To unify this client’s brand and rally their teams in offices spread across the country, we created this visual document that addresses the company’s big picture – and smallest details.

The Client

360 Destination Group, one of the country’s leading destination management companies and a Hawthorn client since 2016, has been helping corporate event planners put on memorable events for more than 40 years. By having their finger on the pulse of destinations up and down the California coast, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Chicago, they keenly understand the locales and combine that with their wildly creative eye to bring corporate events to life. The company’s offices in those destinations could sometimes feel isolated from one another, so they came to us to help them unify their brand.

The Project

With mostly autonomous offices all over the country, ensuring that all team members are aligned in terms of strategy and brand is an important challenge for 360DG. As a part of our work as their full-service marketing agency, one of the first big projects was creating this “Brand Bible”: a highly visual, internal-only document that offers a 30,000-foot view of the company – “this is what we’re trying to accomplish,” “this is our voice” – all the way down to the details, like photo requirements, social guidelines, and specific fonts to use. The initial sections orient staff to the history of the company and gives broad context; as you get deeper into the document, it narrows its focus to the nitty gritty for all marketing tactics.

Our Take

When you go through a rebranding process, much of the thinking revolves around communicating this newly crafted messaging to your customers – but what about those internally, within the company? A brand bible gives employees something they can rally behind and reference. It’s not something to memorize; they don’t need to know it like the back of their hand, but having a document employees can turn to when they’re having a moment of doubt about some detail or when they’re being onboarded? That’s a valuable tool to give to your team.

Last Thought

Some big brands have turned their brand bible into something that works as a casually external-facing document, too, maybe in the form of a coffee table book. It’s not meant to be something that’s picked up and closely examined – and certainly not distributed to the masses – but as a nice-looking and inviting page turn in your reception area. It can help clients, potential employees, investors, and other stakeholders get a sense of your brand in an easy-to-scan, effective way.