The Charter School of San Diego Rebranding
The Challenge
When the Charter School of San Diego (CSSD) contacted Nuffer, Smith, Tucker, the organization was facing numerous misperceptions. The myths surrounding charter schools included that it was only for poor performing students, was not academically rigorous, and didn’t have academic accreditation. Plus, there was the perception of CSSD as an overarching entity for all charter schools in San Diego. So, CSSD tasked Nuffer, Smith, Tucker with helping the organization rebrand itself.
The Tactics
Working with the school’s leadership, Nuffer, Smith, Tucker took CSSD through an extensive brand assessment process and created a plan to dispel the common myths and differentiate CSSD from other charter schools. During this process, NST and CSSD addressed the confusion surrounding the organization’s name and decided it was time to rename the school to better speak to its mission, vision and values.
Through workshops with the faculty, staff and board, NST explored name alternatives, developed a new tagline to support the new positioning and key messages, planned a formal roll out of a new name, designed the new graphic identity and developed a style manual for the use of the graphic elements.
As a result, The Charter School of San Diego officially changed its name to Altus Institute.
The Results
- With the launch of the new name, NST created a full marketing collateral packet, including business cards, letterhead, brochures, folders and more.
- NST also created a scalable version of their logo that incorporated consistent elements but used different colors to help the schools housed under the Altus Institute each have their own identity.