Maui Behavorial Health Resources case study: brand building
Maui Behavioral Health Resources is the umbrella organization of 3 nonprofit agencies, each serving the people of Maui in different ways:
Aloha House emphasizes recovery and healthy lifestyles to individuals and families by providing compassionate, effective and comprehensive behavioral health services with the spirit of excellence and aloha needed to get adults back on track.
Malama Family Recovery Center provides caring, holistic substance abuse treatment to women and children with the goal of empowering families to live safe, independent and healthy lives.
Maui Youth & Family Services focuses on empowering youth and the families challenged with behavioral health issues so our leaders of tomorrow can become responsible, self-fulfilled and contributing members of the community.
The agencies operated independently for many years, then merged in order to share and maximize their limited resources. However, these agencies had a more than 40-year history on Maui and they each had a separate, distinct brand, with staff, clients and donors who had loyalty to those respective brands.
The Task:
REBRAND the organization with a visually cohesive, coordinated approach toward marketing and maintenance of the brand image with the objectives of:
- Reaching a larger audience.
- Securing a larger base of clients.
- Presenting consistent, high quality messaging and image to the community, nonprofit industry, health providers, and potential/current/former clients.
- Reducing volatility in volume of clients.
Our Approach:
Given the enduring history of Aloha House, Malama and Maui Youth, the fundamental concept for the redesign was to maintain the identities of the individual agencies while unifying them under a single, combination mark that gives personality to the parent organization. Additional motivations were to simplify and give equal treatment to the agency logos.
This began with a new color palette:
Then typography:
Then Main Messaging, aligned with the organization’s Brand Archetype:
On the surface, the Magician might not seem like the best fit, best left to the likes of Disney. However, healthcare to most people involves a (sometimes substantial) element of mystery or mystique.
The Magician
Be Amazed
- AKA: Kahuna (Hawaiian), Visionary, Catalyst, Innovator, Charismatic Leader, Mediator, Shaman, Healer, Medicine Man
- About: The Magician is intuitive, insightful, and inspiring, applying fundamental laws (spiritual, supernatural, metaphysical and scientific) to achieve objectives, which are often of a transformational nature. Such transformation might apply to a cleaning company (dirty >> clean), a church (confusion/ignorance >> enlightenment) or a healthcare organization (sickness/pain >> health).
- Drives: Leave a mark on the world.
- Your Priority: Gain mastery of how the world works (technologically, metaphysically, spiritually) and use that knowledge to achieve wonders.
- Customer’s Priority: Gather the necessary information to make a good decision.
- Brand Voice: Ethereal, intuitive, insightful, inspiring, mysterious, fascinating, grandiose, awesome.
- Watch out for: Appearing detached, perception of giving half-truths or withholding vital information. Also beware of making claims that can’t be objectively proven.
- Common Industries: Entertainment, technology, health and beauty, spas.
- Well-known Examples: Disney, TED, Polaroid
The final logo design refines the graphical elements from each of the original logos and uses color and iconic graphics to distinguish between the three agencies:
