By Rachel Peabody, AAEA Association Comms SIG Co-Chair
As a communicator who has recently navigated the exciting, but sometimes choppy, waters of an association rebrand, I can tell you that the whole exercise was a much-needed exercise in reputation management.
We talk a lot about membership at associations and how to best resonate with our target audience. But when you realize your old brand and your old voice doesn’t match the new culture or perspective of your members? Well, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and take a hard look at how you’re managing your reputation with your most important audience.
Particularly for an association like mine, the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) checkoff and membership programs and the 43,000 Illinois soybean farmers that we serve, knew back in 2020 that our organization needed to return to our roots and get laser focused back on our farmer audience. We started the laborious, but extremely gratifying work, of making that culture pivot and almost two years into that transformation, we can confidently say that we have, and our continuing, to rejuvenate that relationship with the farmers we serve. It was an evolution, and this summer, we knew it was time to bring our logo, branding and messaging up to speed. It was reputation management practiced in its most basic form.
On Monday, November 1, 2021, ISA announced our new brand publicly and our “By Association” brand campaign. The new logo is clean and modern with subtle nods back to the years of ISA’s founding, showcasing a return to their roots. Hard working sans serif typefaces are used for clarity and precision to surround the shape of the state of Illinois, which is visually built by row crops with a soybean at the heart of the state. The campaign messaging is distilled into simple words and ideals, all focused around the three driving pillars that help establish ISA’s position as a market leader in sustainable soybean production and profitability: Promotion, Advocacy and Education. The “Power by Association” language illustrates ISA’s commitment to being farmer-built and farmer-led, creating stories that are designed to speak to growers, rather than about growers.
But the best part of this entire effort? Our logo and new brand properties were developed with our farmers and not just for them. Farmer input helped drive the development and final decisions behind ISA’s new look and feel. It’s a brand for Illinois soybean farmers by Illinois soybean farmers and I think that’s special. You can see it in action at ilsoy.org.
If it’s been a while since you’ve taken your own look at how your brand is representing and resonating with your target audience, I encourage you to take a look with fresh eyes, and with perspective not only from in-house, but from your membership base, too. Brand reputation management is critical to not just maintaining your association, but growing it, too. More brand loyalty and more farmer confidence in what we do – I’d take those outcomes any day and remember that the hardest work is often the most rewarding.
Rachel Peabody is the director of communications for the Illinois Soybean Association.