Goal

Despite its many successes (eg, over 1,000 closed files), the St. Albert Food Bank is not fully seen nor widely recognized as a “Community Village” or hub for social services navigation (beyond strategic community partnership members and referral clients). An organizational rebrand was sought to improve brand visibility and unlock the organization’s true potential through increased acceptance and support.

Target audiences included City of St. Albert residents and potential clients, government and other social agencies, and existing and potential donors and supporters.

Situational Analysis

As pioneering evolutionists to the standard food bank and more progressive community food centre models, the St. Albert Community Village and Food Bank is structured to better the lives of others in a truly meaningful and lasting way: Serving hope and healing as well as healthy food hampers to individuals and families in need, or in crisis.

The issue driving the organization’s rebrand was therefore not one of evolution, but clarity and awareness… made ever more challenging by the fact that as a community of wealth and prosperity, St. Albert residents were deemed to be statistically less likely to acknowledge poverty and insecurities within their boundaries.

Unfussy Recommendations

Without full community support, could the mantle of Community Village truly be claimed? And for that matter, what does the term even mean to residents and potential clients and donors beyond the notion of a small group of people gathering to do…What…? With these issues in mind, Unfussy recommended that rebranding efforts be taken to:

• Move beyond the image of a standard food bank in visual identity, imagery, and messaging, and clarify the term “Community Village” to better define its purpose, service offering and value proposition.
• Increase awareness of both the Food Bank and Community Village among St. Albert residents and potential clients and donors/supporters to: promote the facility as an ideal destination for anyone in need of food, shelter, financial, and health insecurities; to convince those in need to seek help (and reassure them that they are indeed worthy of it); and to influence the minds and hearts of residents en masse to: fully embrace the phrase, “It takes a Village to help others in need”; to support the idea that the advantaged hold a moral obligation to help the disadvantaged; to recognize that the disadvantaged (even often friends and neighbours) are indeed worthy of hope and happiness; and to believe in the notion of strengthening the community by strengthening the individual.

At the heart of the matter, the St. Albert Community Village and Food Bank should be seen as THE crucial destination for the disadvantaged and disheartened; offering effective prevention programming and crisis response strategies for those in need of short or long-term support in the face of adversity and uncertainty.

Their brand promise as a multi-disciplined, holistic, and highly focused “Full-Fillment Centre” operating within Alberta’s “Botanical City” should be to promote those in need as a disruptive re-imagining of the dandelion: Not a weed, but a flower, bursting in full, brilliant, abstract bloom…valued and worthy of support; and the organization itself as the end of a struggle and the beginning of a transformative journey toward new horizons… like the answer to wishes of fulfillment blown on the wind.

Outcomes

The re-brand initiative is yet to be formally launched.