City of Aledo

Challenge

The City of Aledo has a rich history and wanted to grow its city, a community of 3,600 in Western Illinois. While local community events attracted visitors from the Quad Cities region, and visitors enjoyed the small-town feel; however, they didn’t think of Aledo as a place to live or work. The City of Aledo needed a way to change that perception.

Aledo hired our team to create a new brand identity to facilitate this perception change. We kicked off an 8-month branding project to develop, design, and deploy this branding with the help of city staff. The goal was simple: create an identity that told Aledo’s story and gave city leaders the tools to attract business and residents.

What started as an initial branding project quickly transformed into a 3-year partnership where we had the opportunity to tell Aledo’s story.

Services

[develop + design]
  • Market Research
  • Brand Identity Development
  • Brand Messaging
  • Graphic Design
  • Brand Guidelines
  • Content Strategy
  • Community Relations
  • Copywriting
  • Brand Collateral
[deploy]
  • Email Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • Social Media Management
  • Communications Planning

Solution

We started with our Develop phase and spent several months gathering feedback from a comprehensive brand audit, which included an internal survey, a stakeholder survey, 25 one-hour stakeholder interviews and a community-wide survey. The research sought to identify value propositions and core values representative of the City of Aledo. The community’s participation in the interviews and surveys was vital to capture the essence of what truly makes Aledo special.

We quickly realized that this is a passionate community with deep-seated pride in four key areas: Agriculture, Adventure, Architecture, and Advancement. These became Aledo’s brand pillars, and we developed a brand story designed to share all of the great parts of living or working in Aledo:

Set in the scenic countryside just 30 minutes south of the quad cities, Aledo is an idyllic retreat from routine. The line showcases the city as a place to unwind, reconnect with friends and explore the unbeaten path. Individuals can discover the history of the eclectic architecture on Main, connect with friends in Central Park at annual festivals or explore off-road trails on your UTV. You can find it all in Aledo.

We then went into Design to create a new City Seal and marketing logo that helped to attract opportunity and celebrate the brand story of Aledo. The City Seal uses three colors: Aledo Green, Mercer County Navy, and Rhubarb Red. It features a Rhubarb leaf, celebrating its status as the Rhubarb Capital and an upward tilt to show the city’s progress.

Released alongside the Seal was the new marketing logo and tagline, “Find It All in Aledo,” which highlights the diverse range of activities and opportunities available in the community. After rolling out this new branding, we moved into the Deploy phase and Aledo asked for our help once more. They retained HAVEN to help fully implement the branding and launch new marketing activities to support their recruitment efforts.

Quote From Jarod

Jarod

Results

For the past two and a half years, we have helped Aledo fully implement its new brand identity and communicate its unique values to its residents, businesses and visitors. We have worked closely with city staff to steadily implement the new brand design standards across all city departments, documents, and signage.

In 2021, we launched new marketing channels for the City, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter handles. We also created their monthly email newsletter, The Monthly Memo, which has grown rapidly and regularly sees open rates of 45%, communicates local initiatives and community events and celebrates local small businesses. In 2022, Aledo updated the branding for their police and public works fleet, and we helped the City update all city hall documents with the correct fonts, colors and logos in 2023.

Aledo continues to leverage its brand identity through signage and advertising to attract more visitors and economic opportunities.

25

60-Minute Brand Audit Interviews

44%

Average Open Rate, 2023 Monthly Memo

69.1%

Year over Year Growth, Facebook Engagements