ReSource

The Challenge

When Recycle North was formed in the 1970s, recycling meant something completely different than it does today. Which is why, over forty years on, people kept stopping by with blue bins filled with light bulbs, newspapers and soda cans. With an expansion into Barre, and multiple poorly digested acquired entities (for example, Youth Build), the organization needed to sort through their branding.

Our Approach

We conducted low cost market research to understand how well the broader Chittenden community understood the totality of the organization’s offerings. The key finding: it was well known as a place where you could buy shabby couches and lamps. Yet the organization does tremendous work beyond the “stuff” side, investing heavily in helping disadvantaged people. We needed to help the organization better tell that “investment in people” side of the story.

Resource Brand Pyramid

Our Solution

By our nature, we prefer to evolve brands not revolutionize them. We brought back three potential paths: stay with the existing brand name, change the branded proposition modestly or dramatically re-envision the branded architecture. We presented concepts for each path, and we collectively settled on the creation of a new umbrella brand “ReSource” with several subdivisions: ReBuild, ReTrain, ReStore and ReLief. We then created a new identity system, and suggested they use a key asset — their rolling stock — as a billboard to broadcast the breadth of their offerings.

The Result

You can find our logo work and identity system across the state now. The organization gives us credit not only with the creation of a new and better branded architecture but with helping it focus its board’s efforts against key priorities and land significant new grants. The organization has tripled in size and revenue since those early years when we began working with them.