When it comes to your organization, you likely know your mission, vision, and what you do. However, do you know how your members and potential members view the organization beyond that? This question is at the heart of association branding and the answer can make or break the size of your membership and member retention. Why? Because your brand is what your members connect most to, and having a misalignment or out of date brand can turn members away.
Signs Your Organization Is Ready for a Rebrand Refresh:
As a dedicated board member, committee member, or long-term member, it can be hard to see your organization through the eyes of someone first discovering its existence. So, how can you tell if your association or professional society is ready to shake the dust off your branding?
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- Your logo is grainy, hard to use in diverse designs, or looks outdated
- Your logo doesn’t reflect your mission
- Your logo isn’t memorable
- When asked, members describe your organization in terms that don’t align with your mission or strategic plan
- Members tend to care more about prices than what your organization is doing
- Your conference branding looks 100% more modern than your association branding
- Your website, emails, or social media could have been made by any organization in your field (they’re generic)
- Your recruitment materials and member on-boarding materials look dated
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Refreshing Your Brand to Appeal to Members While Reflecting Your Mission
You don’t always have to rebrand as an organization to bring your visual aesthetic into the 21st century. In fact, we often don’t recommend tossing out everything when re-envisioning your branding. How you brand your organization is all about understanding how your organization is perceived, what value your members get from the organization, and how your organization compares to others in the field (your differentiators).
Rebranding: When an Association Is Ready for Change
Sometimes when clients come to us, they are in need of a full rebrand. This is the case when the organization is taking a dramatic step forward in their mission and want their audience to see them through fresh eyes. When this is the case, we start from ground zero with a thorough brand strategy, including market research, a competitive analysis, logo and visual aesthetics workshopping, taglines, and communications guidelines.
When rebranding, it’s important to communicate the impending change and the why behind it. This will stir up excitement from your members and provide a sense of transparency in how the organization is evolving.
Best for: Associations taking a large step forward
Brand Expansion
Not every organization needs to wash away the old when considering how to upgrade their branding. When an organization has spent decades building trust with their audience, we don’t want to disrupt that trust through too major of a shift. When this is the case, we try to keep elements from the organization’s existing branding, such as a primary color or near color, to signal that the organization’s identity is evolving and not being reinvented. Often, I tell clients that our job as an association marketing team is to hold a mirror up to their organization, to ensure what’s reflected represents who they are and how they want to be viewed.
Best for: Organizations that have built trust around tradition
Brand Strategy and Positioning
For associations that have in-house marketing teams or don’t know exactly where they stand, we recommend working through the brand strategy and positioning process. This process includes looking at the competitive landscape to see how your association stacks up against competitors, what your members want and need, and an audit of your current brand. Using these, we create a brand strategy that leverages what makes your organization beloved by loyal members, what makes your organization unique, and builds upon your existing brand equity.
Best for: Organizations that want to better understand if they need to refresh their branding
Finding the Right Partner for Branding Your Organization
The first thing I always tell board members is that their view of their organization is going to be different than that of a general member, and even more different than a new or potential member. This is why I don’t recommend DIY branding development. Your board members, committee members, and long-term members have already fully bought into the brand. Their experiences shape their perception of the organization’s identity. Those experiences have yet to happen for new members and potential members, so it’s vital to use an unbiased source to truly ‘see’ your organization.
However, association and professional societies are unique, which means you don’t want to just go with any marketing agency. You want to use a company that understands mission-driven organizations, membership-based organizations, or certifying bodies. Using a generalized marketing association can lead to a steeper learning curve when it comes to aligning branding with operational needs and the unique type of loyalty needed to retain long-term members.
As a company with over 40 clients in our portfolio, we know that each organization is unique, but we also understand governance processes and the member journey. We bring this expertise with us to our branding projects, and the results speak for themselves.
A Tale of Two Case Studies
Case Study One: A Full Rebrand The American Psychosocial Oncology Society (APOS)
When APOS came to us, their branding had drifted from their mission. Their logo felt unrelated to the work they did, members and prospective members couldn’t easily articulate what set the organization apart, and key engagement metrics across membership, conference attendance, and donations had stagnated.
We led a full rebrand, including a new logo, a modernized visual system, and a website redesign with conversion rate optimization and SEO built in. The work took 12 weeks from kickoff to launch.
In the 20 months that followed:
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- Membership grew 37%, from 490 to 672 members
- Conference attendance climbed 13%, from 445 to 502 attendees
- Overall website traffic rose 47%, with new users up 46%
- Organic search traffic grew 25% (now 20K sessions)
- Referral traffic surged 156% (now 5.1K sessions)
- Email traffic more than doubled, up 128% (now 3.7K sessions)
- Direct traffic increased 58% (now 15K sessions)
A modern brand gave APOS members and prospective members a clearer picture of who the organization is, and they responded.
Case Study Two: A Brand Expansion The American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD)
APSARD had grown significantly since their website was first developed, and their existing brand carried real equity with their members. They didn’t need a teardown. They needed their identity to catch up to the scope of their work and to support their revenue-driving initiatives.
We kept their established brand elements while expanding the system: a refreshed visual identity, a new information architecture, an SEO strategy, and a website redesign that supported recruitment and engagement. The project took 10 weeks.
Comparing Oct through Dec 2025 to the same period the year prior:
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- Organic search traffic grew 34% year over year (now 18.3K sessions)
- Direct traffic climbed 57% (now 30.6K sessions)
- Referral traffic rose 7% (now 3.84K sessions)
Brand expansion let APSARD honor what their members already loved while bringing the organization’s visual identity in step with where they are today.
FAQS
How long does an association rebrand take?
The branding process for an association can take anywhere from about 8 weeks to a year, depending on the availability of the collaborating partners within the organization and what the needs of the organization are.
Do we need a new logo, or just a refresh?
We have criteria for what makes a logo successful. These same criteria can help you determine if your logo isn’t as effective as it could be.
You want a logo to be:
- Simple: Not overly complex. The viewer is not confused about what they’re seeing. Simple does not necessarily mean realistic. A simple logo can be abstract or non-objective in subject matter.
- Memorable: The logo is unique enough to leave an impact on the audience.
- Timeless: Will last the lifespan of your organization.
- Relevant: The logo connects to your organization’s purpose and identity.
- Legible: Typography can be read promptly, from a distance, and in differing applications.
- Versatile: Can be used in a wide array of applications.
What's the difference between a rebrand and a brand expansion?
A rebrand reinvents a brand from ground zero, where as, brand expansion builds on an organization’s existing branding. This can include revising the logo to be more modern, adding new brand colors, defining the brand voice, or building out additional aspects of the brand’s visual aesthetic.
How do you handle board approval for branding decisions?
We often work directly with boards to understand their brand before we begin developing branding options. Sometimes we work with a taskforce or committee, and when we do, we clarify what level of approval the board would like when it comes to the final branding.
What does association branding cost?
Branding is an investment that can range from a few thousand dollars for building out sub-branding for a specific initiative to over thirty thousand for market research, full brand development, and implementing branding in a new website and brand assets.
Will my members notice the change?
Absolutely. Your branding stretches the extent of member-facing assets from emails to your conference program book. One thing we do is help our clients proactively communicate to their members of plans to rebrand. In fact, countdown campaigns to the brand launch are one of the most fun parts of the rebranding experience.
