Facing declining membership and attempts to stay relevant, the Board of Directors of the St. Mary’s Curling Club approved us to overhaul their brand and online presence. A brand is more than just a logo – it’s a promise to your customer and tells them what they can expect from your products and services. Knowing this, we created a plan to breathe new life into this great community organization.

One of the first initiatives rolled out was a name change of sorts. Recognizing the interpretation of the word “club” could make the organization sound closed-off or exclusive, we opted to simply reduce the name to St. Marys Curling, which has a more clear, active and welcoming tone. We then researched new branding options and developed an updated logo, colour palette, and voice for the organization.

In an effort to attract new members and increase their community profile, we designed a new and more streamlined website making it easier for the general public to find information, explore membership rates, and see upcoming events. This new website is now more responsive, providing a much-need technological update and allowing the organization to reach people on the devices they use. The website has easy navigation, and features core initiatives front and centre.

We also evaluated and revamped St. Marys Curling’s social presence, putting more focus on Facebook in an effort to connect with members and the public on a consistent basis. Regularly engaging with the community through posts, photos, videos, and events, we were able help them grow their likes by 13% per year since 2015. We advised them to divert a portion of their advertising spend from traditional media to Facebook Advertising, which helped them reach a much larger audience outside of the St. Marys region.

Finally, we worked to improve one crucial channel for communicating with the curling membership base, email. Prior to our consultation, the organization was distributing messages through gmail, which didn’t allow for much creativity or design, and did provide any tracking or database management. We recommend they use a designated email service, such as MailChimp, to handle all digital correspondence. This service allow them to create better-looking email messages in line with the new brand, and better organize their contact list to target emails to the right segments.

All of these elements have raised the profile of the organization in the community and region. On average, they now attract more people to events and have steadily increasing new members year after year. It was a great pleasure to work on the extensive project and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for this amazing group.

PROJECT LEAD

Jason Clarke

Client

St Marys Curling

Skills

Design, Logo, Photography, Photo Editing, Social Content, Web/Social Development