From crisis to belonging: the first rebrand in a decade

01

The brief

The Trevor Project was known for crisis support. The job was to make the brand reflect the whole of what it offers young people, including belonging, without weakening the service people reach in their worst moments.

I led the rebrand with the agency Kettle, alongside the day-to-day marketing engine: brand, paid, organic, partnerships and creative.

02

Listening first

I sold and ran the organization's first brand health study: four waves on Qualtrics BrandXM, so we could see how the work moved over time instead of arguing about it.

03

Acting on it

• Moved 50% more budget into YouTube and set up a managed service with Google.
• Fed the study into the dashboards that track crisis contacts, so brand and service were read together.
• Left fundraising messaging alone and applied the innovation lens to service messaging.
• Replaced a social-listening workaround with AI sentiment that could tell harmful from innocuous language, including euphemisms, and put it in a shared dashboard.

04

Partners and revenue

Marketing ran 80+ brand partnerships that raised $60MM+ in charitable revenue. An AT&T cause-marketing campaign reached 2.5x the benchmark for consideration intent.

05

The team

The marketing team grew from 4 to 11. I split it into paid and organic/owned pods with weekly time set aside for upskilling, and wrote the service agreement, responsibility matrix and shared KPIs that tied Marketing to Creative. My rule: treat underperformance as a support problem first.

06

Outcomes

The organization won Adweek's 2021 Brand Save Award during this tenure. The award belongs to the organization.