The YMCA of Middle Tennessee Advances National Rebrand Using MarcomCentral’s Marketing Asset Management Platform
The YMCA (“Y”) of Middle Tennessee serves 268,000 people through its member locations and programs in Nashville and the surrounding areas. It’s one of the YMCA of USA’s 2600 local charters serviced by the National Resource office located in Chicago. Because of the Y, millions of individuals are healthier, more self-sufficient, and more connected to one another.
The Challenge
For the first time in 43 years, the Y unveiled a new national brand strategy to increase the understanding of its impact and the difference it makes in the communities it serves. Prior to this rebranding effort, all Y locations had the opportunity to create their own logo and their own brand identity. You can imagine the variety of looks this produced. The Y had become their own worst enemy in unifying their brand, which had become “watered down” and was causing confusion amongst the public.
So, the Y underwent a brand revitalization that began in 2011 and concluded in 2015. This long term project included a major overhaul to their messaging, visual identity, and logos and emphasized a focus on brand compliance.
The new brand strategy was launched nationally and the Y of Middle Tennessee quickly realized they needed a tool that could help them produce localized assets for their centers as well as, maintain the brand compliance standards.
Why they Chose MarcomCentral
When the Y of Middle Tennessee began their search for a new tool, there were several must haves on their list including:
Highlights
- 500 active users
- 250 marketing assets downloaded per month
- Reduced marketing delivery time from 2-3 weeks to minutes
- Improved brand protection strategy
- Autonomy for centers to create local assets (produce marketing ad-hoc on their schedule)
- Ability to maintain brand compliance (protect immense value of the brand)
- Reduction of one-off requests (eliminate bottlenecks as a small team with a high volume of asset requests.)
MarcomCentral was selected by the Marketing organization as the solution to these primary challenges.
The Results Speak for Themselves
Prior to building out the their new branded site with MarcomCentral, the Marketing team decided to send a survey to 300 staff members and conduct focus groups to get feedback on what staff wanted and needed out of the tool. This proved invaluable in guiding their implementation of MarcomCentral. The Marketing team was able to determine that the site should have a focus on practicality and function to best serve their users.
The new site, cleverly named “BrandAid,” launched in 2015 and quickly grew to nearly 500 active users. During the launch period, the Y of Middle Tennessee offered several training resources to ensure staff adoption including: onsite and offsite trainings, webinars, and around the clock support available for new user questions.
Over 100 marketing assets are located in easy-to-find groups where they then can be edited by a local center to fit their needs, on their schedule. All campaigns, branding elements, and philanthropy assets are available on the site ensuring that users have brand compliant materials at their fingertips. MarcomCentral’s customizable templates give centers the flexibility to add the personalized details they need while staying within national brand standards.
Users at the local centers report that they love the new system and are impressed by how easy it is to use. They’re particularly happy that they’re able to create professional and polished looking assets in a matter of minutes. The Marketing team is no longer the bottleneck for one-off requests and is able to focus their resources on more strategic projects.