Mekanic

The business landscape in Northern Virginia is shifting dramatically with the announcement of Amazon’s HQ2 and Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus. The Alexandria Chamber of Commerce wanted to attract new members and serve as an advocate for all businesses operating in the area. The primary goal was to re-position the Chamber as a forward-thinking, sophisticated organization that welcomes innovators and champions pro-business policies. They adopted a new name, The Chamber ALX, and a new brand story and visual identity. The Chamber wanted its new brand to suit both global organizations with a presence in Alexandria and unique small businesses that give the city its character. To spark excitement about the launch, the new brand was unveiled in a video at the Chamber’s Annual Meeting. The brand system is being applied to each of the Chamber’s channels: a new website, social media, member features, printed and digital marketing collateral, and events.

The LOR Foundation needed an on-the-ground branded experience to facilitate a community listening project for rural communities. The “My Kind of Livable” campaign is intended to be a meaningful conversation starter for in-person events, focused on gathering the perspectives of rural community residents, civic leaders, nonprofit employees, and more to learn about what “livability” means to them and how LOR’s partnerships with those communities can support livability. In addition to campaign strategy and development, Mekanic designed custom marketing collateral to support a community listening events with giveaways like carabiners, mugs, notebooks, and other swag items to help engage audiences in a conversation. My Kind of Livable is designed for efficient execution and ongoing use at conferences and events across the country.

As ASCP celebrated its 50th anniversary, it looked for a new way to present its brand that matches the value it delivers to its membership. ASCP develops the role of the senior care pharmacist—a dynamic, entrepreneurial, changing profession that is expanding and innovating as the population ages. ASCP wanted to shed the stigma around working with older adults and embrace a new aesthetic that showcases the commitment its members bring to the profession. The new brand represents the many practice settings in which senior care pharmacists make a difference in the lives of their patients, recognizing that there are areas of unity and also uniqueness. The mark is an abstract representation of a butterfly, a symbol of metamorphosis and taking flight. Mekanic led ASCP through a discovery, strategy and creative phases to develop a cohesive visual identity that could flex to meet the needs of various stakeholders: members, Congress and the ASCP Foundation.

The U.S. Apple Association (USApple) unites, advocates for, and supports the entire apple industry in the United States—including growers, packers, shippers, marketers, and other industry suppliers. Over the last two years, USApple has evolved its strategic focus to prioritize member engagement and advocacy, rather than trying to communicate to a general audience. In 2019, Mekanic supported USApple’s brand evolution in many strategically pivotal ways. First, Mekanic developed a refreshed visual identity to position the association as a forward-thinking leader in the industry with a minimalist, symbolic brand mark. It evokes the image of an apple, seasons, cycles, and forward momentum—which stands for the groundswell of young members in the industry who are making an impact. Mekanic also designed and developed a new custom WordPress website for USApple, with a more user-friendly content management system for staff use. The front-end design builds on the new visual identity with updated photography, clean, minimalist aesthetics, and prioritization of important industry updates, advocacy news, and member features. Mekanic continues to partner with USApple on a range of campaigns, marketing collateral design, and other marketing support services.

Lightility acts as a consultative partner helping organizations benefit from financial and energy savings through sustainable lighting upgrades. After adopting a new name to reflect a maturing business, Lightility went through Mekanic’s Kamp process to redefine its value proposition, prioritize target audiences, and evolve its visual identity. Mekanic developed core brand messages to engage Lightility’s target audiences in distinct and meaningful ways, refined the existing logo, and designed a complementary visual identity system that can be applied consistently across all channels. To position Lightility as a comprehensive partner and problem solver operating at a national level, Mekanic developed compelling visuals and digestible messaging to help Lightility’s sales team communicate their results-driven process. Mekanic continues to support the development of Lightility’s maturing brand through the design and development of a new website.

Like many associations, NACAS had been experiencing challenges in recruiting and retaining members over a five-year period. It was struggling to attract Business Partners who bring revenue to the association, as a result, and conference attendance was shrinking. In addition, many members felt more affinity to their Regional association, meaning that there was less cross-pollination of networks and ideas at the national level, which is critical to NACAS’s overarching mission.

Meanwhile, NACAS was approaching its 50th anniversary and wanted to strengthen its brand presence and marketing strategy so that membership and the conference could become a more attractive opportunity for Institutions and Business Partners to forge new collaborative partnerships that benefit students.

Over the past three years, its continued success and marketing and design variations on the C3X theme continued to attract Institutional Members and Business Partners alike.

The National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA) engaged Mekanic to modernize its brand ecosystem to improve engagement with current and prospective members. As the highly-regarded technical support leader for all professionals working within the concrete masonry industry celebrated its 100th anniversary, NCMA needed to forge an innovative new path to evolve its digital presence and improve access to valuable resources for members. First, Mekanic led NCMA through a brand transformation and developed new core brand messaging, an updated visual identity, and a range of versatile assets to bring the brand to life—including a built-from-scratch geometric grotesque sans serif font for the new brand mark. This font is the cornerstone of the evolved NCMA brand system. Then, Mekanic designed and developed a unique web experience that reflects NCMA’s technical leadership with an intuitive and user-focused platform that supports existing online revenue-generating capabilities. The new web platform prioritizes the mobile experience, which is critical for NCMA members who need to access resources and reference materials efficiently while working remotely at various project sites. Mekanic also ensured that the revenue-generating capability of NCMA’s technical resource center would be preserved and deliver increased value to members. The website’s design references masonry with stacked block shapes, and the aesthetic is ideal for attracting more emerging professional members and allied professionals—like architects—who can learn about the benefits of using resilient and beautiful concrete masonry systems in their work.

When the Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the Lung Cancer Alliance joined forces to become the largest organization dedicated to serving the lung cancer community, they enlisted Mekanic to build a new brand from the inside out. The two organizations from opposite coasts of the United States each had their own established strategic partners, donor panels, health care providers, researchers, advocates, and networks of loyal patients that have operated independently for three decades. Six months before the merger and brand launch, the two teams gathered for a two-day workshop, where Mekanic led them through visioning exercises to help begin ideating how the new brand would be positioned, the story it would tell, and how it would come to life. After exploring hundreds of naming conventions, GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer was selected with the complementary tagline: “Empower Everyone. Ignore No One.” The new visual identity gives the organization a next-gen appeal to bring more public attention to the lack of funding, the stigma that surrounds the disease, and the new hope that breakthrough research is bringing to the lung cancer community.

We built a brand to showcase a business owner’s vision and commitment. As a new interior design firm, Determined by Design had a strong story to share. The owner’s pathway to the profession is unique, emotional and has experiential elements many people can relate to. She had already shown great investment in the design community through servant leadership – and was demonstrating the same level of investment in emerging D.C. area neighborhoods as well. We have partnered with the firm since its opening year, to develop a striking visual identity system that resonates with others in the design industry.

Over time, the firm has refined its niche focus, built solid partnerships with housing developers and contractors, earned an esteemed reputation for performance and garnered attention for a distinct point of view. This maturation influenced a shift in the brand messaging from a focus on the firm’s design process to one that highlights its purpose. With Determined by Design, this work led to a restructure of the website to include additional features that better highlighted the owner’s thought leadership.