Non Profit Communications

The Parkinson's Association of San Diego has grown from a small, independent nonprofit into a broad-based education and support services organization offering more than 15 programs and reaching more than 13,000 people per year in the greater San Diego area.

To better accomplish its mission of easing the burden of San Diego's estimated 15,000 Parkinson's patients and the 40,000 affected family members, the Association hired Southwest Strategies to develop and help with implementation of a strategic branding, marketing and public relations plan.

Developing a consistent brand was extremely important to the Association. Southwest Strategies worked closely with staff and board members to revamp and re-brand all of the organization's collateral materials, starting with the logo. The main challenge was to modernize the look and feel of the organization's materials while still telling the story about who they are and what they do. The first recommendation was removing the word "disease" from their name, changing the Parkinson's Disease Association of San Diego to its current name.

Through extensive research and dozens of interviews with staff, the board of directors and Association members, Southwest Strategies arrived at a new brand that conveyed greater hope, family, caring and nurturing. The Southwest Strategies graphic design team developed detailed brand guidelines identifying logo definition and usage, font types, corporate colors and imagery definition for all Association materials. Additionally, Southwest Strategies completely redesigned the Association's logo and color palette and created new, re-branded templates for all collateral materials, including brochures, fact sheets and newsletters.

The Association completed its launch of the new website and is rolling out the newly-branded collateral materials to its target audiences. The results have been positive, as the response rate for the Association's email newsletter has more than doubled.