We take pride in being active in the Central MN communities where we live, work, and spend our free time. Both Emily and I volunteer with various organizations, sit on local boards and committees, and attend events that support the people, businesses, and initiatives that are meaningful to us. Kayla Keenan from INDY reached out after a friend recommended her to us, and we’re thrilled to partner with The INDY Foundation as a client.

INDY & Greenline Marketing

The INDY Foundation is just over five years old, and the work they’re doing for Minnesotans is incredibly inspiring. INDY - which stands for I’m Not Done Yet - is a 501c3 supporting cancer warriors and their families all over the state. Kayla started INDY after her late husband, Kyle Strand, Co-founder of INDY, lost his battle with cancer; his dying wish was to help others who are fighting cancer themselves. “I’m not done yet” - a direct quote from Kyle - was the inspiration for their name. Each month INDY has two “Cancer Warriors” - one 18+ and one under 18 - who they help with financial support as well as resources, a community of support, love, and faith. What they’re doing is nothing short of amazing, and they continue to make a difference in the lives of so many people.

Kayla came to Greenline Marketing in 2022 needing assistance with a variety of marketing elements. After sitting down and learning more about INDY, the team, goals, resources, and their budget we determined that the best place to start was with the brand. They were looking to bring consistency throughout their brand, but more importantly, help people understand what their organization does. Kayla shared that it wasn’t until someone looked them up or was told Kyle’s story that they understood what INDY was all about. Clarity and consistency of the brand was our main focus. Seeing the work they started helped us lay a foundation to polish and document their brand assets in a way that set them up for long-term success and efficiency - and gave them a look and feel with the strength of their organization and their mission.

Often entrepreneurs or start-ups develop their brand themselves or with a small group of volunteers, friends, or supporters. They put together the basics; a name, logo, tagline - enough to get things started. The rest of the brand assets come along the way as they are needed – a color palette for graphics or a website, fonts for printed material, icons for social media, visual elements for an event flyer … you get the idea. And this is exactly what happened to INDY. As they grew they realized they also needed to mature and relook at their brand elements to bring clarity - of who they are and clarity on what and how to use brand elements and consistency.

Elements of a Great Brand

A brand is incredibly important to any organization or business. It’s not just a logo. It’s everything. It’s the perception and reputation associated with your organization – it’s the name, the logo, the typography, the colors, the messaging, the values, the product, and the service experience. All of those things combined should influence the emotional connection someone has to your organization. Branding should be ubiquitous, strategic, and consistent - not only in the look and feel but also in how people experience the products and services.

Having a strong brand does a few things:

1. Improves Recognition And Awareness: A brand is the thing that people think of immediately when they think of you. It’s an underlying theme to how people perceive your offerings.
2. Creates Uniqueness: The brand should set you apart from your competitors and create compelling motivation for your audience to choose you over them.
3. Creates Trust: A well-crafted brand immediately connects in a meaningful way to an organization’s audience. By creating a relevant and impactful brand, the audience immediately sees the organization as more legitimate and worthy of trust.
4. Supports Marketing & Sales Efforts: The brand should not only drive the messaging and appearance of the advertising, but it should drive the entire business. It should embody how employees perform, the services and products provided, and the ultimate direction and future of the organization.

With brand updates, we carefully audit existing assets to ensure a powerful and positive perception is visibly communicated through consistent visuals and messaging. This will have a ripple effect on all marketing efforts.

Executing a Brand Update: Our Process

After kickoff conversations with Kayla and the INDY team, we realized their brand didn’t just need a few updates here and there, but an evolution of their brand. We took hand-drawn elements from the initial launch of INDY and helped create a comprehensive brand - logo, color set, font application, textures, etc. - to polish and illustrate who INDY is. We worked with INDY to keep the name and meaning behind the original assets so the passion and emotion behind the brand remained. The logo is Kayla’s handwriting and the ribbon is an agnostic symbol inclusive of all forms of cancer.

One of the challenges we realized at the onset is that because INDY is propelled by an incredible group of Board Members and community volunteers, there have been many people who have touched, worked on, used, and interacted with the brand as they’ve grown and developed. While many hands make light work for non-profit organizations like INDY, over time the visual elements became inconsistent and diluted. We set out to clean up visual assets and lay the foundation for consistent visuals by creating a brand guide that is easily interpreted and applied, so anyone who is part of their team follows the same standards and graphic use when representing INDY.

• Brand Asset Assessment: We reviewed and audited both internal (messaging guide, brand guide, etc,) and external (social media, printed materials, website, etc.) marketing materials for the use and implementation of INDY’s branding elements including logos, graphics, colors, fonts, messages, etc. We then identified gaps within the use and application of the elements, suggested brand assets we felt were missing, and provided guidance on how to simplify and amplify the brand as a whole.
  
  
• Brand Exploration & Recommendations: At this stage, we took a deep dive to look at the use and application of INDY’s brand elements. From here we were able to provide recommendations to clean up and elevate the brand’s look, feel, and messaging. Then, we conceptualized, created, and updated brand assets based on our findings in the audit. This included design updates like logo variations and hierarchy, primary and secondary color palettes and their applications, as well as taglines, messaging, and secondary messages.
  
  
• Brand Guide Creation: To create the updated brand guide, we compiled the approved brand assets with established rules for the use of elements into a single document that could serve as a reference for the INDY team. We provided the completed guide for INDY to share with stakeholders and internally with those who create elements for  INDY. The last piece of this process was also to update INDY’s working files so that as the brand evolves, there is consistency in the visual elements.

• Brand Asset Library: With INDY’s brand guide established, updated, and documented, we built out the branded creative assets INDY needs for its digital marketing efforts. The goal was to create a toolbox of assets INDY can use with reference and iterate strategy. When utilized properly, INDY’s marketing and communications will now have a unified look, feel, and sound - helping to amplify INDY’s brand.
  
  

"From the outset, Greenline Marketing demonstrated a deep commitment to understanding our organization's goals and tailoring their strategies to meet our unique needs. Their team exhibited a high level of professionalism, expertise, and creativity, making them a valuable partner in our journey towards success." -Kayla Keenan, Co-Founder

As a result, INDY now has a complete brand guide to be used as the directional source for future marketing efforts including but not limited to website creation, social media content, event promotional materials, mailers, and more. With the brand guide established, INDY’s marketing and communication efforts will have a unified look, feel, and sound - helping to amplify their brand and the incredible work they’re doing for fellow Minnesotans.