Brand Strategy
Case Study — 08
Brand &
Website Platform
"Defining a narrative and building the foundation for a global membership network to be understood."
"Defining a narrative and building the foundation for a global membership network to be understood."
[ The Challenge ]
CREO is a global membership network focused on climate finance — working with family offices and institutional investors to help catalyze capital toward climate solutions. In other words: serious work, serious people, and serious stakes.
When I joined as the first Director of Communications and Brand in the organization's ten-year history, the work was strong, but the organization's brand narrative had not been defined. There was a significant gap between the scale of what CREO was actually doing in practice and how it was showing up externally — and that gap was not setting the org up to grow in terms of members, partners, supporters, and funders.
The brand relied heavily on word of mouth within its existing membership. There was no clear narrative for new audiences to land on, no structured membership experience to speak of, and no strong organizational point of view being put into the world. Which meant other people and media stories were filling that gap and shaping CREO's perception without CREO having much say in it.
This wasn't an awareness problem. CREO had credibility and access within its world. The problem was clarity and ownership. Without a defined narrative, that credibility was almost impossible to communicate to anyone outside the existing network. For a prospective member trying to understand what CREO was and why it mattered, there was simply nothing to hold onto.
And for an organization working at the intersection of institutional finance and climate solutions, "trust us, we're well regarded" was not going to be enough. CREO needed to define its own story — clearly and on its own terms — and build a platform that could carry that story consistently.
I came in and treated the brand and website not as a redesign project but as foundational infrastructure — because that's what it actually was. The goal was to build a system that could clearly communicate CREO's value, support organizational growth, and establish the credibility that the mission deserved.
I led the development of CREO's first messaging framework, brand positioning, and site architecture, working closely with the executive team to translate complex, conceptual ideas into language that felt clear, structured, and right for the audience. Climate finance is not a space where you can afford to be vague or generic, so every word had to earn its place. I also partnered with external vendors and designers throughout to make sure strategy, content, and visual execution stayed aligned from start to finish.
I led a full brand and website build from the ground up — which also included developing a new membership portal to replace an existing one that simply didn't meet the aesthetic weight of the mission.
The work included developing the brand narrative and messaging framework from scratch, building a clear site architecture, and creating key pages including a membership experience that finally articulated — in plain language — why joining CREO was worth it. I also designed and launched a research hub to surface insights and drive engagement, and wrote all of the website copy in close partnership with leadership. The result was a platform that took a highly conceptual mission and made it feel accessible, structured, and actionable.
The platform drove strong early engagement, including nearly 200 research downloads in the first month, and received positive feedback from members across the network.
But the real win was ownership. CREO finally had a clear narrative it could stand behind, a platform built to carry it, and a foundation from which to engage new audiences, show up in media conversations, and be understood by external stakeholders on its own terms. For an organization that had spent ten years doing important work quietly, that clarity was long overdue.
[ Before — The Starting Point ]
[ After — Homepage ]
[ After — Key Pages ]
