website, social media channels and marketing materials to target current and prospective students, teachers and volunteers – helping the organization consistently grow its following. In addition, Prophet’s work has helped the organization communicate its mission when applying for grants and seeking partnerships with schools and employers.  

Testimonial

“The whole Prophet team listened really well to everything, caught a lot of the nuance and was able to reflect it back as they structured our messaging materials. Having this all laid out has truly helped me refine the message and maintain consistency in our communications.”

Antoinette Decker
Director, Creator

CASE STUDY

Change Please

Designing an experience strategy to help a nonprofit enable its global expansion

Challenge

Change Please is a coffee company that supports individuals that are homeless by hiring and training them to become baristas. The charity provides the living wage, housing and therapy and devotes 100% of the profits to ending homelessness.​ 

The brand is already well-established in the U.K., with close to 60 coffee stores and plans on expanding into multiple markets as the number of trained and employed baristas continues to grow. Amid plans for global expansion, the charity was intent on finding the best path to uncommon growth at a pivotal moment. 

It needed help creating design assets that would drive the brand forward and an experience strategy that is unique and consistent. 

Solutions

Prophet and Change Please used co-creation workshops to brainstorm and collaborate on ways the charity could bring its unique heritage to life, using fun and informal visual story representations. 

We focused on new approaches for core journey phases for digital and offline touchpoints. This included a unique unboxing experience to help customers learn about the mission at home. We also created an iconographic narrative of the brand story using a tangible and engaging journey map to use in its cafes. 

Our holistic playbook includes 40 concepts to improve the overall brand and experience. We focused primarily on three core areas: design updates and advice, social media guidance and experience ideation.  

Results

Change Please is testing these new experiences in stores and across digital touchpoints. It is rolling out the design assets in cafes across the U.K., as well as incorporating Prophet’s concepts into global growth efforts. Most importantly, people are learning more about this ambitious organization wherever they drink their coffee.  

Through Prophet’s pro-bono program, Propheteers lend their expertise to a select group of nonprofits, helping them achieve remarkable results. If you or a nonprofit you know is interested in working with us, reach out today.

CASE STUDY

ReachOut

Creating a new messaging strategy and design aesthetic to help a nonprofit achieve its mission

Challenge

ReachOut is a charity that connects young people from disadvantaged backgrounds with volunteer mentors. Through one-on-one support sessions, these young individuals are provided the opportunity to improve academic skills and expand their aspirations. It also benefits mentors by raising awareness of social inequities. ReachOut struggled with low brand awareness, which hindered funding efforts and mentor recruiting. Messaging and communication strategies weren’t sharp enough and the charity lacked a comprehensive roadmap for reaching mentors, donors and corporate partners.   

Solutions

Prophet worked with ReachOut to dig deeper into all three audience groups, identifying core issues and developing specific goals. On weekly coaching calls, we tracked progress and worked closely with ReachOut’s devoted team to co-create messaging that better articulates what the charity stands for. We also ensured that the values were clearly communicated in messages tailored to each audience.  

Overall, we completed 59 projects and helped ReachOut create inspirational design assets that brought key brand values to life in a tangible, more human way. These assets focus on multiple engagement touchpoints including Instagram, donor and mentor recruitment communications and in-person recruitment events. 

Results

ReachOut’s new design tools and applications are already increasing the charity’s impact on social media channels. As the number of mentors continues to grow, the group has already provided close to 17,000 hours of valuable one-to-one interventions and 35 workplace visits to boost corporate involvement. And with an additional 71 career talks, the organization is finding new ways to reach the people it can benefit most.  

ReachOut’s inspirational messages are contagious, and Prophet is thrilled to say that we’re continuing our work with this motivating organization. We are using our new relationship as a corporate partner to further Prophet’s broader goals of greater diversity and inclusion. In partnering with ReachOut, we hope to hire more individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds in our own internship program, connecting with those who wouldn’t otherwise have access or awareness of the professional services industry. We are also hosting work experience visits, inviting ReachOut participants to learn about a day in the life of a consultant. 

ReachOut isn’t just changing the lives of young people. It’s also benefitting the mentors including us, Prophet employees as we strive to make a lasting difference in these individuals’ lives.

Through Prophet’s pro-bono program, Propheteers lend their expertise to a select group of nonprofits, helping them achieve remarkable results. If you or a nonprofit you know is interested in working with us, reach out today.

CASE STUDY

TRAFFIC

Illuminating Vietnam’s complex wildlife trade chain to drive sustainability.

Challenge

TRAFFIC is a leading global non-governmental organization that focuses on trade in wild animals and plants in the context of both biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

With growing concerns of potential disease transmission from wild animals to humans in trade, TRAFFIC wanted to map the key nodes and understand potential disease transmission risks across the complexities of wildlife trade chains in Vietnam. After analyzing the trade chain structure, TRAFFIC determined the actors and processes that would help it identify potential interventions. These included social and behavioral change strategies to increase the safety and sustainability of wildlife product supply and consumption in the country.

Solution

Prophet helped TRAFFIC define and analyze the wildlife trade chain in Vietnam.

Based on qualitative expert interviews and secondary research, we defined and visualized a clear and simple wildlife trade chain that illustrates the key nodes, actors and activities across the entire trade from sourcing to consumption of wild animal species in Vietnam (including pangolins, bats, rats, macaques and civets).

Next, we evaluated the potential risks of direct disease transmission to humans. This helped us to prioritize key nodes that require targeted intervention to mitigate risks at various human-animal interfaces.

Leveraging qualitative expert interviews and best practice research, we further assessed and prioritized potential intervention opportunities. We identified quick wins or longer-term investments that have a significant impact on safe and sustainable wildlife product supply and consumption in Vietnam. These included greater efforts to monitor and inform market sellers, improving enforcement of laws and penalties on wildlife trade and transportation, and enhancing education and outreach efforts targeting young people in both urban and rural areas.

Results

The wildlife trade chain analysis is now an instrumental communication tool that enables TRAFFIC to better engage key local and national government, inter-governmental and non-profit organization stakeholders on how to develop and target mitigation strategies for potential disease risks across Vietnam’s wildlife trade chain.

This work also serves as an important springboard for stronger inter-agency collaboration efforts on public health, animal/wildlife health and behavioral change. TRAFFIC is well-positioned to drive further refinement of the joint research with Prophet, guiding practical actions to strengthen the safety and sustainability of wild animal trade in Vietnam and adapting any successes to other national contexts in the broader Asia-Pacific region and globally.

“Working with Prophet has enabled TRAFFIC to visualize our wildlife trade work in Vietnam in a new way,” says James Campton, Project Leader, Wildlife TRAPS of TRAFFIC. “This rapid-research and analysis approach to expert elicitation can help us work more strategically to identify priorities for action and likelihood of impact. The concise summaries and clear infographics created by Prophet give us a model to better share our findings and develop mutual understanding with a range of partners across government, international agencies, private sector and civil society.”

“Prophet’s rapid-research and analysis approach to expert elicitation can help us work more strategically to identify priorities for action and likelihood of impact.”

James Compton
Project Leader, Wildlife TRAPS

Through Prophet’s pro-bono program, pro-bono program Propheteers lend their expertise to a select group of nonprofits, helping them achieve remarkable results. If you or a nonprofit you know is interested in working with us, reach out today.

CASE STUDY

Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano

Enhancing Digital Communications in the Fight To End Hunger

Challenge

Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano’s mission is “Leading the fight to end hunger, in partnership with our community and in service of our neighbors in need.”  To do so, they distribute food directly to low-income people at community sites and make food available for other nonprofit organizations serving the ill, needy and infants. This team distributed 40 million pounds of food between March 2020 and February 2021.

Food Bank asked us to help with its newsletter communication. The original printed newsletter was titled “Bread Connection” and dated back to the early 90s. Though minor layout changes were made through the years, the digital newsletter had an outdated layout with too much text and no audience focus. Additionally, articles were comprised of a too wide range of content including event updates, program statistics and stories about the brand’s service.

Solutions

Prophet helped Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano define a targeted messaging approach, a topic framework and target audience for the print newsletter. After desk research and gathering employee feedback, the new title “At the Table” was selected. It reflects the coming together of families to share stories and inviting the donor to have “a place at the table” while staying connected to what’s happening.

The design of the printed newsletter was modernized to resemble a magazine’s balance between photos and white space. The digital newsletter audience was defined with help of a persona– Amy, a mom who wanted a hopeful, actionable, engaging email that could be applied to her life hassle-free. The digital issue was rebranded as “Refresh” and was given a design rework and new functionality (mobile responsiveness).

Results

Today, Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano sends its newsletters to donors who have given any gift within last three years as well as volunteers who have served hours within last two years. With a clearer focus, the Food Bank team found it easier to create purposeful, written content an impactful newsletter when developing each newsletter.

It saw an increase of about $3,000 in donations directly related to the printed newsletter in the first year, trackable from paper remit envelopes in each edition.

Its digital newsletter saw 82% of their active list, which currently has 22,395 subscribers, open at least one newsletter in the past year.

“Prophet’s rework of our newsletters was a gamechanger in our offline and online communication with donors and volunteers.”

Rachel Braver
Community Marketing Manager

Impact

3k

uplift in dollars donated via print newsletter

82%

open rate for email newsletter in past year

CASE STUDY

The Wharton Center

Defining brand purpose for a performing arts center

Challenge

The Wharton Center at Michigan State University (MSU) is an important asset to the Lansing community. While its well-known for providing entertainment, its purpose is elevated by its support for the performing arts in the local community. The organization brings a unique spirit to Lansing but has recently struggled to demonstrate value to its constituents. While embarking on new programs poised to improve engagement and relevance within MSU, The Wharton Center found that its brand lacked focus – it needed to redefine its role at MSU and within the greater community.

Solutions

The Wharton Center looked to Prophet to help define its purpose and better position it within the extended local community. The Prophet team found that the brand’s purpose and promise were rooted in its core beliefs and reason for existing: to inspire the mind and move the soul by sharing stories, celebrating differences and creating a community through performance and education.

To demonstrate its newly discovered and defined purpose through its visual assets and media, Prophet created a new visual identity for the brand and an implementation plan. The brand evolution focused on the concept of putting “Art at the Center” – it reflects both the variety and dimensionality of the performing arts by using a dynamic logotype. Prophet also introduced representational shapes to add a unique flavor to the graphic system. These shapes represent that performing arts are always alive, moving and evolving through music, dance and variety.

Results

The revitalized brand purpose and visual identity helped The Wharton Center define and express its role within the MSU community. Each year, the Center impacts the lives of more than 30,000 young people, to help them find courage, foster boldness and embrace diverse perspectives. The organization is committed to shaping the world through performing arts and arts education; and sharing stories of its community–of dreams, heartbreaks, struggles and triumphs– and heritage for future generations.

This work received a gold award for key art and a bronze award for print collateral at the 2019 International Design Awards.

CASE STUDY

Equality California

Helping a civil rights organization evolve

Challenge

Equality California had achieved major state policy victories but faced a fraught national political climate and persistent disparities in health and well-being. The organization needed to reframe its ongoing mission for California’s LGBTQ community, and beyond.

Solutions

Prophet helped Equality California think through fundamental questions about its purpose and brand story, helping the organization think about the strategic considerations behind ambitions such as broadening beyond California or doubling down on intersectional advocacy.

Leveraging input from a rigorous qualitative and quantitative research process, Prophet developed a 5-year plan to transform the brand. This strategy laid the groundwork for the new Equality California brand to come to life physically and digitally, through new brand identity, tagline, messaging and mission statement.

Results

Equality California’s refreshed strategy, brand identity and brand assets launched to great celebration. Its new direction set the organization on a path to become an even more inclusive, disruptive and enduring agent of change for years to come.

Impact

40%

increase in monthly Twitter impressions

27k

new members since the rebrand

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