Complete ReBrand for children’s conscious brand

Client Case

Shambala Kids is a company full of purpose and love; her founder Mel believes we create a better world by providing children and parents tools for being more mindful. Shambala Kids has existed for more than 15 years producing dozens of books, hundreds of articles and graduating many people on her method.

The brand´s design was created back when the brand was launched, with more of a 90´s feeling in mind, and seeking to establish a first design that would allow the author and teacher to pursue her early book deals and training mostly offline. 

Founder and owner Mel, reached out to me to support her with this process and redefine its image to generate more awareness and begin her digital channels. As well, Shambala needed a digital strategy to correct course in some specific channels to do brand repositioning and digital transformation.  

This is how this task began.

What was the problem

The logo and Shambala Kids brand assets were created more than a decade ago, and the products were mostly sold physically: books were printed, and cd´s produced. This out-dated image is now not compliant with the brand's trendy and positive tone, as mindfulness is one of today's most popular search subjects. 

The client wanted a brand and a social and digital strategy that could be sustainable in the long run. Shambala Kids produces a great deal of content, as the founder and author was written several best selling books (distribuited through Amazon). It was also important for her to be able to produce her own content in the long run, so part of the requirements was to create a framework she would continue.

The first step to solve this need was to create a strategy to be executed by the client (as requested) in digital channels. There was an existing website, but she needed a content strategy to start creating blog posts, and she was also required to have Facebook and Instagram profiles. So the tasks to be done were: 

  • Produce a brand refresh inspired by a classic logo. 

  • Generate a content strategy based on her book content and current articles

  • Creating buyer personas for the brand to have a clear notion of who we were talking to

  • Defining a social media plan for her social channels. 

Shambala needed to have online space to continue its journey of providing teachers and parents tools to practice mindfulness with kids. Opening this content into digital would give the client much more means to continue her work. 

This was the new logo and social design created under my creative direction by art director MJ Salinas, working exclusively for this project.

How it was resolved

Our team for strategy and design started with examining how we could create a new proposal. We took as inspiration the old Shambala Kids logo, which featured a rainbow and a sun, which meant hope and joy. The designer wanted to reflect these values stay true to the foundation of the brand. 

A new logo was developed and with the logo, we created the social media templates for Facebook, Instagram, blog posts, YouTube covers, and Pinterest.

We developed a simple 3x3 strategy for social media (3 posts for Facebook and 3 for Instagram weekly). Our lead copywriter checked client articles and booked excerpts to produce significant social content for social media channels. 

Tools and actions

To create buyer personas, we worked on empathy exercises based on design thiking and studied current brand user´s. To collect and analyze all the info, we worked with Google Documents to collectively make sure the team is tracking the info. 

Strategy was created on social media methodology, giving special attention to awareness. And we worked with Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest analytics for references. The website is currently on WordPress, and we were able to support the client on some changes to be done.

All graphic assets were created in Adobe Suite and then moved over to Canva.com for easy editing and client management. 

Final Results 

Since the strategy had a strong base on the clients writing work, we created a content vortex around it to that would allow the client to have a framework to continue the strategy. This allowed the client to be able to become self sufficient in time, producing her own content based on the strategic plan we did together

Through the usage of the brand templates and the initial strategy, it´s possible for her to continue generating awareness about her work.