A New Brand for a Reinvigorated Community

This past weekend, July 10, marked the three-year anniversary of the Serial Marketers community. Today, our mission is clearer than ever as we introduce a new brand identity that will strengthen our presence as we connect marketers around the world.

The changes from March 2020 to July 2020 set the tone for the past year. We started a series of virtual events with inspiring guest speakers, launched speed networking events on Upstream , and grew at our fastest pace yet. We also brought on staff to help with web development, editing, and a slew of other tasks.

Since those pivotal months, we’ve hardly slowed down. Here’s a summary of what happened over the past 12 months. We…

·???????Surged past the 2,000-member mark earlier this year.

·???????Launched a private member database.

·???????Debuted a premium membership option that continually offers new kinds of rewards to members.

·???????Overhauled our web presence with offers, guest speaker archives, member news, and more features.

·???????Launched an industry events calendar .

·???????Launched an industry awards calendar .

·???????Initiated the $CMO coin on Rally.io, becoming one of the first 50 or so creators or communities to do so.

·???????Increased frequency of our members-only newsletter to once a week.

·???????Released MarketerFaves.com to highlight technologies relevant to marketers.

There are still a few new updates coming, including overhauling our existing Advisors (office hours) and new Academy (training) programs; you can see a preview of where these are going on Superpeer .

That leads to one of the most pronounced changes with Serial Marketers: our new brand identity.

The initial logo design from July 2018 was based on a sketch I shared on Fiverr as I was launching the community. I envisioned a university crest with the words “Learn, Try, Share.” It looked like this:

A designer with the username bangbend responded, offering to do a version for free and then charged me $5; I made sure to send him a better fee and since used him for several other projects. I was the second person to leave a review for the Indonesian designer; he now has more than 600 with an average rating of 4.9.

I was stunned by his version with the wood paneling, even if I used the red, black, and white color scheme versions more often.

The overall approach to design was disjointed though. There were rectangular versions of the logo, for instance, that were easy to read but bore no relation to the original icon. And with the university seal, in format like Slack or LinkedIn icons, you could barely make out what was there.

Then, this year, along came the multifaceted and multitalented David Bell , one of many members who has reinvigorated the community with his energy and practical suggestions. He joined in February, thanks to cross-promotion through ExecThread.

One of David’s most important contributions was the introduction to Justin Sapp and Christian Drury at Brightwell , the design and brand identity studio. They appreciated some of my challenges and agreed to work on some ideas for an updated logo, along with a few thoughts for how that’d shape the overall design story for the community.

Another time, I’ll interview Justin and Christian about their work and share more about the evolution of it. Their approach was so good that I was torn at different times – first with the logo design (there was another option I was very close to running with) and then the color scheme.

The end result wound up being this work of art:

One of many elements I loved about the winning design is that it plays off the tagline for the community, one I came up with during a rare subway ride last November: “Marketers need marketers, too.” It was inspired by seeing some clever copy on the ads on the train, and I kept thinking about what that kind of copy would look like for Serial Marketers.

Serial Marketers is a place for and by marketers, after all. We need each other on an emotional level, but we also often need marketers to help us. It fits with the community’s brand.

If you look at the symbol, it could be completely abstract, which is fine. The icon resembled a new twist on the infinity symbol for me, one that spins off in new directions.

It also felt like a superhero’s insignia. If Green Lantern wore red and was a marketer, for instance, maybe he’d wear something like this.

But there are more direct references to the community.

It’s possible to see one giant S in the icon, or two S’s connected to each other as if one is in front of the other.

Then there are the M’s, lowercase. The M’s join together. Marketers need marketers. They’re fused. They need each other to complete the picture. It is a literal manifestation of the community’s tagline and purpose.

There is so much more to unpack from Brightwell, but that’s at least a taste of what they delivered. I can’t thank them enough for how much thought and energy they put into this.

We even have a store set up for merchandise . If you have any ideas for what else you’d like there, let me know, and I’ll try to add it.

As for where to go from here, examples like David Bell’s show how we are constantly reaping benefits from new members joining and sharing their ideas and networks. If you haven’t joined yet or want to, it’s a great time to source opportunities and opportunities.

Just visit https://www.serialmarketers.net and click “join now for free.” I’ll be sure to let you in.

See you there.

David Berkowitz

Serial Marketers founder