Work: Case Study Lowcountry Land Trust
Our work began with the Lowcountry Open Land Trust to develop a stronger website. A few years later a strategic planning process called for the organization to shorten its name to the Lowcountry Land Trust and set a path for bigger, broader, more collaborative, and more impactful conservation work across the South Carolina coast. To accomplish that, they needed a new brand platform and marketing program that could engage many different community organizations and members across the region.
We dug into our research and set out to interview and engage all the key stakeholders in the Land Trust’s work – their staff, the full board, community leaders, conservation partners, donors and sponsors, journalists, and residents. The key insight that revealed itself during this process can be summed up in a word – TRUST. The Land Trust’s approach to conservation was grounded in collaboration, where participants work together on shared goals, foster conversations and relationships rooted in respect, and seek paths where all parties ultimately flourish. Trust was not only in their name, it was arguably the most powerful tool in their conservation toolkit. That concept became the focus of all our writing and design.
With our focus set, we launched into brand storywriting and identity design to bring the core themes of cooperation, trust and flourishing to life. The line that best captured the underlying mission of it all is “where trust lives, life flourishes.” That quickly became the central rallying cry for all the branding and programs that followed.
From there the new logo and identity explored the relationship between trust and flourish and found its answer in two hands forming a live oak acorn. With the story and identity nailed down, we turned our attention to designing and building a new website, email, social media formats, brand launch event materials, merchandise and more. We also worked with the Land Trust team to plan, concept and design materials a few new programs to engage different part of our lowcountry community – Flourish as an annual event to bring all the conservation players together, Soul of The Lowcountry as young professionals-focused initiative, and The Angel Oak Effect which rallying the community around protecting one of the lowcountry’s iconic sites. Over the years we worked in partnership with the Land Trust team to bring its new vision and mission to life through programming that inspired and empowered.
The rebranding and programming that followed allowed the Lowcountry Land Trust to step into a larger role across the region, engage new audiences in landscape-scale conservation work, and build on the collaborative relationships and partnerships they had forged. As a result, thousands of acres of ecologically, culturally, and historically significant land has been protected along the coast for future generations to experience and steward.
