The Salon is a space in Pittsburgh that brings brilliant women together to experience new things, ideas, and people. It is a room for work, play, and deep discussion. Their programming and content compliments a vibrant community—their brand needed to as well. The Salon approached us to develop a brand strategy, a visual refresh of their brand, and to roll all of this out through a website + brand activation campaign.
Challenge
How do we create a brand that is modern and honest—tying a huge variety of programs together under one umbrella? How do we create an experience that feels refined and special—while being accessible for all kinds of women? How do we centre local women at all times—creating space for them to own the brand whenever they lead programming at The Salon?
Build a brand that brought together two long-standing organizations.
Approach
We started with the space and the programs. What did the space make people feel, and what was the intention behind the design decisions that make The Salon what it is? Then, we looked at the programming. What programming performed best with people, what performed the worst? What stood out about the top performing programs? We then went on to pair the values that guided the space’s design with analysis of what was driving programs to perform particularly well. We came out with a set of Experience Principles and a whole suite of program positioning materials that would appeal to The Salon’s audience.
Execution
Once we had built out Experience Principles and program positioning materials, we trained The Salon team on how to use them. We threaded these principles and learnings into a visual brand refresh and a tone + voice document for the team. Equipped with a new visual style, writing guidelines, and training on The Salon brand—the team was ready to go. We assisted them by providing strategy for activating the brand and designing a brand new website that reflected the refresh. Finally, we activated the brand on socials and on The Salon’s newsletter.
Brand Refresh
We provided a refreshed brand with new assets, a set of brand guidelines, and tone/voice guidelines for the team. These would be implemented on social and the website.
Website Redesign
We overhauled The Salon’s website—optimizing for newsletter and sales conversion. In the re-organization we also integrated some new concept and visual ideas to express the brand refresh.
Brand Activation
We built out a strategy and several posts to activate the brand across social media.
Outcome
Within the first couple weeks of The Salon moving away from their old website they saw a ~5% increase in conversion to sales and doubled their sales MoM. The brand brought a level of clarity to The Salon’s programming and perspective—attracting new members, partners, and event sponsors in the months after the brand’s relaunch.
